Vestige

“ Monuments and ruins have been disinterred in the ancient seats of human power, in the oriental world, and inscriptions deciphered, which give vitality to ancient history. Ethnology has arisen to hold up the light of her resplendent lamp, amid these ruins, to guide the footsteps of letters, science and piety. ”

“ If the grave—and it was not a grave, remember, like ours, but a cave, with a stone at the door of it, that anybody could roll away for entrance—if the grave was there, why, in the name of common-sense, did not the rulers put an end to the pestilent heresy by saying, ‘Let us go and see if the body is there’? ”

“ I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies.
8 Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest; it crieth out against me: therefore have I hated it.
9 Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her; come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field, come to devour.
10 Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. ”

“ History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription moulders from the tablet; the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand, and their epitaphs but characters written in the dust? What is the security of a tomb or the perpetuity of an embalmment? ”

“ In old churchyards, and in churchyards which the dead never enter now, but which are streets over which the feet and wheels of commerce clash and whirl, there are memories and relics of you. We dig down to the broken marbles and the ancient graves, and we find references to your Book and you mixed up with the epitaphs of our ephemeral and our immortal dead. ”

“ I find I must devote one other chapter to the consideration of the interesting remains which form almost the sole materials of this earlier portion of my history. But the class of these to which I am now about to turn, are to be found, not on the face of the country, but locked up in the minds of the inhabitants. And they are falling much more rapidly into decay—mouldering away in their hidden recesses, like bodies of the dead; while others, which more resemble the green mound and the monumental tablet, bid fair to abide the inquiry of coming generations. ”

“ Here on every side the landmarks are the temples or the citadels, the graves or the pleasances of contending races who achieved their destinies and are no more, while to this day that ancient leveller, the ploughman, mixes their bones impartially and lays bare their household gods without reverence and scarcely with curiosity. ”

“ Your heritage is in a goodly land. Its fields are wide; its skies are bright; and its people free. Choose you out its men of mark—the great and good—as patterns for yourselves. Ask of their experience, if in its silent teachings you may not find reason—nay more—encouragement, to hope for a good name too—a place among them. ”

“ I have now a home, which I trust may be permanent, if any thing in this earth can be, termed so. Thither will I transport the heart of the good father, and beside the shrine which it shall occupy, I will construct my own grave. ”

“ The builder’s stones are graven—the footway is of pictured pebbles, miniatures, amulets, and seals, reflecting lineaments and traces of the history of entombed generations. Their inscriptions reveal to us the impress of ancient, mediæval, and modern art. ”

“ Every close and every wynd and every land has its history; and, as nearly a hundred closes even now survive, besides the sites and memories of many more, and as every close contains its lands, it would take several volumes to tell all there is to be told. ”

“ From a single mound standing by itself, we must not of course attempt to deduce too much, but by comparing a number of observations from all parts of the country, we arrive, by degrees, at a knowledge of the general and particular characteristics of the grave, and by this mean learn to refer the different kinds to distinct classes, and in some measure to distinct periods. ”

“ I examine the theory of evolution from every side; and, as that which I have been assured is the majestic dome of a monument capable of defying the ages appears to me to be no more than a bladder, I irreverently dig my pin into it. ”

“ Beyond question, this new land "within" is the home, the cradle, of the human race, and viewed from the standpoint of the discoveries made by us, must of necessity have a most important bearing on all physical, paleontological, archaeological, philological and mythological theories of antiquity. ”

“ If in the one which, from the inscription and the date, we discover to be that of our ancestor whom we seek, we find the evident remains of a corpse, we shall be satisfied that he has rested in his tomb in peace. ”

“ What are the secrets that remain in the keeping of our Mother Earth? Such was my soliloquy as I passed out of the galleries containing the antiquities in the British Museum. All things earthly must pass away, we know; but the mind is staggered as it contemplates the relics still left to us of great empires of which history gives us but a hazy dream. ”

“ It now leads us on to clinging to the life of our ancestors, their being, and their natures; and beyond that to the fascination of all history, as being the continuity of life, the ever-shifting changes of the one great chain which we see around us at its present stage, and of which we form part. ”

“ And yet this innate tendency to magnify and extend into the dim, illimitable regions of antiquity whatever of human effort is deemed most worthy, is a source of difficulty to the conscientious student. Amid the wild growth of myth and marvel the antiquary or archæologist warily treads his way to surer ground, and out of scattered fragments of a by-gone age constructs anew an old order of existence, or opens a vista to the mind’s eye through which glimpses may be gained of the habits and inner life of our remote ancestors. ”

“ All over the ancient lands are buried and forgotten cities, and in those cities are papyrus scrolls and graven tablets and bricks. Infinite stores of knowledge are thus concealed from us; and how simple for the ancient ones who possess this information to make it known to us, and so to convince us of their reality! ”

“ Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon. In the following pages I have sought to reveal some of the romance of excavation, to tell the fascinating story of the men who have gone out into the desert places and dug up long-lost cities and the fabled treasure of ancient kings. Brilliant men, who have played their part in unearthing the glories of the past, have written many volumes on the subject which is nearest their hearts, and if, after closing this book, the reader and student feel a desire to seek them out, I shall be content. ”

“ We might go back and trace how much of our knowledge of the earliest ages is derived from the study of the interior of their dwellings; what a rich volume of information is conveyed in a mosaic; what a treatise does not lie in a frescoed wall! ”

