Glasgow Courier. — 1861-06-20 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

BUCKLE'S LOGIC.  Mr Buckle seems to think the absence of that wide sentiment of loyalty, which first brought England under the Tudors -to a true sense of national life and unity, a  positive advantage in Scotland. He:narrates the dismal series of predatory acts and murders which constitute Scotch history in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, without the dimmest perception that here was a deep. rooted deficieney in the reverence for. moral order, for a righteous government that should übdüè these rebel. lions and licentious wills. In a time when almost every, statesmaii of distinction came to a violent end—such men as Murray, Morton, Lennox, and Rutliven —when the most reckless and vindictive tragedies were enacted In every town in Scotland—when the burning of a foeman's house with all its initiates Wee a compare. tively common wient—in Snell times Mr Buckle would have us believe that the only ohitecle to the progress of civilisation wait the, absence of a; "spirit of inquiry into the laws of phenomena and the diffusion of the rei suits of that inquiry." Is not this trifling with history; is it not like saying, when the sun is darkened. amidst a raging storm, that the winds and clouds ana are due to the absence of light, instead of the absence of light to the wind and clod& It is a cotitradittion of the hiss torieal sense to nanate the history of SCidlittid in the • fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, and then to tell us that the absence of loyal feeling promoted the growth of civilisation.  And what did eventually subdue this deep-seated Scotch barbarism? Certainly not the power of the throne, tor till the intim it never had any power in Scotland, and not Much for a long time afterwards. Certainly not the power of the Roilian Church, which made less way in Scotland than in any other Eutin pean kingdom. It was the stern and gloomy Calvinistio dogmatism which at length effected what neither Church nor King had been able to effect— which drove the iron through the soul of that untameable population, and brought them at last under the yoke of a certain austere principle of social order. Mr Buckle accumulates very painful evidence of the repulsive features of the popular Scotch faith —features which show that the native barbarism of the age in Scotland perverted grossly the true Christian revelation, and gate a kind of fierce and bloody distortion even to the stern doctrines of the great Genevan divine. Still it is impossible not to read in every page of this Scotch history of the century that Scotland needed a thorough taming; that civilisation could not take a step till the mindsof the people were subdued; till their vehement self-will and pas. sionate revengefulness and unscrupulous covetousness, were brought into some kind of voluntary subjection; till they began to reverence some spiritual invisible kingship of higher and wider authority than their visible chieftainship. This was the work of Knox and his followers to effect; and though the spiritual instruments used were no doubt bent and discoloured in the using, so that it is difficult to recognise the true revelation of Christ in the fierce and horrible doctrines of which Buckle has selected so many specimens, yet the wot was done. The Presbyterian ministers, for the firs time, taught the Scotch to look up to a higher law thati their own family tmditioas ; to fear a worse hell than unsatisfied passion. And we do not fear that any thoughtful reader of Mr Buckle's volume will be tempted to believe that Bacon, Newton, or even Dr Adam Smith, (who, in Mr Buckle's eccentric view,) produced • book which has had more influence on civilisation than any other that was ever written, could have done this work in their place. Mr Buckle has no eye for the dynes. mica of history. He writes a very interesting account of the mere intellect of nations; but only puzzles himself and his readers when he confounds this with the history of the civilising forces which brought each nation into a condition for intellectual progress. And„,nowhere is he guilty of a more thorough confusion of this kind than in his chapters on the Scotch intellect. We find him neglecting entirely the rough grinding down and breaking in of the unruly will which first turned Scotchnien into citizens, and insisting at great length on the dawning of a few scientific discoveries concerning political economy, and chemistry, and physiology, which cannot be supposed to have really civilised a single Scotchman, though it was one of the first fruits of their civilisation. —Spectator.