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One short distribution and circumscription of historical ages will soon place matters in a more hopeful aspect. Fabulous history ceases, and authentic history commences, just three-quarters of a millennium before Jesus Christ; that is, just 750 years. Let us call this space of time, viz., the whole interval from the year 750 B.C. up to the Incarnation of Christ, the first chamber of history. I do not mean that precisely 750 years before our Saviour’s birth, fabulous and mythological history started like some guilty thing at the sound of a cock-crowing, and vanished as with the sound of harpies’ wings. It vanished as the natural darkness of night vanishes. A stealthy twilight first began to divide and give shape to the formless shadows: what previously had been one blank mass of darkness began to break into separate forms: outlines became perceptible, groups of figures started forward into relief; chaos began to shape and organize its gloomy masses. Next, and by degrees, came on the earliest dawn. This ripened imperceptibly into a rosy aurora that gave notice of some mightier power approaching. And at length, but not until the age of Cyrus, five centuries and a half before Christ, precisely one century later, the golden daylight of authentic history sprang above the horizon and was finally established. Since that time, whatever want of light we may have to lament is due to the loss of records, not to their original absence; due to the victorious destructions of time, not[1] to the error of the human mind confounding the provinces of Fable and of History.

Let the first chamber of history therefore be that which stretches from the year 750 B.C. to the era of His Incarnation. I say 750 for the present, because it would be quite idle, in dealing with intervals of time so vast, to take notice of any little excess or defect by which the actual period differed from the ideal; strictly speaking, the period of authentic history commences sixteen or seventeen years earlier. But for the present let us say in round numbers that this period commenced 750 years B.C. And let the first chamber of history be of that duration.

B. Next let us take an equal space after Christ. This will be the second chamber of history. Starting from the birth of our Saviour, it will terminate in the middle of the eighth century, or in the early years of Charlemagne. These surely are most remarkable eras.

C. Then passing for the present without explanation to the year 1100 for the first Crusade, let us there fix one foot of our ‘golden compasses,’ and with the other mark off an equal period of 750 years. This carries us up nearly to the reign of George III, of England. And this will be the third great chamber of history.

D. Fourthly, there will now remain a period just equal to one-half of such a chamber, viz.: 350 years between Charlemagne’s cradle and the first Crusade, the terminal era of the second chamber and the inaugural era of the third. This we will call the ante-chamber of No. 3.

Now, upon reviewing these chambers and antechambers, the first important remark for the student is, that the second chamber is nearly empty of all incidents. Take away the migrations and invasions of the several Northern nations who overran the Western Empire, broke it up, and laid the foundations of the great nations of Christendom–England, France, Spain–and take away the rise of Mahommedanism, and there would remain scarcely anything memorable.

From all this we draw the following inference: that memory is, in certain cases, connected with great effort, in others, with no effort at all. Of one class we may say, that the facts absolutely deposit themselves in the memory; they settle in our memories as a sediment or deposition from a liquor settles in a glass; of another we may say that the facts cannot maintain their place in the memory without continued exertion, and with something like violence to natural tendencies. Now, beyond all other facts, the facts of dates are the most severely of this latter class. Oftentimes the very actions or sufferings of a man, empire, army, are hard to be remembered because they are non-significant, non-characteristic: they belong by no more natural or intellectual right to that man, empire, army, than to any other man, empire, army. We remember, for instance, the simple diplomacy of Greece, when she summoned all States to the grand duty of exterminating the barbarian from her limits, and throwing back the tides of barbarism within its natural limits; for this appealed to what was noblest in human nature. We forget the elaborate intrigues which preceded the Peloponnesian war, for these appealed only to vulgar and ordinary motives of self-aggrandisement. We remember the trumpet voice which summoned Christendom to deliver Christ’s sepulchre from Pagan insults, for that was the great romance of religious sentiment. But we forget the treaties by which this or that Crusading king delivered his army from Mahometan victors, because these proceeded on the common principles of fear and self-interest; principles having no peculiar relation to those from which the Crusades had arisen.