It is easier far, means not being wanting, to place in one's cabinet some matchless group of Capo di Monti, some priceless specimen of the fabric of Sevres or Dresden, than to tax one's strength in extracting the lessons conveyed by form and colour. It is a simpler matter to be the possessor of Damascus sword-blades or Aleppo prayer-rugs than to burden one's self with reflections upon oriental chivalry or mysticism. And so, again, it is a far readier, as it is certainly a rougher, way of being in sympathy with antiquity, to notch off a fragment in the Acropolis, or carve one's name among the ruins of the Forum, than to originate such poetic passages as Byron uttered over the field of Marathon, or Longfellow in the market-place of Nuremburg. Say what we will, both forms of veneration arise alike from the same innate craving to grasp some part or parcel of the tissue of the past. To the untiring few who have overcome the drought and dust of the up-land journey, the summit, once attained, will disclose many a point and promontory unsuspected by the purblind dweller in the plain. The retrospect will reveal to them a busy, thronging life underlying the serenity of history. They will be able to range the perished multitudes in their once motley grouping, to restore warmth and colour to lineaments long obscured in death, and greed and alacrity to the sunk eyes and folded hands. To those whom the spirit of the past is apt to visit as a passionate inspiration, the mere record of consecutive events is often wearisome. It is not altogether for this that they have laboured to catch some murmur, however slight, of the infinite harmony that is being sounded by all, the chords of history. Rather, it is to tramp mistily along from generation to generation in the long, forced march of human life. Rather, to probe to the depths of some one of the world's stupendous follies, of some one of its golden vanities, that they have thus cast about them with measure and lead-line. And when they have completely searched out and written of the world's stupendous follies, they will perhaps have written what alone would be worth calling its history.