It Takes Time, This Interpretation, This Process Of Grafting One
Mind Upon Another.
For he does not supply mere information.
A fig for
information. That would be easy to digest. He supplies character, which
is tougher fare. His book, unassuming as it is, comes up to my test of
what such literature should be. It reveals a personality. It contains a
philosophy of life.
And what is the dominating trait of this old Scotsman? The historical
sense. Ancient inscriptions interested him more than anything else. He
copied many of them during his trip; fifty, I should think; and it is no
small labour, as any one who has tried it can testify, to decipher these
half-obliterated records often placed in the most inconvenient
situations (he seems to have taken no squeezes). To have busied himself
thus was to his credit in an age whose chief concern, as regards
antiquity, consisted in plundering works of art for ornamental purposes.
Ramage did not collect bric-a-brac like other travellers; he collected
knowledge of humanity and its institutions, such knowledge as
inscriptions reveal. It is good to hear him discoursing upon these
documents in stone, these genealogies of the past, with a pleasingly
sentimental erudition. He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but
for the light they throw upon the living world of his day. Speaking of
one of them he says: "It is when we come across names connected with men
who have acted an illustrious part in the world's history, that the
fatigues of such a journey as I have undertaken are felt to be
completely repaid." That is the humanist's spirit.
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