1G4

DEATH S DOINGS.

The labours of the Antiquary serve to tracethings up to their source,—to throw light upon theold for the improvement of the new,—to show theadvance in some, and the failure of others towardsthat perfection, which is the ultimate aim of art,science, and literature.

There is, besides what belongs to the useful andimportant in antiquarian researches, an innocentpleasure and a harmless gratification, that per-

Arts, which are much of the brightness, and give much of thehappiness, of distinguished civilization:—if it may not seemtoo much arguing in a circle, to say that Poetry is useful, byenlarging its own powers.— What is this Love of Antiquity ?Not the coldly-curious taste, sometimes seen, of research intoparts of knowledge from most minds hid by rareness, or sepa-rated by want of evident, common, compelling interest,—but afeeling placed half in imagination, half in our social nature, bywhich we accept our union of brotherhood with our kind, takeconcern in them, most distantly divided from us by time, andconfess a title to affect us, in their memory, by whatevershapes of matter it may be borne.

" Men, for the most part, love the Present. The joy giventhem in the consciousness of their living being, is of the hour,the moment: which it fills with animating, sparkling, fires.But the urn of the Past they can believe to contain only ex-tinct and cold ashes,—misjudging,—nor aware how'even inour ashes live their wonted fires.' "