The present age has rewritten the annals of the world, and set its own impress on the traditions of humanity. In no period has the burden of the past weighed so heavily upon the present, or the interpretation of its speculative import troubled the heart so profoundly, so intimately, so monotonously.

How remote we stand from the times when Raleigh could sit down in the Tower, and with less anxiety about his documents, State records, or stone monuments than would now be imperative in compiling the history of a county, proceed to write the History of the World! And in speculation it is the Tale, the fabula, the procession of impressive incidents and personages, which enthralls him, and with perfect fitness he closes his work with the noblest Invocation to Death that literature possesses. But beneath the variety or pathos of the Tale, the present age ever apprehends a deeper meaning, or is oppressed by a sense of mystery, of wonder, or of sorrow unrevealed, which defies tears.

This revolution in our conception of History, this boundless industry which in Germany, France, England, Italy, has led to the printing of mountains of forgotten memoirs, correspondences, State papers, this endless sifting of evidence, this treasuring above riches of the slight results slowly and patiently drawn, is neither accident, nor transient caprice, nor antiquarian frenzy, but a phase of the guiding impulse, the supreme instinct of this age—the ardour to know all, to experience all, to be all, to suffer all, in a word, to know the Truth of things—if haply there come with it immortal life, even if there come with it silence and utter death.