“Because, I apprehend, first, that you are laboring under the delusion already mentioned, by which men ever magnify the importance of the events of their own age, and forget how readily future generations will let them slip from their memory, and let documents which contain the record of them slip out of existence; and, secondly, because you do not give yourself time to realize all that is implied in supposing eighteen hundred years to have elapsed, nor to transport yourself fairly into that distant age.  As to the first;—­let us recollect that the importance of historical events is by no means in proportion to the excitement they produce at the time of their occurrence.  We have many exemplifications of this even in our own time; see the rapidity with which every trace of a political storm, which for a moment may have lashed the whole nation into fury, is appeased again:  the surface is as smooth after a few short years as if it had never been ruffled at all!  In all such cases, the constant tendency is to let the events which have been thus transient in their effects sink into oblivion.  But even of those which have been far more significant, (since each future age will teem with fresh events equally significant, all claiming a part in the page of general history,) the importance will be perpetually diminishing in estimate, and still more in interest, from the intenser feeling with which each age will in turn regard the events which stand in immediate proximity to its own.  As time rolls on, all of the past that can be spared will be gradually jostled out.  Details will be lost; and then, when remote ages turn to reinvestigate the half-forgotten past, the want of those details will issue in the customary problems and ‘historic doubts.’  In the page of general history, events of a remote age, except those of a surpassing interest, will be reduced to more and more meagre outlines, till abridgments are abridged, and even these compendiums thought tedious.  The interval between decade and decade now will be as much as that between century and century then.  History will have to employ a sort of Bramah press in her compositions, and its application will compress into mere films the loose and pulpy textures submitted to it by each age.  Let human vanity think what it will, many events and many names which seem imperishable will speedily die out of remembrance; many lights in the firmament, destined (as we deem) to shine ‘like the stars for ever and ever,’ will hereafter be missing from the catalogue of the historic astronomer.”

“But, at all events,” said the other, “though there are thousands of facts which will be virtually forgotten, it will be at all times easy to ascertain (if a sufficiently strong motive exist) the real character of past, events by a reference to the documents preserved by the press.  The press,—­the press it is which will preserve us from the doubts of the past.”