It was the most formidable engine of resistance to the prerogatives of the Crown and the dominion of the great owners of the soil, but it has exercised in its own sphere an authority not less absolute and arbitrary.

The immediate subjects of this democratic authority were the clergy themselves: far from being its masters, they have too often been its slaves. The Reformation, which gave so great an impulse to learning in England and in Germany, lowered the standard of scholarship in Scotland. The parochial schools flourished within certain limits, the high schools and the universities held a humbler position than they ought to have done; though, by the way, Mr. Buckle is again wrong in stating that the Scotch Universities are under the control of the clergy it is notorious that they have, till lately, been mainly governed by municipal authorities, neither academical nor clerical. Everything conspired to place the ministers at the mercy of the prejudices, and even of the vices, of their flocks; being compelled to descend to this level, the Church gradually counted in its ministry fewer members of the most highly educated classes of society; it has made up in violence what it lacked in wisdom; it has alienated to a considerable degree the higher classes from its communion; whilst the extreme democracy of the Church chose to throw off even the slight restraint of the law, and seek in a vast schism to exercise a still more paramount authority. If Mr. Buckle is anxious to extend his gloomy catalogue of the misdeeds of ignorant fanaticism, he will find an abundant harvest in those popular sects which have, both in Scotland and in England, been most eager to throw off clerical authority. He will find the Free Kirk of Scotland incomparably more imbued with the doctrines he abhors than the Established Church. He may hear in an English Methodist Meeting, or a Baptist Tabernacle, the superstitions which he conceives to be most adverse to the progress of the human mind. And we hope he will forgive us for asserting our conviction that the safest barrier against the excess of popular fanaticism and intolerance, which we dread and deplore as much

* Even the intensely doctrinal tone of Scotch preaching, and the tendency to Antinomianism which pervades it, are attributable to this cause. It is extremely rare to meet with a Scotch minister who dares to pronounce from the pulpit a searching denunciation of those grosser violations of moral laws to which both sexes are in many parts of Scotland unhappily too prone. The theology of Scotland has so moulded itself to the popular mind, that the habits and prejudices of the people have sensibly affected the importance attached to the truths and the laws of Christianity itself.

as Mr. Buckle, is an enlightened clergy, independent by position, tolerant by reason, and attached to the service of a Church which is not governed by the prejudices of the lower orders.

Mr. Buckle speaks with extreme contempt of the state of literature in Scotland in the seventeenth century, and calls Burnet the only Scotch writer of eminence from the Restoration down to the Union. We should have thought that the eloquence and wisdom of Archbishop Leighton might have exempted him from this [sweeping act of oblivion. But Mr. Buckle also forgets that the Aberdeen Doctors' of the seventeenth century, as they were called, Bishop Patrick Forbes, Dr. John Forbes, Dr. William Leslie, who defended the moderate Episcopacy of Scotland against the Covenanters, formed as learned and accomplished a society as Scotland has ever known. They were crushed by a visitation of the Presbyterian Assembly of 1640. The Assembly's errand,' says Gordon of Rothinsay, 'was thoroughly done; these eminent divines ' of Aberdeen either dead, deposed, or banished; in whom fell more learning than was left in all Scotland beside at that time.' At this very time when learning was most depressed by revolutionary violence in Scotland, there was hardly a University in Protestant Europe which did not boast of its Scotch Professors; and Scotland was as well known abroad by the men of letters she sent forth, as by the soldiers of fortune who fought the battles of Gustavus.

Mr. Buckle does not appear to be aware (or at least he never adverts to the fact) that for upwards of a century two great parties have existed in the Church of Scotland-the Moderate party, and the Popular party-names which already indicate their respective positions. The Moderate party, which sought to maintain the authority of the higher Church Courts, has been constantly on the side of liberal opinions and toleration. In the last century it reckoned Principal Robertson as its acknowledged head; it counted men like Thomas Reid, John Home, Drs. Beattie, Blair, and George Campbell, the antagonist of David Hume, among its members. These divines defended patronage because it tended to raise the character of the clergy by making them less dependent on the opinions and the passions of the

An excellent account of the Moderate party will be found in the interesting book, entitled 'My own Life and Times,' by the late Dr. Somerville, minister of Jedburgh, recently published in Edinburgh. So little is the General Assembly a conclave of fanatical priests, that in the last century Sir Gilbert Elliot, Henry Dundas, and Sir Henry Jardine took a prominent part in its debates.

VOL. CXIV. NO. CCXXXI.

P

people. Their opponents, in the name of what they called God's people,' appealed to those traditions of the Covenant which cause such infinite surprise and dismay to Mr. Buckle. The same contest has gone on to the present day, and whatever may be the strength of the Popular party in numbers and in intolerance, we deny that they exclusively represent the mind of the Church of Scotland, still less the mind of the Scottish nation.

