Time is an able teacher of
causes and qualities, but he setteth little store by names and persons,
or the mould and fashion of their deeds. The pyramids have outlived the
very names of their builders. "Oblivion," says Sir Thomas Browne,
"blindly scatters her poppies. Time has spared the epitaph of Adrian's
horse--confounded that of himself!"
Few things are so durable as the memory of those mischiefs and
oppressions which Time has bequeathed to mankind. The names of
conquerors and tyrants have been faithfully preserved, while those from
whom have originated the most useful and beneficial discoveries are
entirely unknown, or left to perish in darkness and uncertainty. We
should not have known that Lucullus brought cherries from the banks of
the Phasis but through the details of massacre and spoliation--the
splendid barbarities of a Roman triumph. In some instances Time displays
a fondness and a caprice in which the gloomiest tyranny is seen
occasionally to indulge. The unlettered Arab cherishes the memory of his
line. He traces it unerringly to a remoter origin than could be claimed
or identified by the most ancient princes of Europe.
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