Menu understood this matter best, when he said, "Those
best know the divisions of days and nights who understand
That
the day of Brahma, which endures to the end of a thousand such
ages, [infinite ages, nevertheless, according to mortal
reckoning,] gives rise to virtuous exertions; and that his night
endures as long as his day." Indeed, the Mussulman and Tartar
dynasties are beyond all dating. Methinks I have lived under
them myself. In every man's brain is the Sanscrit. The Vedas
and their Angas are not so ancient as serene contemplation. Why
will we be imposed on by antiquity? Is the babe young? When I
behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man; it is
more ancient than Nestor or the Sibyls, and bears the wrinkles of
father Saturn himself. And do we live but in the present? How
broad a line is that? I sit now on a stump whose rings number
centuries of growth. If I look around I see that the soil is
composed of the remains of just such stumps, ancestors to this.
The earth is covered with mould. I thrust this stick many aeons
deep into its surface, and with my heel make a deeper furrow than
the elements have ploughed here for a thousand years. If I
listen, I hear the peep of frogs which is older than the slime of
Egypt, and the distant drumming of a partridge on a log, as if it
were the pulse-beat of the summer air. I raise my fairest and
freshest flowers in the old mould. Why, what we would fain call
new is not skin deep; the earth is not yet stained by it. It is
not the fertile ground which we walk on, but the leaves which
flutter over our heads. The newest is but the oldest made
visible to our senses. When we dig up the soil from a thousand
feet below the surface, we call it new, and the plants which
spring from it; and when our vision pierces deeper into space,
and detects a remoter star, we call that new also. The place
where we sit is called Hudson, - once it was Nottingham, - once -
We should read history as little critically as we consider the
landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and
various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create,
than by its groundwork and composition. It is the morning now
turned evening and seen in the west, - the same sun, but a new
light and atmosphere. Its beauty is like the sunset; not a
fresco painting on a wall, flat and bounded, but atmospheric and
roving or free. In reality, history fluctuates as the face of
the landscape from morning to evening. What is of moment is its
hue and color. Time hides no treasures; we want not its _then_,
but its _now_. We do not complain that the mountains in the
horizon are blue and indistinct; they are the more like the
heavens.
Of what moment are facts that can be lost, - which need to be
commemorated? The monument of death will outlast the memory of
the dead. The pyramids do not tell the tale which was confided
to them; the living fact commemorates itself. Why look in the
dark for light? Strictly speaking, the historical societies have
not recovered one fact from oblivion, but are themselves, instead
of the fact, that is lost. The researcher is more memorable than
the researched. The crowd stood admiring the mist and the dim
outlines of the trees seen through it, when one of their number
advanced to explore the phenomenon, and with fresh admiration all
eyes were turned on his dimly retreating figure. It is astonishing
with how little co-operation of the societies the past is remembered.
Its story has indeed had another muse than has been assigned it.
There is a good instance of the manner in which all history
began, in Alwakidis' Arabian Chronicle: "I was informed by _Ahmed
Almatin Aljorhami_, who had it from _Rephaa Ebn Kais Alamiri_,
who had it from _Saiph Ebn Fabalah Alchatquarmi_, who had it from
_Thabet Ebn Alkamah_, who said he was present at the action."
These fathers of history were not anxious to preserve, but to
learn the fact; and hence it was not forgotten. Critical acumen
is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the _past_ cannot be
_presented_; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs
over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the
historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle
has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and
beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating.
We will sit on a mound and muse, and not try to make these
skeletons stand on their legs again. Does Nature remember, think
you, that they _were_ men, or not rather that they _are_ bones?
Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more
modern. It is written as if the spectator should be thinking of
the backside of the picture on the wall, or as if the author
expected that the dead would be his readers, and wished to detail
to them their own experience. Men seem anxious to accomplish an
orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the
works behind, as they are battered down by the encroachments of
time; but while they loiter, they and their works both fall a
prey to the arch enemy. History has neither the venerableness of
antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it
would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might
with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and
then tell us, - when did burdock and plantain sprout first? It
has been so written for the most part, that the times it
describes are with remarkable propriety called _dark ages_. They
are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark
about them.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 44 of 113
Words from 44219 to 45236
of 116321
