Mr. Kingsley has fine gifts and good purposes.  He has a rare power of realizing scenes and characters,—­a power equally rare of presenting them in vivid, pictorial delineation.  He must be a very engaging lecturer, imparting to his official labor an interest which does not always belong to labors of like kind.

For discoursing upon history he has important qualifications, which it would be uncandid not to acknowledge.  Of these it is the first that he clings manfully, despite the tendencies of our time, to the human, rather than the extra-human stand-point.  He respects personality; he treats of men, not of puppets; he is old-fashioned enough to believe that men may be moved from within no less than from without, and does not attempt, as Quinet has it, to abolish human history and add a chapter to natural history instead.  Here, too, he follows Carlyle, but in a way which is highly to his credit.  The enthusiasm for science which marks these later centuries breeds in many minds a powerful desire to establish “laws” for the history of man,—­that is, to establish for man’s history an invariable programme.  To this end an effort is made to render all results in history dependent on a few simple and tangible conditions.  The intrepid prosaic logic of Spencer, the discursive boldness of Buckle, the rigid dogmatism of Draper are all engaged in this endeavor.  But, while eager to make history simple and orderly, they forget to make it human.  There is an order and progress, perhaps, but an order and progress of what?  Of men?  Of human souls, self-moved?  No, of sticks floating on a current, of straws blown by the wind!  Men, according to this theory, are but ninepins in an alley which Nature sets up only to bowl them down again; and what avails it, if Nature makes improvement and learns to set them up better and better?  The triumphs are hers, not theirs.  They are but ninepins, after all.  Progress?  Yes, indeed; but wooden progress, observe.

Mr. Kingsley recognizes human beings, and recognizes them heartily,—­loves, hates, admires, despises; in fine, he deals with history not merely as a scientist or theorist, but first of all as a man.  There are those who will think this weak.  They are superior to this partiality of man for himself, they!  They would be ashamed not to sink the man in the savant.  But Mr. Kingsley refuses to dehumanize himself in order to become historian and philosopher.  He does well.

Again, it is partly Mr. Kingsley’s merit, and partly it expresses his limitation, that he is treating history more distinctively as a moralizer than any other noted writer of the time.  He assumes in this respect the Hebraistic point of view, and looks out from it with an undoubting heartiness which in these days is really refreshing.  He believes in the Old Testament, and doubts not that riches and honors are the rewards of right-doing.  And in this, too, there is a vast deal of truth; and it is truly delightful to find one who affirms it, not with perfunctory drawl, but with hearty human zest, a little red in the face.