For there is this contradiction, by which the science of Mr. Buckle is sorely perplexed, that at the very time when he discovers numerous indications of extreme bigotry and superstition in the annals of the Scottish people, he is compelled to acknowledge that no part of Britain, and no country in Europe, could boast of a more splendid array of intellectual gifts-more acute and ingenious philosophers, more accomplished historians, more wise economists, more profound men of science. To these Mr. Buckle has somewhat ungraciously done justice, though he attributes to the deductive method of their reasoning the slender influence exercised by such men in correcting the prejudices of the nation at large. But this contrast proves that it is not on Scotland or on the Scottish character, that the reproach of these prejudices falls, but on the peculiar institutions which keep them in viridi observantiâ among the humbler classes of society; just as the mists of our Scottish hills lie thick upon the valley, long after the mountain top is exulting in the sunshine. The essential difference between the historical phenomena which Mr. Buckle discovers alike in Spain and in Scotland, is, that in Spain an arbitrary and sacerdotal Church has imposed its yoke on the mind of the nation-in Scotland, a democratic Church has blended the religious convictions of the laity with the exercise of spiritual power; in one case the influence came from above; in the other from below.

If there be any truth in these general criticisms, they are fatal to Mr. Buckle's pretensions. He has not founded the science of history; he has not thrown any fresh light or certainty on the objects of historical inquiry by the application of his general principles. Whatever merit or value his book

* With his accustomed proneness to hasty generalisation, Mr. Buckle attempts to show that the Scotch philosophers are all prone to the method of à priori reasoning, now called the deductive method. He even quotes John Hunter and Black in proof of this assertion, though their experiments are models of inductive observation. Does not Mr. Buckle perceive that the true progress of science depends on the use of both methods, each in its proper place; and that in Scotland, as well as in England, both have been employed?

may possess is due not to its general principles, but to the industry with which he has accumulated a large mass of heterogeneous extracts from many writers. He has applied his system to Spain and Scotland in the volume now before us, but the result is that the peculiar characteristics of the Spanish and Scottish nations are mainly due to special occurrences rather than to general causes. Mr. Buckle's theory utterly fails to explain such events as the invasion and final expulsion of the Moors, the discovery of America, or the democratic form of the Scotch Reformation; and these peculiar events manifestly originated in circumstances, which, if he explains them at all, he must explain by other means. If Mr. Buckle had the faculty of looking with somewhat less of passion on human affairs, he would perceive, that opinions and events which to him appear to be good or evil are in fact so mixed up and interdependent, that evil is often the parent of good, and good sometimes the parent of evil. Nothing in life deserves unqualified abhorrence or unqualified admiration. For, as every individual man now living in the world is the descendant of innumerable progenitors, ascending in geometrical progression from his own parents to their parents, and so on in an extending series, every event is the result of an infinite number of causes, some great, some small, some visible, some imperceptible, but all in their degree contributing to each particular consequence. 'It were infinite,' said Lord Bacon, to judge the causes of causes, and their im'pulsions one of another.' To embrace this infinite series is in the power of Omniscience alone; and, as the omission of a single unit in an intricate calculation disturbs the whole result, so in the great reckoning of human history no positive general knowledge can be reached without faculties far surpassing those of man. In the divine order of the universe, doubtless each particular event, becoming in its turn the cause of innumerable other events, has its appropriate place and object; and the great mystery of creation is that every event conspires to advance the progress of the whole, although the freedom of the will of intelligent beings remains unfettered in all parts. To explain that mystery is the task of a purer philosophy than that of the writer before us, and of a nobler state of being than that of man. Mr. Buckle bas yet to learn another lesson. Knowledge and power, as he conceives them, what are they (to use the language of Mr. Tennyson), if they be cut off from reverence and charity, and if no higher hand guide the course of life from a divine commencement to some diviner end?

ART. VIII. Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, with Accounts of the Manners and Customs of the People, and of the Chase of the Gorilla, Crocodile, Leopard, Elephant, Hippopotamus, and other Animals. By PAUL B. DU CHAILLU. London: 1861.

IF F the deep interest attaching to the geography of Africa is closely connected with the desire to solve mysterious problems which have given birth to a long series of theories and conjectures, it is bound up yet more closely with practical efforts to atone for past injustice and lessen the amount of human suffering. Each year adds to our store of knowledge by some fresh discovery; and each discovery, while it leads to the abandonment of old conjectures or the modification of previous theories, seems to bring us sensibly nearer to the time when African slavery shall be smitten in its ancient strongholds. The knowledge which is the fruit of long toil and indomitable perseverance has swept away, one after another, almost every popular conception of African geography which even the present generation had inherited. The idea which pictured Africa as one huge waterless desert, divided at its zone of greatest width by a range of sterile mountains, and bounded here and there by coast regions of greater richness, has given way before researches which have displaced it by images of vast inland lakes, and of rivers which may open the very heart of the land to the trader and the missionary. Regions supposed to be without human inhabitants or haunted by the merest savages, have disclosed large societies under some form of law, and connected with the world beyond by a system of regulated commerce. To the north of the equator, the great lake Tsad has been shown to be but one of many lakes and streams watering the fertile lands which extend from Bagírmi to Timbúktu.* The labours of Dr. Barth have proved that from the Bight of Benin the way lies open by the splendid streams of the Kwara and the Bénuwé, to the chief town of Adamawa under the tenth parallel of latitude. Further south, the mountain of Alantika, rising to the height of 8000 feet, reveals probably but the outermost limits of an unknown

* See 'Edinburgh Review,' No. ccxxii., for April, 1859, art. II.