brief
talk with him in the street, before the general conversation began at
the table. He remarked upon the extraordinary devotion exhibited by
Delane of the London Times to the interests and politics of Lord
Palmerston. Becoming interested in our conversation, we strayed away
from the rest, and were walking about a quarter of a mile down the
_bazaar_, when (are you surprised to hear?) Mr. Buckle was missed,
the two _boabs_ came running after us, and we were cited to the
dinner-table.

Buckle, of course, was the card. He talked with a velocity and fulness
of facts that was wonderful. The rest of us could do little but listen
and ask questions. And yet he did not seem to be lecturing us; the
stream of his conversation flowed along easily and naturally. Nor was it
didactic; Buckle's range of reading has covered everything in elegant
literature, as well as the ponderous works whose titles make so
formidable a list at the beginning of his History, and, as he remembers
everything he has read, he can produce his stores upon the moment for
the illustration of whatever subject happens to come up.

In the first place, let me say how delightful it was to discover his
cordial interest in our own country. He expresses a strong hope that
England will take no part against us, and do nothing to break the
blockade. He is going to write about America; indeed, his next volume,
besides containing a complete view of the German philosophy, will treat
of the United States. But he will visit us before he writes. Although
appreciating the great work of De Tocqueville, he complains of the
general inadequacy of European criticism upon America. Gasparin's books,
by the way, he has not seen. For his own part, he considers the subject
too vast, he says, and the testimony too conflicting, to permit him
to write upon it before he has seen the country; and meanwhile he
scrupulously refrains from forming any conclusive opinions.

Subject to this reservation of judgment, however, he remarked that
he was inclined to think that George III forced us prematurely into
democracy, although the natural tendency of things both in America and
England was towards it; and he thought that perhaps we had established
a political democracy without having yet achieved an intellectual
democracy: the two ought to go hand in hand together. The common people
in England, he said, are by far the most useful class of society. He had
been especially pleased by the numerous l