W53 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, BY JAMES W. BOUTON, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. INDIANA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 2.22-60 PREFACE. THE historian Gibbon has remarked that "a lively desire of knowing and recording our ancestors so generally prevails, that it must depend on the influence of some common principle in the minds of men." To this we are probably to refer the inquisitiveness that leads individuals to the investigation of the relics of bygone periods, whether as naturalists, philologists, or historical inquirers. The Book of Genesis has been eagerly scrutinized as containing a divinely-inspired record of the Origin of Mankind; and ancient histories are carefully turned over in quest of clews in the same direction. The studies of language and etymology are interesting as affording traces of the ancestry of our modern peoples. The same plea holds good in regard to religious inquiry. Language and worship are crystallized history. Unbecoming alike are the supercilious disdain and the sanctimonious contempt flung by pretentious men upon ancient ideas and usages. The ignorant cock that scorned the jewel because he knew not how to ascertain its value, and preferred the corn which he could scratch out from the dunghill, is an apt likeness of such persons. It is certainly proper to pay due regard to utility and present advantage. But the disposition to confine the attention to that limit is as imbruting and sensual as anything in fetishworship or the orgies of the old-time divinities. The generous mind will cast aside such a temper, and, in obedience to its own instincts, hasten to broader fields of exploration, whether in natural science, metaphysical inquiry, or archæological investigation. Labor which makes a person better acquainted with himself or his fellow-men is not wasted. In former periods it was the practice to check exuberant |