eral considerations will suffice to show that
here, too, we labor under a delusion. Oblivion will practically cover
many events, owing to the mere accumulations of the press itself. You
talk of the ease of consulting 'original documents'; but when they lie
buried in the depths of national museums, amidst mountain loads of
forgotten and decaying literature, it will not be so easy, even
supposing the present activity of the press only maintained for
eighteen hundred and fifty years (although, in all probability, it
will proceed at a rapidly increased ratio),--I say it will not be so
easy to lay your hands on what you want. The materials, again, will
often exist by that time in dead or half-obsolete languages, or at
least in languages full of archaic forms. It will be almost as difficult
to unearth and collate the documents which bear upon any events less
than the most momentous, as to recover the memorials of Egypt from
the pyramids, or of ancient Assyria from the mounds of Nineveh. The
historian of a remote period must be a sort of Belzoni or Layard. If
we can suppose any thing so extravagant as that the British Museum will
be in existence then, having preserved during these centuries (as it
does now) all new hooks, and accumulated ancient and foreign literature
only at the rate it has during these few years past, the library alone
will extend over hundreds of acres at least. This, unless our posterity
are fools, can hardly be the case; and therefore much will be rejected
and left to the mercy of the great destroyer. But the very existence of
any such repository is itself a very doubtful supposition. Comprehensive,
indeed, may be the destruction of many large portions of our archives,
essentially necessary to minute accuracy at so distant a date; nay,
England herself may have ceased to exist. If her subterranean fuel be
not exhausted, a cheaper and equally abundant supply of it may have
been found elsewhere, and transfer for ever the chief elements of her
manufacturing or commercial prosperity; or entirely new and more
transcendent sources of science may have done the same thing, and our
country may be left, like a stranded vessel, to rot upon the beach!
Her furnaces extinguished, her manufactories deserted, her cities decayed,
the hum of her busy population silenced, she may present a spectacle of
desolation like that of so many other famous nations which have risen,
culminated, and set for ever."

"Or," interrupted I,