Henry Thomas Buchle, 1822-1862:  he was the author of a History of Civilization, of which he published two volumes, the work remaining unfinished at the time of his death.  For bold assumptions, vigorous style, and great reading, this work must be greatly admired; but all his theories are based on second principles, and Christianity, as a divine institution, is ignored.  It startled the world into admiration, but has not retained the place in popular esteem which it appeared at first to make for itself.  He is the English Comte, without the eccentricity of his model.

Sir Archibald Alison, 1792-1867:  he is the author of The History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution to the Restoration of the Bourbons, and a continuation from 1815 to 1852.  It may be doubted whether even the most dispassionate scholar can write the history of contemporary events.  We may be thankful for the great mass of facts he has collated, but his work is tinctured with his high Tory principles; his material is not well digested, and his style is clumsy.

Agnes Strickland, born 1806:  after several early attempts Miss Strickland began her great task, which she executed nobly—­The Queens of England.  Accurate, philosophic, anecdotal, and entertaining, this work ranks among the most valuable histories in English.  If the style is not so nervous as that of masculine writers, there is a ready intuition as to the rights and the motives of the queens, and a great delicacy combined with entire lack of prudery in her treatment of their crimes.  The library of English history would be singularly incomplete without Miss Strickland’s work.  She also wrote The Queens of Scotland, and The Bachelor Kings of England.

Henry Hallam, 1778-1859:  the principal works of this judicious and learned writer are A View of Europe during the Middle Ages, The Constitutional History of England, and An Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.  With the skill of an advocate he combines the calmness of a judge; and he has been justly called “the accurate Hallam,” because his facts are in all cases to be depended on.  By his clear and illustrative treatment of dry subjects, he has made them interesting; and his works have done as much to instruct his age as those of any writer.  Later researches in literature and constitutional history may discover more than he has presented, but he taught the new explorers the way, and will always be consulted with profit, as the representative of this varied learning during the first half of the nineteenth century.