Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works, Vol. 1 of 3 (Classic Reprint)

Download or read book Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works, Vol. 1 of 3 (Classic Reprint) written by Henry Thomas Buckle and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-04 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works, Vol. 1 of 3 Few men, perhaps, have been placed throughout life in circumstances more favourable to the development and utilisation of intellectual power than those which surrounded Henry Thomas Buckle, the author of the History of Civilization in England. He belonged by birth to that middle class of whose services to the world he himself entertained so high an estimate; and he had the good fortune also to belong to a family which seems to have united considerable taste for literature with sufficient fortune to place at his disposal, from an early age, such means of study or travel as he himself desired. These advantages he shared, it is true, with thousands of young men who never make any visible return to the world for their good fortune; nevertheless, it is probable that a larger proportion of young men so circumstanced do actually distinguish themselves, than of any other class in life. But Mr. Buckle's good fortune consisted more especially in two other circumstances which fell to his lot. In the first place, his mother, who seems to have early formed a high estimate of her son's abilities, unceasingly stimulated and encouraged him to exertion. And, in the second place, the delicacy of his health, from childhood upwards, shut him out from schools, from the universities, and from the professions - from all those places and pursuits, in short, where boys and men learn to imitate one another; where they learn to accept conventional solutions to the problems which are sure to present themselves to every active intellect; or where they learn to limit their ambition to the acquirement of wealth or of worldly success. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.