Title:  Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858

Author:  Various

Release Date:  May 18, 2004 [EBook #12374]
[Date last updated:  May 28, 2005]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A Magazine of literature, art, and politics.

Vol.  I.—­May, 1858.—­No.  VII.

AMERICAN ANTIQUITY.

The results of the past ten or fifteen years in historical investigation are exceedingly mortifying to any one who has been proud to call himself a student of History.  We had thought, perhaps, that we knew something of the origin of human events and the gradual development from the past into the world of to-day.  We had read Herodotus, and Gibbon, and Gillies, and done manful duty with Rollin.  There were certain comfortable, definite facts in antiquity.  Romulus and Remus were our friends; the transmission of the alphabet by the Phoenicians was a resting-spot; the destruction of Babylon and the date of the Flood were fixed stations in the wilderness.  In more modern periods, we had a refuge in the date of the discovery of America; and if we were forced back into the wilds and uncertainties of American History, Mr. Prescott soon restored to us the buried empires, and led us easily back through a few plain centuries.

Beyond these dates, indeed, there was a shadowy land, through whose changing mists could be seen sometimes the grand outlines of abandoned cities, or the faint forms of temples, or the graceful column or massive tomb, which marked the distant path of the advancing race:  but these were scarcely more than visions for a moment, before darkness again covered the view.  Our mythology and philosophy of the past were almost equally misty and vague.  History was to us a succession of facts; empire succeeding empire, and one form of civilization another, with scarcely more connection than in the scenes of a theatre;—­the great isolated fact of all being the existence of the Jews.  All cosmic myths and noble conceptions of Deity and pure religious beliefs were only offshoots of Hebrew tradition.