rests of Truth are
those of every soul, be it of them that we number with the dead, or that
are still reckoned among these that we greet as living. Let us not be
petty in our kindness. Over the fresh grave of a scholar let us rise to
that high and large friendliness which respects more the scope of every
man's nature than the limited measure of any man's performance, and
sides bravely with the soul of the departed, even though it be against
his fame. Who would not choose this for himself? Who would not whisper
from his grave, "My personal weaknesses let those spare who can; my work
do not praise, but judge; and never think in behalf of my mortal fame to
lower those stars that my spirit would look up to yet and forever"?

As a man and scholar, Mr. Buckle needs no forbearance; and men must
commend him, were it only in justice to themselves. Such intellectual
courage, such personal purity, such devotion to ideal aims, such a clean
separation of boldness from bitterness,--in thought, no blade more
trenchant, in feeling, no heart more human;--when these miss their honor
and their praise, then will men have forgotten how to estimate fine
qualities.

Meanwhile, as a thinker, he must be judged according to the laws of
thought. Here we are to forget whether he be living or dead, and whether
his personal traits were delightful or disagreeable. Here there is but
one question, and that is the question of truth.

And as a thinker, I can say nothing less than that Mr. Buckle signally
failed. His fundamental conceptions, upon which reposes the whole
edifice of his labor, are sciolistic assumptions caught up in his youth
from Auguste Comte and other one-eyed seers of modern France; his
generalization, multitudinous and imposing, is often of the card-castle
description, and tumbles at the touch of an inquisitive finger; and
his cobweb logic, spun chiefly out of his wishes rather than his
understanding, is indeed facile and ingenious, but of a strength to hold
only flies. Such, at any rate, is the judgment passed upon him in the
present paper; and if it is stated roundly, the critic can be held all
the better to its justification, and the more freely condemned, should
these charges not be sustained.

But while in the grand topography of thought and in the larger processes
of reasoning the failure of Mr. Buckle, according to the judgment here
given, is complete, it is freely admitted that as a writer and man of
letters he has claims n