On 19 March 1858 ‘the doors of the Royal Institution were opened some time before the usual hour to admit the throng of fashionable people who had collected’, recalls Henry Thomas Buckle's (1821–62) friend and biographer Alfred Henry Huth, ‘and by the usual time for opening the theatre was [sold-out] … by a brilliant and excited audience’. Those lucky enough to get tickets ‘were crammed from floor to ceiling’ in order to be present for the first and, what would turn out to be, the only public lecture by Buckle who himself could not procure a sufficient number of tickets for his guests. ‘It is very hard that you should be limited because of your just popularity’, John Barlow, the organizer of the event, wrote to Buckle. ‘But what can be done? I can not expand the lecture-room, nor prevent members from exercising their right to indulge themselves and their friends with a high intellectual gratification.’ The members to whom Barlow referred belonged to the Royal Institution and they were hoping to get a glimpse of the ‘great Buckle’ while hearing him speak on a surprisingly popular topic: the science of history.