Record

“ We get it, especially, not from the history of the theorist or the statistician, but from the actual, naïve, human record to be found in memoirs, in popular literature, in architecture, painting, sculpture, and music, in the industrial arts, in every unforced product of the mind. ”

“ How inadequate the record; how insufficient for the task the chronicler; no one will be so painfully conscious, as is the man whose hand—in the absence of a better hand—has here attempted the narrative. ”

“ It is presumed that a record of achievements in war,—victories so complete and surprising, gained by our countrymen, our brothers, our fellow-citizens in arms,—a record which revives the memory of the brave, and brings their gallant deeds before us, will certainly prove acceptable to the public. ”

“ Doubtless it is impossible for any one journal to make a complete record of all the books and articles that appear in the field of history, but I believe the record could be made much more complete than it now is ”

“ The perfect record may never be possessed, but it seems to be ideally possible, because the events which the record would keep in memory must have happened, and, therefore, might have been recorded if fortune had been favorable. If, however, the understanding of what has happened is correct, its truth can not be something fixed once for all. ”

“ Now thousands of individuals and thousands of bodies—families, clans, associations, that accomplish much in this world, go on very well without keeping any record at all of what they do. This is indisputable. On the other hand we shall see that as work is done well and carefully there is an increasing disposition to make and keep a record of results; and as the work extends in scope and complexity, the record, too, becomes more complex. ”

“ I do not suppose there is any magical thing in any fairyland to compare with the Record Book, on the pages of which are constantly being printed a record of every event that happens in any part of the world, at exactly the moment it happens. ”

“ For the wealth that is ours to-day we are indebted in large measure to man’s instinctive desire, manifested in all ages, to perpetuate his knowledge and achievements. Before the thought of a permanent record had begun to take shape in men’s minds, oral tradition, passing from father to son, and from generation to generation, sought to keep alive the memory of great achievements and valorous deeds. ”

“ Whimpole, making a wild guess.
"Our bedroom. There should be a record on the walls; there should, indeed, be a record, such as is placed outside those houses in London which have been inhabited by famous people. Failing that, it is in the power of every man, assuredly every rich man, to make for himself a record that shall be unperishable--far better, my dear sir, than the mere fixing of a plate on a cold stone wall." ”

“ There are records and traditions of every degree of value, from utter worthlessness to the worth of the most authentic history, preserving the evidences of powers which may be generally described as spiritual. Through all ages, among all races, the living have alleged themselves from time to time to have seen the forms and even heard the voices of the dead. ”

“ We understand by history a record of events that are past, and that it embraces chronology, biography, manners and customs, statistics, governments, and the rise and fall of kingdoms, nations and empires. ”

“ It is only worth raising when the record is unusually ample and varied, and of long continuity; when we can believe that it enshrines the thoughts of the people, not merely of the priest or of the philosopher. We are more likely to believe this when the record is rich not only in literature, but in monuments. ”

“ It requires rare gifts indeed to make such a record—a keenness of eye, a skill of hand, and a transparent honesty of purpose that do not often occur to this degree. The record is indeed so well made that it will always be legible, and what is to be read therein will have an ever increasing historical interest. ”

“ Some of the brightest glimpses of the private life and noble character of that statesman can be obtained from her journals, which are a daily record, in many uniform volumes, not only of her own life, but of the important events of the social, dramatic, political, religious and literary world. Those journals are profusely illustrated and are of great value, since the daily record is unbroken for a period of over twenty years. ”

“ Must a new physiological record be made for each form of the sixty or more words of which Press constitutes the base, and must a new record be also made for each of the prefixes and suffixes in the thousands of combinations in which they occur? No one believes any such absurdity. ”

“ The general idea of providing a permanent record of historical events in the nation’s history is worthy of universal encouragement, and also of making these records easily accessible for public enlightenment. ”

“ I only speak of these wonderful books, however, for the other aspect of their method—because it shows a stage in the natural struggle of the mere record to become something more, to develop independent life and to appear as action. Where the record is one of emotions and sentiments, delicately traced and disentangled, it is not so easy to see how they may be exposed to an immediate view ”

“ Historical criticism becomes hard and exacting, even where the chronicle records events not improbable in themselves; and the moment that the story falls out of our scheme of the world’s habitual course, the ever repeated question comes out to meet it—Which is the more likely, that so unusual an event should have really happened, or that the record should be misunderstood or false? ”

“ In this article, however, we are only concerned with documentary records, or archives. In its accurate sense a record is a document regularly drawn up for a legal or administrative purpose and preserved in proper custody to perpetuate the memory of the transaction described in it; for the most part it forms a link in a complicated process, and unless the connexion between it and the other documents making up the process has been preserved, a portion of its meaning will have perished. ”

“ History, if we define it as the mere transcription of the written records of former generations, can go no farther back than the time such records were first made, no farther than the art of writing. But now that we have come to recognize the great earth itself as a story-book, as a keeper of records buried one beneath the other, confused and half obliterated, yet not wholly beyond our comprehension, now the historian may fairly be allowed to speak of a far earlier day. ”

