ith its diffusion and multiplication 'of the sources
of knowledge, will alone prevent in the future the doubts which gather
over the past. There will never again be the same dearth of historic
materials."

"In spite of all that," replied Harrington, "I suspect it will be
very possible for men to entertain the same doubts about many events
of our time, eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, as they entertain
of many which happened eighteen hundred and fifty years ago."

"I can hardly imagine this to be possible."

"Because, I apprehend, first, that you are laboring under the delusion
already mentioned, by which men ever magnify the importance of the events
of their own age, and forget how readily future generations will let
them slip from their memory, and let documents which contain the record
of them slip out of existence; and, secondly, because you do not give
yourself time to realize all that is implied in supposing eighteen
hundred years to have elapsed, nor to transport yourself fairly into
that distant age. As to the first;--let us recollect that the importance
of historical events is by no means in proportion to the excitement they
produce at the time of their occurrence. We have many exemplifications
of this even in our own time; see the rapidity with which every trace
of a political storm, which for a moment may have lashed the whole
nation into fury, is appeased again: the surface is as smooth after
a few short years as if it had never been ruffled at all! In all such
cases, the constant tendency is to let the events which have been thus
transient in their effects sink into oblivion. But even of those which
have been far more significant, (since each future age will teem with
fresh events equally significant, all claiming a part in the page of
general history,) the importance will be perpetually diminishing in
estimate, and still more in interest, from the intenser feeling with
which each age will in turn regard the events which stand in immediate
proximity to its own. As time rolls on, all of the past that can be
spared will be gradually jostled out. Details will be lost; and then,
when remote ages turn to reinvestigate the half-forgotten past, the
want of those details will issue in the customary problems and
'historic doubts.' In the page of general history, events of a remote
age, except those of a surpassing interest, will be reduced to more
and more meagre outlines, till abridgments are abridged, and