Postscript on Mr. Buckle. 211 



it were a sort of talismanic formula for the solu- 

 tion of all manner of problems, psychological and 

 historical. But it is just one of those formulas, 

 like Mr. Spencer's famous law of the change from 

 incoherent homogeneity to coherent heterogeneity, 

 that needs to be charged with significance by 

 means of copious preliminary explanation in or- 

 der to convey any sense at all to the mind of the 

 reader. 



To the many readers who, some twenty years 

 since, were interested in what then bid fair to be 

 the "biggest of big books," the most attractive 

 pages in Mr. Stuart-Glennie's volume will be 

 those which give us glimpses of the personal pe- 

 culiarities of Mr. Buckle. The sad story of Mr. 

 Buckle's fruitless journey in quest of health, the 

 rapid decay of his strength, and his untimely death 

 at Damascus has long been generally known, but 

 it acquires fresh interest from the fuller ac- 

 count now given by his fellow -pilgrim. Few 

 would now rate the value of Mr. Buckle's work, 

 or the loss to science from his premature end, so 

 highly as they were commonly rated at the time. 

 Yet, as a fresh instance of how life is short while 

 art is long, of how the world passes away from 

 us while yet we are stammering over the alpha- 

 bet of its mysteries, there is something infinitely 



