and his doings, eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, could be as
much the subject of doubt and controversy (if remembered at all) as
the events which Strauss has shown to be unhistorical. I think the
press alone, with its diffusion and multiplication 'of the sources
of knowledge, will alone prevent in the future the doubts which gather
over the past. There will never again be the same dearth of historic
materials."
"In spite of all that," replied Harrington, "I suspect it will be
very possible for men to entertain the same doubts about many events
of our time, eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, as they entertain
of many which happened eighteen hundred and fifty years ago."
"I can hardly imagine this to be possible."
"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."
"I doubt that. Has there been any lack of historic controversy respecting
a thousand facts which have transpired since the press was in full
activity? You forget, that, in the first place, neither the press, nor
any thing else, can preserve any original documents. Time will not be
inactive in the future more than in the past; it will have no more
respect for printed books than for manuscripts. An immense mass of print
is every year silently perishing by mere decay. The original documents
to which you refer will, eighteen hundred years hence, have almost all
perished; few will be preserved except in copies, and how many disputes
that alone will cause, it is hard to say; but we may form some guess
from the experience of the past. Of thousands of these documents, again,
no importance having been attached to them, and no one having imagined
that any importance would ever be attached to them, no copies will
have been taken, and there will be here again the usual field for
conjectures. This is a common trick of time;--silently destroying what
a present age thinks may as well be left to his maw. It is not even
discovered that valuable documents are lost, till something turns
up to make mankind wish they may be found. But neither is this the
sole nor the chief source of future historic doubts. Do not flatter
yourself too much on the wonders which the press can work, amongst
which one unquestionably is, that it will bury at least as much
as it will preserve. Several considerations will suffice to show that
here, too, we labor under a delusion. Oblivion will practically cover
many events, owing to the mere accumulations of the press itself. You
talk of the ease of consulting 'original documents'; but when they lie
buried in the depths of national museums, amidst mountain loads of
forgotten and decaying literature, it will not be so easy, even
supposing the present activity of the press only maintained for
eighteen hundred and fifty years (although, in all probability, it
will proceed at a rapidly increased ratio),--I say it will not be so
easy to lay your hands on what you want. The materials, again, will
often exist by that time in dead or half-obsolete languages, or at
least in languages full of archaic forms. It will be almost as difficult
to unearth and collate the documents which bear upon any events less
than the most momentous, as to recover the memorials of Egypt from
the pyramids, or of ancient Assyria from the mounds of Nineveh. The
historian of a remote period must be a sort of Belzoni or Layard. If
we can suppose any thing so extravagant as that the British Museum will
be in existence then, having preserved during these centuries (as it
does now) all new hooks, and accumulated ancient and foreign literature
only at the rate it has during these few years past, the library alone
will extend over hundreds of acres at least. This, unless our posterity
are fools, can hardly be the case; and therefore much will be rejected
and left to the mercy of the great destroyer. But the very existence of
any such repository is itself a very doubtful supposition. Comprehensive,
indeed, may be the destruction of many large portions of our archives,
essentially necessary to minute accuracy at so distant a date; nay,
England herself may have ceased to exist. If her subterranean fuel be
not exhausted, a cheaper and equally abundant supply of it may have
been found elsewhere, and transfer for ever the chief elements of her
manufacturing or commercial prosperity; or entirely new and more
transcendent sources of science may have done the same thing, and our
country may be left, like a stranded vessel, to rot upon the beach!
Her furnaces extinguished, her manufactories deserted, her cities decayed,
the hum of her busy population silenced, she may present a spectacle of
desolation like that of so many other famous nations which have risen,
culminated, and set for ever."
"Or," interrupted I, "(and may God avert the omen!) the same ruin may
be accomplished still earlier, and by more potent causes. Her nobles
enervated by luxury, her lower classes sunk in vice and ignorance,
and both the one and the other decaying in piety and religion (a sure
result of neglecting that Bible which has directly and indirectly formed
her strength), she may have fallen a victim to the consequences of her
own degeneracy, or to an irresistible combination of the enemies who
envy and hate her. That picture of the splendid imagination of the great
historian of our day may be realized, 'when some traveller from New
Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a
broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.'"
"In short," resumed Harrington, "in several ways that appalling
catastrophe may have taken place; and, should this be the case, how
many questions will be asked of history, but asked in vain! As for
Rome,--what other great name in the present strife pitted against
England,--for aught we can tell, she may by that time be in desolation
far more remediless than when the grim Attilas and Alarics stormed her
walls. For aught we know, the agency of those terrible elements which
more or less mine the soil of Italy may have made her 'like unto'
Herculaneum or Pompeii; or that silent desolater, the malaria, which
Dr. Arnold thinks will be perpetual and will increase, may long before
that period have reduced, not only the Campagna of Rome, but the whole
region of the 'seven hills,' to a pestilential solitude."
