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 that 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 cooperation
of the societies, the past is remembered.
Its story
has indeed had a different muse than has been assigned it .
There is a good instance of the manner in which all history
began, in Alwakidi's 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 for
gotten.
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 attain.
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.
