A storm of obloquy had assailed him at the outset of his labor. Beginning with the time when the first instalment of 'Civilization in England' was given to the public, passion, prejudice, and pride had strained their powers to vilify his character and heap abuse upon his name. The Press, the Pulpit, and the Lyceum, with rare and brave exceptions, met the formidable array of Facts with which the work bristled, by sciolistic criticisms, bigoted denunciations, or timid, faint praise. Conservatives in Politics and Religion exhibited him as a dangerous innovator, a social iconoclast, the would-be destroyer of all that was sacred in Institutions and in Religion. Theologians branded him as immoral and atheistic, and poured upon him a torrent of vituperation and hatred. 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.