THE CALIFORNIAN
AND
OVERLAND MONTHLY.
A WESTERN MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
VOL. VI.-DECEMBER, 1882.-No. 36.
THE BANCROFT HISTORICAL LIBRARY.
Lofty purposes, great achievements, and grand natural or architectural objects require distance to give them the atmosphere essential to a proper view. A thing which is too recent or of too quick a growth fails to impress us as we are impressed by other things made venerable by time, and about which cluster the accumulated sentiment of passing ages. Could the Alexandrian library have escaped destruction until to-day, the wealth of Christendom could not purchase it.
With what veneration does the student regard an ancient manuscript in Hindostanee, Hebrew, Greek, or even in Latin, which was once the every-day topic or literary pastime of the men of its own day! Did we know the history of some of those priceless rolls, we might discover that the ignorance of the masses, or the rivalry of the few scholarly men of the time, made almost hopeless the ambition of the author to be recognized as the benefactor of his race or the historian of his people. Jeremiah the eloquent, whose scribe accompanied him to make copies of his lamentations over the perverseness of his generation, sold few copies, very likely, as he complains that a prophet hath honor except in his own country. The poet Job desired nothing worse for his enemy than to have written a book; and truly, an author who was obliged to go from door to door reciting his verses, or who must teach to public audiences, very much as a college professor lectures to his class, the contents of his manuscript volume, led a laborious life.
Yet the productions of the world's early brain-workers, which have survived the ravages of barbarian warfare and the vindictiveness of religious persecution-how high they stand! and how crystal clear is our perception of their truths and beauties, seen through the atmosphere of centuries of time, and without the belittling associations of contemporaneous rivalry or each day's needs! So great are the fascinations of objects seen through the rarified air of antiquity, that the modern, unless it be something absolutely new-if such a thing there be-affords us comparatively little pleasure, and elicits little interest. To be recent is to be valueless.
Vol. VI-32.[Copyright, 1882, by THE CALIFORNIA PUBLISHING COMPANY.]
