of the past.  You do not suppose, I presume, that London and Rome are absolutely privileged from the fate which has overtaken Babylon and Memphis.  I, for one, therefore, do not expect that the time will arrive when, in the historic investigations of the past, our Strausses will not find abundant scope for ingenious theories; nay, many real sources of perplexity even in reference to events which, at the time of their occurrence, seemed written as ‘with a pen of iron on the rock for ever.’  But even supposing no other difficulty, I cannot lay small stress upon the mere accumulation of materials on which the historian, two thousand years hence, will have to operate, if he would recover an exact account of the events of our time.  It is much the same whether you have to dig into the pyramids of Egypt, or into the catacombs of the buried literature of two thousand years, for the memorials which are to enable you to arrive at the exact truth, at least as to any events of transient interest, however important at the time of their occurrence.  It will be like ’hunting for a needle in a bundle of hay,’ as the proverb says.”

“Still, I cannot imagine that facts like those with which our ears have been ringing during the last eight months, can ever be contested.”

“Can you not?” said Harrington.  “I cannot imagine any thing more likely than that, eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, such an event, on Strauss’s principles, may be shown to be very problematical.”

“Will you endeavor to show how it may probably be?” rejoined Robinson.

“Well, I have no objection, if you will give me till this evening to prepare so important a document.”

In the evening, after supper, he amused us by reading us a brief paper, entitled

The papal aggression shown to be impossible.

“I shall proceed on the supposition that some Dr. Dickkopf or Dr. Scharfsinn, for either name will do, has to deal (as my uncle here believes our modern critics have to deal in the Gospels) with an account literally true.  This learned man I shall imagine as existing in some nation at the antipodes eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, and intellectually, if not literally, descended from some erudite critics of our age.  Let me further suppose that the principal memorials of the current events are found in the page of some continuator of Macaulay (may the Fates have pity on him!  I am afraid he will be far worse than even Smollett after Hume), who publishes his work only sixty years hence.  Let us suppose him (as surely we well may) proceeding thus:  ’During the year 1850-51, our countrymen are represented to us, by the accounts of those who lived at the time (some few still survive), as having been in a condition of political and religious excitement almost unprecedented in their history.  It was occasioned by the attempt of the Pope to reestablish the Roman Catholic hierarchy,