“ Every castle, every statue, every painting, every piece of mechanism, everything had its birth, its origin, first in the mind of the one who formed it before it received its material expression or embodiment. ”

“ If we follow, step by step, the development of the tomb into the temple, the palace, and the triumphal arch, we shall see how the outward form and the human and cosmic myth were reciprocally enlarged. Ethnography, archæology, and the history of all peoples indicate their gradual evolution, so that it is only necessary to allude to it ”

“ Every form of chronicled lore, be it register, [Pg 243] fabric roll, charter, or brief, teems with some peculiar custom which is a moving history, an heirloom from the old world, helping to connect the past and the present.
Architectural items enter largely into the varied forms of church documents; the Indulgence often gave full particulars as to the repairs of a building, a fact most valuable for supplying the date at which any portion was built or renewed. ”

“ Deeds and evidences in private hands may have been hastily examined in some instances—indeed, a herald’s summons invites their production—and monuments were often viewed in the churches, but for the most part men’s memories and the hearsay of the country-side made the backbone of the pedigree. ”

“ It is necessary to look closely to distinguish on the smooth walls the hieroglyphic inscriptions, the rows of little figures, little owls, little jackals, that tell in a lost language the history of ancient peoples. ”

“ Unhappy Youth! e’er yet the tomb was closed, And dust to dust conveyed in peace reposed, He sought his father’s closet, searched around, To find a will: the important will was found. Well pleased he read, These lands, this manor, all Now call me master! ”

“ In a few years men will understand why, in this country, as well as in England, people are hunting up their genealogy, and by tradition, history, and heraldry, trying to ascertain of what family they are. ”

“ Before parting with the ancient vestments of the Western Church, let us spend a few moments on another, and to the antiquary a melancholy, subject, namely, the fate which has befallen them.
The number of actual vestments which survive to our own day is comparatively small. ”

“ As, for the most part, those who were left behind were ignorant, rude, and unlettered, it consequently happened that many of the marvellous things which the ancients did, and the secrets of their science, are known to us by name only, and, indeed, hardly by name. It has happened to us in our turn as it happened to the ancients. ”

“ In the first part of the work we have given a series of legends and traditions mostly attaching to our ancient mansions, and these are usually introduced by short genealogical notices of the principal persons named, together with the present state of the houses they either erected or improved. ”

“ Upon these imperishable monuments, which have outlived, in all the beauty and freshness of early youth, the sculptured trophy, the triumphal arch, the pompous and elaborate inscription, and the many costly and gorgeous works of art that were erected to commemorate the conqueror's achievements, may be read the meaning, though sententious legend, which, assisted by appropriate designs, tells its story plainly and effectively. ”

“ "These relics have a history then?"
"So much so that they are history." ”

“ He sees the present narrow line of existence, momentarily fluctuating, as one stage, like innumerable other stages that have each been the all-important present to the short-sighted people of their own day. ”

“ If the antiquary digs from among the ruins of Herculaneum a piece of ancient money, a vase, or a statue, we rejoice with him, in finding the mode of life, the manners and arts of an ancient people, placed before our eyes: If he finds an old record, illustrative of the history of his country, however limited in extent that country may be, we are grateful to him for the particle of knowledge he has added to our store ”

“ They are no more matter of historical tradition than any of the thousand other legendary genealogies which men delighted to recall to memory at the periodical festivals of their gens, their deme, or their village. ”

“ THE FINAL FORM OF VESTMENTS IN THE WESTERN CHURCH. Hitherto, to a great extent, we have been groping in the dark, guided only by the dim light yielded by obscure passages in early writers or by half-defaced frescoes and shattered sculptures. Much is conjectural, much uncertain; and often the shreds of information obtained from different sources appear contradictory, requiring patient thought and investigation to unravel the entanglement and reconcile the inconsistencies. ”

“ The walls, which are full of chinks and crannies, are of that immense thickness which proves that our ancestors built for their remote descendants, and not in our modern fashion; for we are beginning to build in the English style, that is, barely for one generation. ”

“ For myself, I am content with one generalization, which I find saves a world of bother and perplexity: it is quite safe to style every excavation, cavern, circular wall, or arch by the sea, a Roman bath. ”

“ But beyond the limited circle of those peculiarly interested in geology or archæology, this discovery will claim the especial attention of all who, whether on ethnological, philological, or theological grounds, are interested in the great question of the antiquity of man upon the earth. ”

“ Those material relics of the past which were created more than sixty years ago, though some of them are of infinite value as mementos, examples, and heirlooms, are, for the most part, certainly not of a kind which we need wrangle over or fight about. ”

“ Is there to be merely a repetition of the past—an introduction a second time of "man made in the image of God?" No! The geologist, in the tables of stone which form his records, finds no example of dynasties once passed away again returning. ”

“ A beautiful, large edifice, the glorious relic of a hoary antiquity has, out of neglect or disuse, fallen into a dilapidated condition; accumulations of dirt and dust may be lying everywhere within it, maybe, some portions are tumbling down to the ground. ”

“ If we are to discover the foundations of any system or cult, however, if we are to excavate the soil religious as we would the soil archæological in the hope of coming upon the basis of any particular faith, we must undertake the work in a manner as thorough as that of the antiquary who, pick in hand, delves his way to the lowest foundations of palace or temple. ”

“ By the modes adopted for such disposal, and the relics found in the receptacles of the dead, we are enabled not only to understand something of these superstitions and beliefs, but also to judge of their culture status and to gain some knowledge of their arts, customs, and modes of life. ”