"But all this is mere vision?" said Robinson.
"Certainly; but it is the vision of the possible. Similarly wonderful
and equally unexpected revolutions have taken place in the history of
past nations and empires in a less space of time; and some enormous
changes, we know, must happen during the next eighteen hundred and fifty
years; and they will tend both to jostle out thousands of events of meaner
moment, and to effect a comparative destruction of the memorials 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, which had been extinct since the Reformation. As
these events, though all-absorbing to the actors in them, (as are so
many others of very secondary importance,) have now shrunk to their
true dimensions, and are, in fact, infinitely less momentous than
others which were silently transpiring at the time almost without
notice, I shall content myself with simply condensing a brief
contemporaneous document which gives the chief points, without passion
or prejudice, in a narrative so simple that it vouches for its own
veracity:--
"Without permission of the Crown, or any negotiations with the
Government whatever, Pope Plus the Ninth divided the whole of England
into twelve sees, and assigned these to as many Roman Catholic bishops
with local titles and territorial jurisdiction. The chief of them was
one Nicholas Wiseman (by birth, it is said, a Spaniard), who was created
Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal.
"'The said Wiseman issued a pastoral letter, which was read on the
27th day of October, 1850, in all the churches and chapels of the
Romanists, congratulating Catholic England on the reestablishment of
the Roman hierarchy. In it he used the startling expression, "Our
beloved country has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical
firmament, from which its light had long vanished."
"'The nation was the more surprised at all this, inasmuch as the
position of Pio Nono was not such as to warrant any expectation of a
step so audacious. Little more than a year had elapsed since his own
subjects in Rome itself rebelled against him, murdered his Prime
Minister, and compelled him, in the disguise of a menial, to fly from
Rome; nor was he restored except by the arms of the French, who besieged
and took Rome in 1849.
"'That the Pope, while holding his own little dominions on so precarious
a tenure, should venture to assume such an exercise of supremacy over
the most powerful nation in the world,--a nation so jealous of its
independence, which had so long been, and which still was, most averse
to his claims,--seemed almost incredible to the people of England; and
they were proportionably indignant.
"'Some affirmed that the aforesaid Cardinal Wiseman was the chief cause
of it all,--the spectacle of many conversions from the Church of England
to that of Rome having deceived him into a notion that the national
mind was far more generally disposed to receive Romanism; and to make
up the long-standing breach with the Papacy, than was really the case.
The principal cause of the conversions above mentioned was what was
called the "Oxford Movement." In the University of Oxford had sprung up
a body of men who had consecrated their lives to the diffusion of
doctrines indefinitely near those of Rome. They spoke of the Reformation
contemptuously; advocated very many, obsolete rites and usages;
magnified the power of the church and the prerogatives of the
priesthood. Many of them, at length, finding that they could not, with
any shadow of consistency, remain in the English church, abandoned it;
but many others remained, and propagated the same opinions with
impunity. They were regarded as traitors by their brethren, though no
steps were taken to prevent them from teaching their notions, nor to
deprive them of their benefices and emoluments. Among those who gave up
their livings, of their own accord, from the feeling that they could not
hold them with a safe conscience, the principal was one afterwards
called Father Newman.
"'Now this Newman must by no means be confounded with another of the
same name, Professor Newman,--in fact his own brother,--who was also
educated at Oxford, but whose history was in most singular contrast
with his. While the one brother went over to Rome, exceeded in zeal
and credulity even the Romanists themselves, and sighed for a
restoration of mediaeval puerilities, the other lapsed into downright
infidelity, and denied even the possibility of an external revelation.
"'Very many thought, that, if the Oxford party had been wise enough
to proceed more gently in the propagation of their notions, they would
have accomplished much greater things, and perhaps eventually brought
the popular mind to embrace the Romish Church. But their later
publications (and especially No. 90) opened the eyes of many, and the
frequent defections from the English Church, which were almost daily
announced in the papers, opened the eyes of many more.
"'But whether or not Wiseman and other principal persons were misled
by erroneous representations of the state of the English mind, certain
it is that he advised the Pope to take this perilous step. The Pope
was persuaded; he assured the people of England, that he should not
cease to supplicate the Virgin Mary and all the saints whose virtues
had made this country illustrious, that they would deign to obtain,
by their intercessions with God, a happy issue to his enterprise.
"'The excitement produced by the publication of the Pope's proceedings
throughout England was prodigious, and can hardly be conceived by us
at this day. Every county, city, and almost every town, held meetings
in the utmost alarm and indignation; and resolved on petitioning the
Queen and Parliament to do something or other to prevent the Pope's
measures from taking effect; and especially to annul all claims to
local and territorial jurisdiction in this country. The universities;
the clergy in their dioceses; the Bishops collectively,--even Philpotts
of Exeter, though intoxicated with zeal for those Oxford notions which
had done all the mischief; the municipalities; almost all organized
bodies, whether of Churchmen or Dissenters;--discussed and resolved.
