The archaeologist is not, or ought not to be, lacking in vivacity.  One might say that he is so sensible to the charms of society that, finding his companions too few in number, he has drawn the olden times to him to search them for jovial men and agreeable women.  It might be added that he has so laughed at jest and joke that, fearing lest the funds of humour run dry, he has gathered the laughter of all the years to his enrichment.  Certainly he has so delighted in noble adventure and stirring action that he finds his newspaper insufficient to his needs, and fetches to his aid the tales of old heroes.  In fact, the archaeologist is so enamoured of life that he would raise all the dead from their graves.  He will not have it that the men of old are dust:  he would bring them to him to share with him the sunlight which he finds so precious.  He is so much an enemy of Death and Decay that he would rob them of their harvest; and, for every life the foe has claimed, he would raise up, if he could, a memory that would continue to live.

The meaning of the heading which has been given to this chapter is now becoming clear, and the direction of the argument is already apparent.  So far it has been my purpose to show that the archaeologist is not a rag-and-bone man, though the public generally thinks he is, and he often thinks he is himself.  The attempt has been made to suggest that archaeology ought not to consist in sitting in a charnel-house amongst the dead, but rather in ignoring that place and taking the bones into the light of day, decently clad in flesh and finery.  It has now to be shown in what manner this parading of the Past is needful to the gaiety of the Present.

Amongst cultured people whose social position makes it difficult for them to dance in circles on the grass in order to express or to stimulate their gaiety, and whose school of deportment will not permit them to sing a merry song of sixpence as they trip down the streets, there is some danger of the fire of merriment dying for want of fuel.  Vivacity in printed books, therefore, has been encouraged, so that the mind at least, if not the body, may skip about and clap its hands.  A portly gentleman with a solemn face, reading his ‘Punch’ in the club, is, after all, giving play to precisely those same humours which in ancient days might have led him, like Georgy Porgy, to kiss the girls or to perform any other merry joke.  It is necessary, therefore, ever to enlarge the stock of things humorous, vivacious, or rousing, if thoughts are to be kept young and eyes bright in this age of restraint.  What would Yuletide be without the olden times to bolster it?  What would the Christmas numbers do without the pictures of our great-grandparents’ coaches snow-bound, of huntsmen of the eighteenth century, of jesters at the courts of the barons?  What should we do without the ’Vicar of Wakefield,’ the ‘Compleat Angler,’ ‘Pepys’ Diary,’ and all the rest of the ancient books?  And, going back a few centuries, what an amount we should miss had we not ‘AEsop’s Fables,’ the ‘Odyssey,’ the tales of the Trojan War, and so on.  It is from the archaeologist that one must expect the augmentation of this supply; and just in that degree in which the existing supply is really a necessary part of our equipment, so archaeology, which looks for more, is necessary to our gaiety.