sistence, and the stimulus thus given to the increase of
population, are the first elements of an advance from a savage to a
civilized state, of the abandonment of rude freedom and nomadic habits,
and of the development of a regular social system. This principle is
clearly set forth and elaborately illustrated by Mr. Buckle; and we the
more readily refer to this author, because he stands high in the esteem
of Mr. Wilson, who, in order to prove his own especial fitness for
historical composition, and the incompetence of all who have preceded
him in the attempt, refers to a passage in Buckle, containing an
enumeration of the qualifications which he considers indispensable for
the historian. This enumeration includes all the attainments that have
ever been in the common possession of the human family. Mr. Buckle
remarks, with indisputable truth, that one historian has lacked some of
these qualifications, another historian has lacked others of them. Mr.
Wilson states that "each and every writer" who has preceded him has
lacked them all. Mr. Buckle, by implication, excepts one person, as
uniting in himself all the qualifications he demands. Mr. Wilson thinks
_he_ is the exception; but we are quite sure that the exception intended
by the author was--Henry Thomas Buckle.

In the Old World, civilization, as all admit, had its origin in tropical
regions. Across the whole extent of the Eastern Continent, races are
found inhabiting the warmer latitudes, which are now, or formerly were,
in what is popularly called a semi-civilized condition. No one, we
believe, has ever been foolish enough to account for this fact by
supposing that a single people or tribe, having attained some degree of
culture, had diffused the germs of knowledge over so large a portion
of the globe. Chinese civilization differs almost as much from that
of Hindostan as from that of England or of France. The Assyrian
civilization was indigenous on the borders of the Euphrates, and the
Egyptian on the borders of the Nile. What is remarkable in these and
in all the other cases that might be cited is, that in those regions
civilization never reached the high point which it has attained in other
parts of the world, less favored at the outset; that it exhibited a
grotesque union of refined ideas and strangely artificial institutions,
with customs, manners, and creeds that seem to the European mind
abhorrent and ridiculous; and that, the internal impulse with which it
s