Project Gutenberg's Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858

Author: Various

Release Date: May 18, 2004 [EBook #12374]
[Date last updated: May 28, 2005]

Language: English

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. I.--MAY, 1858.--NO. VII.

AMERICAN ANTIQUITY.

The results of the past ten or fifteen years in historical investigation
are exceedingly mortifying to any one who has been proud to call himself
a student of History. We had thought, perhaps, that we knew something
of the origin of human events and the gradual development from the
past into the world of to-day. We had read Herodotus, and Gibbon,
and Gillies, and done manful duty with Rollin. There were certain
comfortable, definite facts in antiquity. Romulus and Remus were our
friends; the transmission of the alphabet by the Phoenicians was a
resting-spot; the destruction of Babylon and the date of the Flood were
fixed stations in the wilderness. In more modern periods, we had a
refuge in the date of the discovery of America; and if we were forced
back into the wilds and uncertainties of American History, Mr. Prescott
soon restored to us the buried empires, and led us easily back through a
few plain centuries.

Beyond these dates, indeed, there was a shadowy land, through whose
changing mists could be seen sometimes the grand outlines of abandoned
cities, or the faint forms of temples, or the graceful column or massive
tomb, which marked the distant path of the advancing race: but these
were scarcely more than visions for a moment, before darkness again
covered the view. Our mythology and philosophy of the past were almost
equally misty and vague. History was to us a succession of facts; empire
succeeding empire, and one form of civilization another, with scarcely
more connection than in the scenes of a theatre;--the great isolated
fact of all being the