682 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



coins of Greece and Rome, coins of Arabia, coins of Cyrenaica, coins from 

 Colophon, Tyre, Sidon, — Nineveh's Winged Bulls. 



I knew a police inspector who saved and docketed the cigar ashes of royal 

 personages, and I once heard of a distinguished chiropodist who saved their nail 

 parings. Mr. Pierpont Morgan owns the largest collection of watches in the 

 world, and another American is the proud possessor of the only complete collection 

 of" Crusoes" in existence : i.e. the editions of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. 



But not only is the past retrieved in fragments ; in some museums and exhibi- 

 tions, and to a certain extent in historical plays, it is actually reconstructed : in 

 London is displayed the interior of an apothecary's shop in the 17th century, with 

 its crocodile and bunches of herbs, or the shop of a barber-surgeon, or a recon- 

 struction of the laboratory used by Liebig, or the Bromley Room, or Shakespeare's 

 Globe Theatre in exact facsimile, or Solomon's Temple, while, for the purposes of 

 illustration, Madame Tussaud's must for the moment be classed with the Pantheon. 

 The cinema is going to keep alive the persons and events of the present genera- 

 tion within the most sluggish imaginations of the next — for those who perhaps won't 

 read history or visit museums. This need not mean the gradual atrophy of the 

 imagination, as some Solomon Eagles portend — to discuss which would, however, 

 mean a digression. In any case, I fancy the most lively imagination would scarcely 

 ignore the opportunity if an authentic film were in existence of seeing Dr. Johnson, 

 let us say, walk down Fleet Street tapping each lamp-post with his stick or of 

 listening to a gramophone record of Rachel or Edmund Burke. 



Wherever one turns it is easy to see this thriving instinct of the human heart. 

 There are enthusiastic leagues for preserving woods, forests, footpaths, commons, 

 trees, plants, animals, ancient buildings, historical sites. In times to come, nearly 

 every private house in London will have historical connections and bear a 

 commemorative tablet. In anticipation of its extinction the hansom cab has 

 already been lodged behind the portals of its last depository. Everywhere 

 enthusiasts are expending a vast amount of energy in inducing people to stick to 

 the old — pedants will have you use the old idioms and spellings, the language must 

 be preserved in its original beauty ; no ancient rite or custom can be allowed to 

 lapse into desuetude but some cry of reprobation goes up to heaven in righteous 

 anger. There are anniversaries, centenaries, bicentenaries, tercentenaries — 

 glutinous tercentenaries ! 



Perhaps the most valuable instrument for perpetuation is the printing press. 

 No sooner is an event over, than it is reported in the daily press and the news- 

 paper preserved in the British Museum for all time. In future there will be no 

 historical lacunae. In virtue of our elaborate precautions it is improbable that 

 London will ever become a second Nineveh. Immediately a discovery is made or 

 a research brought to its conclusion the world is copiously informed. In the 

 present era of publicity, we need never fear that a man's secrets will die with him. 

 It were safe to prophesy that there will never be another Mrs. Stopes, for the good 

 reason that his contemporaries will never let a second Shakespeare slip through 

 their fingers, so to speak. The scholar's lament over the loss of the Diakosmos 

 of Demokritus, or the naturalist's over that of the observations of William Harvey 

 on the Generation of Insects — destroyed in the fortunes of war— will probably 

 never be heard again. Within the sacred rotunda of the British Museum Reading 

 Room may be perused the novels of Charles Garvice as well as the great Chinese 

 Encyclopaedia of the Emperor K'ang-hi in 5020 volumes. 



