studied it with diligence and curiosity, while scholars,
professors, authors and historians in Italy, Spain, France,
England, Holland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have applied their
minds to it with an enthusiasm, which has been like a kind of
worship. Yet, after the most minute investigation, it cannot be
discovered that a single reference was made to the Annals by any
person from the time when Tacitus lived until shortly before the
day when Vindelinus of Spire first ushered the last six books to
the admiring world from the mediaeval Athens. When it appeared it
was at once pronounced to be the brightest gem among histories;
its author was greeted as a most wonderful man,--the "unique
historian", for so went the phrase--"inter historicos unicus."

Now, are we to be asked quietly to believe that there never lived
from the first quarter of the second century till after the second
quarter of the fifteenth, a single individual possessed of
sufficient capacity to discern such eminent and obvious excellence
as is contained in the Annals? Are we to believe that that could
have been so? in a slowly revolving cycle of 1,000 years and more?
ay, upwards of 1,300! If that really was the case, it is enough to
strike us dumb with stupor in contemplating such a miraculous
instance of perpetuated inanity,--among the lettered, too!--the
learned! the studious! the critical! If that was not the case,
what a long neglect! Anyhow, the silence is inexplicable. It
indicates one of two things,--duncelike stupidity or studious
contempt. Both these surmises must be dismissed,--the first as too
absurd, the second as too improbable. There can arise a third
conjecture--Taste for intellectual achievements, and appreciation
of literary merit, had vanished for awhile from the earth, to
return after an absence of forty generations of mankind. Again,