408 THE LOST BOOKS. 



ascending scale. And, moreover, unless he understands 

 how Nature, like the Sibyl, destroys her own books, 

 he will never cease to wonder at the absence of miss- 

 ing links. For it is not one missing link, but millions, 

 that we require. It would however be just as rea- 

 sonable to expect to 6nd every book that ever was 

 written ; every clay-tablet that ever was baked in the 

 printing ovens of Chaldsea ; every rock that was ever 

 inscribed ; every obelisk that was ever engraved ; every 

 temple wall that was ever painted with hieroglyphics, 

 as to expect to find every fossil of importance. Where 

 are the missing links in literature, and where are the 

 primeval forms ? Where are the ancient Sanscrit 

 hymns that were written without ink on palm leaves 

 with an iron pen ? Where are the thousands of 

 Hebrew bibles that were written before the tenth cen- 

 tury,- A. D. ? Where are the lost books of the Romans 

 and the Greeks ? We know that many manuscripts 

 have been consumed in great fires ; the fire of Alex- 

 andria in the time of Julius Caesar, which no doubt 

 destroyed papyri that could never be replaced ; the 

 fire in the time of Oumar ; the fires lighted by Popes 

 and reverend Fathers of the Church ; and the fire of 

 Constantinople during the Crusades, which robbed us 

 for ever of Arrian's history of the successors of Alex- 

 ander ; Ctesias' history of Persia, and his description 

 of India ; several books of Diodorus, Agatharcides, 

 and Polybius ; twenty orations of Demosthenes, and 

 the Odes of Sappho. But the material of books, 

 whether paper or parchment, bark, clay, or stone, is 

 always of a perishable nature, and, under ordinary 

 circumstances, is destroyed sooner or later by the 

 action of the atmosphere. Were it not that books 

 can be copied, what would remain to us of the litera- 



