In this case also Mr. Buckle may be medicinal. We
owe him thanks also for refreshing our expectation of a science of
civilization,--for affirming the venerableness of intellect, which
recent teachers have undervalued,--for vindicating the uses of
doubt,--and, finally, for a specimen of intellectual intrepidity of
which one could wish there were less need. And withal how royally he
presumes upon a welcome for candid confession of his thought! Such a
presumption could be created in his soul only by a great magnanimity;
and the evidence of this on his pages sheds a beauty about all his
words.

But he is not an Oedipus. He has guessed; and the riddle awaits another
comer. A science of history he has not established; the direction in
which it lies he has not pointed out; and if Hegel and his precursors
have failed to indicate such a science, the first clear step toward it
remains yet to be taken. And should some majestic genius--for no other
will be sufficient for the task--at length arise to lay hold upon the
facts of man's history, and exercise over them a Newtonian sway, he will
be the last man on the planet to take his initial hint from Auguste
Comte and the "Positive Philosophy." This mud-mountain is indeed
considerably heaped up, but it is a very poor Pisgah nevertheless; for
it is a mountain in a pit, whose top does not rise to an equality with
the broad common levels, far less with the high table-lands and skyward
peaks and summits of intelligence.

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN.

From Leamington to Stratford-on-Avon the distance is eight or nine
miles, over a road that seemed to me most beautiful. Not that I can
recall any memorable peculiarities; for the country, most of the way, is
a succession of the gentlest swells and subsidences, affording wide and
far glimpses of champaign-scenery here and there, and sinking almost to
a dead level as we draw near Stratford. Any landscape in New England,
even the tamest, has a more striking outline, and besides would have its
blue eyes open in those lakelets that we encounter almost from mile to
mile at home, but of which the Old Country is utterly destitute; or it
would smile in our faces through the medium of those way-side brooks
that vanish under a low stone arch on one side of the road, and sparkle
out again on the other. Neither of these pretty features is often to be
found in an English scene. The charm of the latter consists in the rich
verdure of the fie