“ For the prolongation of the record right on into our own time, while it very greatly increases the real value of the collection as a piece of historical evidence, yet deprives it of that illusion [26] which men cannot avoid where history is concerned: the illusion that things thoroughly passed are in some way greater and of more consequence than contemporary things. ”

“ In this little known and scarce essay he emphasized the true nature of the record as a series of enrolments of judgements, charters, grants and agreements, suggested by quotations that it was rather a roll (rotulus) than a book (liber) , and, by means of extracts from other records and collations, confirmed his earlier conclusion that the extracts in the College of Arms Manuscript were taken from the original Roll then (1580) in existence. ”

“ Perusing records that are a century old is something better than listening to a centenarian, even if his memory could go back so far. The records are as fresh as first impressions, and they bring before us men and things as they were, not as after-historians supposed them to be. ”

“ From the great body of records, both public and private, many fall easily and naturally into the class in which the text takes a simpler narrative form; such as judicial records, laws, decrees, proclamations, registers, &c., which tell their own story in formulae and phraseology early developed and requiring little change. ”

“ For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory? ”

“ Of such, no records are kept in the book of time. Should anybody compile a history of lost opportunities, it might easily require a bigger volume, than that needed for the story of opportunities taken at the crucial moment. ”

“ We must deal with the history, then, in the first place, as we should deal with all other histories. The historical student knows that his first business should be to inquire into the validity of his evidence, and the nature of the record in which the evidence is contained, that he may be able to form a proper estimate of the correctness of the conclusions which have been drawn from that evidence. ”

“ There is an account kept, whether we keep one or not. There are a good many revelations which show us that this is the case. Your history goes before you. All of you will find it when you get [to] the other side of the vail. Every man's history—his acts—are written, whether he has kept a record here or not. ”

“ And he who shall first, by means of these only records that remain, scattered, disconnected, and crumbling into hopeless decay, decypher some legible tale of probability, and unravel a leading clue to the history of these now inexplicable relics, will win and deserve the admiring gratitude of all, who are curious to investigate the ever changing aspects of human society. ”

“ Instances of this kind crowd on my memory as coming within my own experience and observation. It is hopeful to think that the record is daily becoming less imperfect; it is stimulating to know that so much is only waiting for investigation. ”

“ I ask you to think of the Records not as documents which have come into existence somehow, and which somehow contain among them certain isolated matters that may give passing pleasure to persons of antiquarian tastes. I ask you to think of them as not being a mere mass of parchments and papers arranged in chronological order, in which the student of any particular period of history may find all that he wants, if only he exhausts all the documents of that period. ”

“ The people were taught that the record was inspired, and therefore true. They were not taught that it was true, and therefore inspired. ”

“ In consequence, it is only in periods when the stream of personal record flows wide and deep that history begins to live, and that we have a chance to view it through the eyes of the actors instead of projecting upon it our own fancies and conceptions. ”

“ Behind us lies a night of fearful gloom, unillumined by the light of written records, of picture memorials, of aught which can give a certain idea of the past. A few stray streaks of light, in the form of tradition, of oral poetry, of carved records, are the only guides we have. ”

“ They form too important a feature at the very threshold of the history of the country, and have been too much perverted by a careless consideration of the only record we have of them, and the intrusion of extraneous or spurious matter, to be passed over in less detail. ”

“ A large mass of material of great value cannot be described here. It is made up of records primarily of value for constitutional history, charters, writs, laws, and documentary material of all kinds, from which often new facts are obtained for narrative history or light of great value thrown on doubtful points, especially of chronology or of the history of individuals. ”

“ If the young speaker will faithfully follow up such a method of recording the results of his oratorical experience, he will find it one of the best forms of discipline, and the record itself—carefully indexed, frequently reviewed, and kept within reasonable bulk—will in time possess a value greater than gold. ”

“ The genuine, and if I may use the term, unsophisticated, domestic records preserved in many families of genealogical occurrences, have been solemnly admitted in the highest courts of judicature as evidences of family pedigree; hallowed by their insertion on the fly-leaves of that holy Record, which it is presumed no man would listlessly employ to give a colouring or sanction to falsehood, while he conscientiously believes the sacred volume to contain the revealed will of his Maker, and to exhibit the means of his own eternal salvation. ”

“ They signally contrast the vivid and splendid colouring of objects created or developed by human genius and patience, from the exquisite decorations and jewel-like masses of domestic and public architecture to the magnificent flowers and fruit produced, by the labour of countless generations, from originals so dissimilar that only the records of past ages can trace or the searching comparisons of science recognise them. ”

“ He who knows all that is to come as intimately as he does all the past, could have caused a record to have been made, disclosing names, and dates, and places, so that the most minute statements of what is to occur might have been in the possession of man as clearly as the records of the past now are. ”

“ Indeed, a very high authority as good as told the writer in the war records office in Washington that no man's memory is as good as the published record, or entitled to any weight at all when not in entire harmony therewith. ”

“ We now turn to the historical ages of each of the principal countries, to review what advance has been made even where a basis of written record has come down to us, equally accessible in all recent times. ”