Mr. Buckle encounters another difficulty in Scottish history in this, that though a new and splendid literature arose in Scotland at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was unable to diminish national superstition. It was thoroughly skeptical, and yet did not produce the appropriate effect of skepticism. So that at this point one of Mr. Buckle's four great laws of history seems to break down. For a moment he appears discouraged, and laments, with real pathos, the limitations of the human intellect. But in the next chapter he addresses himself again to the solution of his two-fold problem, viz.: "1st, that the same people should be liberal in their politics and illiberal in their religion; and, 2d, that their free and skeptical literature in the eighteenth century should have been unable to lessen their religious illiberality." In approaching this part of his task, in the fifth chapter, our author gives a very elaborate and highly colored picture of the religion of Scotland. It is _too_ well done. Like some of Macaulay's descriptions, it is so very striking as to impress us almost inevitably as a caricature. Every statement in which the horrors and cruelties of Calvinism are described is indeed reinforced by ample citations or plentiful references in the footnotes. But some of these seem capable of a different inference from that drawn in the text. For instance, he charges the Scottish clergy with teaching, that, though the arrangements originally made by the Deity to punish his creatures were ample, "they were insufficient; and hell, not being big enough to contain the countless victims incessantly poured into it, had in these latter days been enlarged. There was now sufficient room." He supports the charge by this reference to Abernethy,--"Hell has enlarged itself,"--apparently not being aware that Abernethy was merely quoting from Isaiah. He says that to write poetry was considered by the Scotch clergy to be a grievous offence, and worthy of special condemnation. He supports his statement by this reference: "A mastership in a grammar school was offered in 1767 to John Wilson, the author of 'Clyde'" (a poet, by the by, not found among the twenty John Wilsons commemorated by Watt). "But, says his biographer, the magistrates and ministers of Greenock thought fit, before they would admit Mr. Wilson to the superintendence of the grammar school, to stipulate that he should abandon 'the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making.'" This fact, however, by no means proves that poetry was considered, theologically, a sin, for perhaps it was regarded practically as only a disqualification. It is to be feared that many of our school committees now--country shopkeepers, perhaps, or city aldermen--would, apart from Calvinism, think that a poet must be necessarily a dreamer and an unpractical man. A few exaggerations of this kind there may be. But, on the whole, the account seems to be correctly given; and it is one which will do good.