trances to their tombs and their
mummy pits so that no one might penetrate into them? What is the use of
carving in darkness endless panels of hieroglyphs which no eye is to
behold and the key to which one keeps for one's self? M. Ernest Feydeau
is bold enough to desire to be an artist as well as a scholar; for
picturesqueness in no wise detracts from accuracy, though erudites
generally affect to believe the contrary. Did not Augustin Thierry draw
his intensely living, animated, dramatic, and yet thoroughly true
"Stories of the Merovingian Times" from the colourless, diffuse,
ill-composed history of Gregory of Tours? Did not Sauval's unreadable
work become "Notre-Dame de Paris" in Victor Hugo's hands? Did not Walter
Scott, by his novels, Shakespeare by his dramas, render the greatest
services to history by giving life to dead chronicles, by putting into
flesh and blood heroes on whom forgetfulness had scattered its dust in
the solitude of libraries? Does any one suppose that the chroniclers of
the future will not consult Balzac to advantage, and look upon his work
as a precious mine of documents? How great would be the interest excited
by a similar account, domestic, intimate and familiar, by a Greek or a
Roman author? We can have some idea of this from the fragments of
Petronius and the Tales of Apuleius, which tell us more about life in
the days of antiquity than the gravest writers, who often forget men
while dwelling upon facts.

In an essay on the history of manners and customs which forms the
introduction to his book, M. Ernest Feydeau has discussed this question
of colour applied to science with much spirit, logic, and eloquence. He
proves that it is possible, without falling into novel writing, without
indulging in imaginativeness, and while preserving the gravity and the
authority of history, to group around facts, by the intelligent reading
of texts, by the study and the comparison of the monuments, the manners,
the customs, the books of vanished races, to show man at a particular
time, to put as a background to each event the landscape, the city, or
the interior in which it occurred, and in the conqueror's hand the
weapon which he really carried. Ideas have forms, events take place amid
certain surroundings, individuals wear costumes which archaeology,
properly understood, can restore to them. That is its proper task.
History draws the outline with a graver, archaeology must fill it in with
colour. Understood