The only public reply which the English writer condescended to make, is contained in the closing pages of the fourth chapter of the last volume which he published. Every line of this answer, which is transcribed below, breathes the spirit of Him who, when he was reviled, reviled not again--the spirit of forbearance, of generous forgiveness, of magnanimity, of unruffled dignity. Buckle had learned, indeed, from his own investigations, that he who would elevate mankind must expect, not only its indifference to his labors, but its positive abuse. He knew, that the individual who, like Jesus, attempts to promulgate new truth, either moral or intellectual, must expect to array against himself the greatest portion of the human family, incrusted in their prejudices, their ignorance, their interests, or their feelings, and must be content with the appreciation and sympathy of the few who are wise enough to understand him, truthful enough to accept his doctrine, however unwholesome to their tastes, and brave enough to avow it. Perhaps he had also learned the fact, that, in the present state of humanity's development, few, very few, even of the best of mankind, love truth, chiefly _because it is truth_, and are hence eager to know their own shortcomings; but that those truths only are, for the most part, capable of being acceptably presented to individuals, which it is more satisfactory to their personal feelings, more comfortable to their own inherent peculiarities of disposition, to conform to than to reject. Be this as it may, the reply which he makes to the outrages showered upon him is evidently the language of a man whose thoughts are far removed from the arena of petty spite or private resentment, the expression of one who knew the grandeur and usefulness of his labors, who expected, in their prosecution, to be misunderstood and calumniated, and who, yet, was incapable of other than the most generous impulses of a noble philanthropy toward his maligners and traducers.
In the announcement of his inability to fulfil the great promises made in the former volume, we find, likewise, the indications of a nature full of lofty grandeur. He who has known the scholar's hopes, the student's struggles, and the author's ambition, may form some faint conception of what must have been the feelings of the great Historian when the conviction came to him, first faintly foreshadowed and then deepening to a reality, that the prize for which he had contended--and such a prize! which had seemed, too, at times, almost within his grasp--was destined forever to elude him. Frankly to acknowledge failure in such a struggle, was in itself great; to acknowledge it when the cries of his assailants were still ringing in his ears, and when it might have been measurably concealed, was still greater; to acknowledge it in words which betray no trace of disappointed _personal_ ambition, but only a regret that the final avenue to truth should not have been opened, was heroic even to sublimity. The pages of Buckle's 'History of Civilization' which record the answer to his traducers and the acknowledgment of his disappointment in relation to what he should be able to achieve, will stand in the annals of literary history as a memorable instance in which is significantly exhibited one factor of that highest religious spirit so much needed in our day--_devotion to the intellectual discovery of all truth for truth's sake_.