Labours of the Antiquary

There is an exquisite pleasure in reviving the memory of past days from the dust scattered over it by time, of which none but those engaged in the pursuit can have an idea of.

Imagination loves to look back upon former ages, and fill up the remaining outline, which seems so dull to the incurious, with colors more vivid even than they ever possessed in reality.

So memory in old age throws a fairy gleam over the enjoyments of youth, more enchanting than the light in which they appeared when present.

These are the feelings which actuate the labours of the antiquary of true taste ; reviving the features of the dead, and the manners and acts of ages that are gone.

Found in Record of the Bartholomew family
By George Wells Bartholomew · 1885

 

The Authors of our Existence

"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. 

We seem to have lived in the persons of our forefathers; it is the labor and reward of vanity to extend the term of this ideal longevity. 

Our imagination is always active to enlarge the narrow circle in which nature has confined us. 

We fill up the silent vacancy that precedes our birth by associating ourselves to the authors of our existence." 

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) as quoted in The family of Early, which settled upon the eastern shore of Virginia and its connection with other families (1920)