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OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 15 
of these was rescued from a butcher in Madrid just as 
he was tearing a sheet from it to wrap a sirloin of 
beef which a servant-girl had purchased. It has always 
been a matter of regret that we have had no minutes 
of the proceedings of the Congress which was assem- 
bled in New York in 1765 for considering the Stamp 
Act, but I am told that such minutes have lately been 
discovered in a chest of old papers, soaked and mouldy, 
under a leaky roof in a Maryland attic. But this is 
nothing to the Rip van Winkle slumber of Aristotle’s 
essay on the Constitution of Athens, from which Euro- 
pean scholars used to quote as late as the sixth century 
after Christ, but of which nothing has been seen since 
the ninth century until the other day a copy was found 
in an Egyptian tomb. On one side of the sheets of 
papyrus is an account of receipts and expenditures 
kept by the steward or bailiff of a gentleman’s private 
estate in the years 78 and 79 after Christ; on the 
other side is the long-lost essay of Aristotle, a most 
valuable contribution to Greek history, which now, 
since its publication in 1891, may be read like any 
other Greek book. From other Egyptian tombs have 
been recovered a part of one of the lost tragedies of 
Euripides, interesting passages from Athenian orators, 
and the account of the Crucifixion from the Greek 
gospel attributed by the early Fathers to St. Peter, — 
an intensely interesting narrative, which was published 
in London in 1894. 
In recalling such illustrations, one is in danger of 
straying from one’s main thesis, and so I will only add 
that, with the progress of the arts, there are found 
various new ways of making original materials ac- 
cessible. Here photography has done wonders. Old 
