written as 'with a pen of iron on the rock for ever.' But even supposing
no other difficulty, I cannot lay small stress upon the mere accumulation
of materials on which the historian, two thousand years hence, will have
to operate, if he would recover an exact account of the events of our
time. It is much the same whether you have to dig into the pyramids of
Egypt, or into the catacombs of the buried literature of two thousand
years, for the memorials which are to enable you to arrive at the exact
truth, at least as to any events of transient interest, however important
at the time of their occurrence. It will be like 'hunting for a needle
in a bundle of hay,' as the proverb says."

"Still, I cannot imagine that facts like those with which our ears have
been ringing during the last eight months, can ever be contested."

"Can you not?" said Harrington. "I cannot imagine any thing more likely
than that, eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, such an event, on
Strauss's principles, may be shown to be very problematical."

"Will you endeavor to show how it may probably be?" rejoined Robinson.

"Well, I have no objection, if you will give me till this evening to
prepare so important a document."

In the evening, after supper, he amused us by reading us a brief paper,
entitled

THE PAPAL AGGRESSION SHOWN TO BE IMPOSSIBLE.

"I shall proceed on the supposition that some Dr. Dickkopf or
Dr. Scharfsinn, for either name will do, has to deal (as my uncle here
believes our modern critics have to deal in the Gospels) with an
account literally true. This learned man I shall imagine as existing
in some nation at the antipodes eighteen hundred and fifty years hence,
and intellectually, if not literally, descended from some erudite
critics of our age. Let me further suppose that the principal memorials
of the current events are found in the page of some continuator of
Macaulay (may the Fates have pity on him! I am afraid he will be far
worse than even Smollett after Hume), who publishes his work only
sixty years hence. Let us suppose him (as surely we well may)
proceeding thus: 'During the year 1850-51, our countrymen are
represented to us, by the accounts of those who lived at the time
(some few still survive), as having been in a condition of political
and religious excitement almost unprecedented in their history. It
was occasioned by the attempt of the Pope to reestablish the Roman
Catholic hierarchy, which had been extinct