To draw with as much accuracy as may be the outline of these shapes out of the past is the business of the prehistoric student; and to assist him in his task, what has he? First, he has the Bible narrative, wherein some of the chief events of the world’s history are displayed, but at uncertain distances apart. Then we have the traditions preserved in other writings, in books, or on old temple stones--in these the truth has generally to be cleared from a mist of allegory, or at least of mythology. And, lastly, besides these conscious records of times gone by, we have other dumb memorials, old buildings--cities or temples--whose makers are long since forgotten, old tools or weapons, buried for thousands of years, to come to light in our days; and again, old words, old beliefs, old customs, old arts, old forms of civilization which have been unwittingly handed down to us, can all, if we know the art to interpret their language, be made to tell us histories of the antique world. It is, then, no uninteresting study by which we learn how to make these silent records speak. ‘Of man’s activity and attainment,’ Carlyle finely says, ‘the chief results are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in tradition only: such are his Forms of Government, with the Authority they rest on; his Customs or Fashions both of Cloth-habits and Soul-habits; much more his collective stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired of manipulating nature--all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles from Father to Son; if you demand sight of them they are nowhere to be met with. Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, even from Cain and Tubalcain downwards; but where does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic and other Manufacturing SKILL lie warehoused? It transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun’s rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort.’