MR. RAMBLER.
SIR,
You have formerly observed that curiosity often terminates in barren
knowledge, and that the mind is prompted to study and inquiry rather by
the uneasiness of ignorance, than the hope of profit. Nothing can be of
less importance to any present interest, than the fortune of those who
have been long lost in the grave, and from whom nothing now can be hoped
or feared. Yet, to rouse the zeal of a true antiquary, little more is
necessary than to mention a name which mankind have conspired to forget;
he will make his way to remote scenes of action through obscurity and
contradiction, as Tully sought amidst bushes and brambles the tomb of
Archimedes.
It is not easy to discover how it concerns him that gathers the produce,
or receives the rent of an estate, to know through what families the
land has passed, who is registered in the Conqueror's survey as its
possessor, how often it has been forfeited by treason, or how often sold
by prodigality. The power or wealth of the present inhabitants of a
country cannot be much increased by an inquiry after the names of those
barbarians, who destroyed one another twenty centuries ago, in contests
for the shelter of woods, or convenience of pasturage.
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