mes
Echo has forgotten to even whisper through "the corridors of Time."

When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were
the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious
Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with
writing--as proved by their inscriptions--than the Phoenicians, then
only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data
and dogmas. Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no
appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in
the Past?"

"Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its
offshoots .... can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?"
More easily than was many another civilization. Europe has neither the
titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments,
to preserve the records of its "existing arts and languages." Its
civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively
indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences.
What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even
approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the
geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms? Is it its
ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile
furniture: or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and
micrographs? While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and
cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed
by a child breaking them to atoms. When we know of the destruction of
the "Seven World's Wonders," of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the
Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly
crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the
hand of Time--lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm--the
question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern
reasoning. Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few
days; your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand
civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are
made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable? And
why should European civilization escape the common lot? It is from the
lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in
nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know
nothing of the ar