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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 investigationare exceedingly mortifying to any one who has been proud to call himselfa student of History. We had thought, perhaps, that we knew somethingof the origin of human events and the gradual development from thepast into the world of to-day. We had read Herodotus, and Gibbon,and Gillies, and done manful duty with Rollin. There were certaincomfortable, definite facts in antiquity. Romulus and Remus were ourfriends; the transmission of the alphabet by the Phoenicians was aresting-spot; the destruction of Babylon and the date of the Flood werefixed stations in the wilderness. In more modern periods, we had arefuge in the date of the discovery of America; and if we were forcedback into the wilds and uncertainties of American History, Mr. Prescottsoon restored to us the buried empires, and led us easily back through afew plain centuries.
Beyond these dates, indeed, there was a shadowy land, through whosechanging mists could be seen sometimes the grand outlines of abandonedcities, or the faint forms of temples, or the graceful column or massivetomb, which marked the distant path of the advancing race: but thesewere scarcely more than visions for a moment, before darkness againcovered the view. Our mythology and philosophy of the past were almostequally misty and vague. History was to us a succession of facts; empiresucceeding empire, and one form of civilization another, with scarcelymore connection than in the scenes of a theatre;—the great isolatedfact of all being the existence of the Jews. All cosmic myths and nobleconceptions of Deity and pure religious beliefs were only offshoots ofHebrew tradition.
This, we are pained to say, is all changed now. Our beloved dates, oureasy explanation, and popular narrative are half dissolved under thetouch of modern investigation. Roman History abandons poor Romulus andRemus; the Flood sinks into a local inundation, and is pushed backnobody knows how many thousands of years; an Egyptian antiquity arisesof which Herodotus never knew; and Josephus is proved ignorant of hisown subject. Nothing is found separate from the current of the world'shistory,—neither Hebrew law and religion, nor Phoenician commerce,nor Hindoo mythology, nor Grecian art. On the shadowy Past, over thedeserted battle-fields, the burial-mounds, the mausolea, the temples,the altars, and the habitations of perished nations, new rays of lightare cast. Peoples not heard of before, empires forgotten, conquests notrecorded, arts unknown in their place at this day, and civilizations ofwhich all has perished but the language, appear again. The world wakesto find itself much older than it thought. History is hardly the samestudy that it once was. Even more than the investigations of hieroglyphsand bass-reliefs and sculptures, during the past few years, have theresearches in one especial direction changed the face of the ancientworld.
LANGUAGE is found to be itself the best record of a nation's origin,development, and relation to other races. Each vocabulary and grammarof a dead nation is a Nineveh, rich in pictures, inscriptions, andhistorical records, uncovering to the patient investigator not merelythe external life and actions of the people, but their deepest internallife, and their connection with other peo