Amongst these meetings one was held at the Guildhall of London, which
was crowded with the merchant princes of that great city, and all that
could represent its wealth, intelligence, and energy. One Masterman
opened the proceedings, made a vehement speech against the Bishop of
Rome and his pretensions, and proposed a stringent resolution, which
was carried by acclamation.
"'At a dinner given by the Lord Mayor, at which were present many
of the Ministers of the Crown, the Lord Chancellor Wilde spoke very
boldly, and, as some thought, unadvisedly, on his possible future
relations to the Cardinal.
"'Cardinal Wiseman published a subtle defence of himself and the
Popish measure, which he addressed to the people of England; and,
whether consistently or inconsistently, pleaded in the most strenuous
manner for the inviolable observance of the principles of
"religious liberty."
"'A singular and indeed inexplicable circumstance occurred in the
course of this controversy. In a lecture, delivered at the Hanover
Square Rooms, a certain Presbyterian clergyman had asserted that
the oath prescribed in the Pontificale Romanum, which the Cardinal
Wiseman must have taken to the Pope when he received the Pallium as
Archbishop of Westminster, notoriously contained a clause enjoining
the duty of persecution. This clause, a facetious Englishman said,
ought to be translated, "I will persecute and pitch into all
heretics to the utmost of my power"; and every one knew that the Pope
of Rome looked upon the English as the greatest heretics in the world.
"'When Wiseman heard of the representations thus made, he caused his
secretary to write to the Protestant lecturer, to say that the clause
in the oath to which he had referred was not insisted upon, in his
(the Cardinal's) case, by the Pope, and that, if his calumniator chose
to go to the Cardinal's library, he would see that it was cancelled
in his copy of the Pontifical. The Protestant accepted his challenge
and went to the said library. He was then shown the oath, and found the
clause in question, totidem verbis; not cancelled, however, but marked
off by a line in black ink drawn over it, and (as it seemed) very
recently.
"'Pamphlets were published on this curious circumstance on both sides;
the Roman Catholics contended that the mere fact of Wiseman's challenge
was a sufficient proof of his consciousness of rectitude.
"'On the whole, after half a year of perpetual agitation, both in and
out of Parliament, a measure was passed which was notoriously inadequate
to suppress the offence, and which was broken with impunity.
"'It is gratifying to add, that, notwithstanding the dangerous and
vehement excitement which so long inflamed the minds of the people,
no life was lost except on one occasion. The sufferer--contrary to
what might have been expected--was of the dominant party a policeman,
who was endeavoring to repress the party violence of some Irish
Catholics in the North of England.'"
____
"Now it need not be said," proceeded Harrington, "that these sentences
contain what is perfectly well known by you--for myself I say nothing--to
be the merest matter of fact, narrated in the simplest language, without
any art or embellishment. Would you like to hear how Dr. Dickkopf, of
New Zealand, or Kamtschatka, or Caffre-land, might treat such a document
eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, amidst that imperfect light which
we well know rests upon so many portions of the past, and which may, very
possibly, be felt in the future? I think it would not be difficult for
him to show that the 'Papal Aggression' was impossible."
"We will, at least, listen to you," said Robinson.
"Let us suppose, then, some learned Theban stumbling upon this brief
record of an obscure event, and, as usual, making (if only because he
had discovered what nobody in the world either knew or cared about)
a huge commentary upon it; concluding from the internal evidence, the
simplicity of the style, the absence of all imaginable motives for
misrepresentation, and some external corroborative fragments painfully
gleaned from the history of the period, that these sentences formed a
genuine, literal, historic account of certain events which transpired
in England in the year 1850. This, of course, would of itself be
sufficient to make ten Dr. Dickkopfs turn to and prove the contrary;
and any one of them, I imagine, might, and probably would, thus
reply. Excuse his clumsy style. He would say:--
"'That there may have been, and very probably was, some nucleus of
fact which may have served as a groundwork for these pseudo-historical
memorials, is not denied: but to regard that document of which it
is professedly a condensation as a genuine record of the period in
question, can only, we conceive, be the infelicity of an essentially
uncritical mind. Most evidently, whether we regard the known events and
relations of that age (as far as they have come down to us) or the
internal characteristics of the document itself, we discover
unequivocal traces of an unhistoric origin. Let us look at both these
sources of evidence in order. If we mistake not, the document, even
as it now stands, bears on its very front, that the original document,
so far from being a literal description of the events of the time to
which it professedly related, was allegorical, or at most historico-
allegorical, and most likely designed broadly to caricature and
satirize some perceived tendencies or conditions of the English
religious development in certain parties of that age. But whether it
be, or be not, reducible to the class of allegorieo-ecclesiastico-
political satire, certainly no person of critical discernment can for
a moment allow it to be a literal statement of historic events. And
first to look at the internal evidence.