Childhood is itself Antiquity--to
every man his only Antiquity. The recollection of childhood cannot make
Abraham old again in the mind of a man of thirty-five; but the beginning
of every life is older than Abraham. _There_ is the abyss of time. Let
a man turn to his own childhood--no further--if he would renew his sense
of remoteness, and of the mystery of change.

For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it rushes;
but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an apprehension
not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an illusive
apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history--a real apprehension
when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If there is no
historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the renewed and
unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind.

And it is of this--merely of this--that "ancient" history seems to
partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman history, and that is why
it seems long ago. Suppose the man of thirty-five heard, at that present
age, for the first time of Romulus. Why, Romulus would be nowhere. But
he built his wall, as a matter of fact, when every one was seven years
old. It is by good fortune that "ancient" history is taught in the only
ancient days. So, for a time, the world is magical.

Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by learning
something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges the
sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great illusion is over
and history is re-measured, and all fancy and flight caught back and
chastised, the enlarged sense remains enlarged. The man remains capable
of great spaces of time. He will not find them in Egypt, it is true, but
he finds them within, he contains them, he is aware of them. History has
fallen together, but childhood surrounds and encompasses history,
stretches beyond and passes on the road to eternity.

He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years that
are the treasury of preceptions--the first. The great disillusion shall
never shorten those years, nor set nearer together the days that made
them. "Far apart," I have said, and that "far apart" is wonderful. The
past of childhood is not single, is not motionless, nor fixed in one
point; it has summits a world away one from the other. Year from year
differs as the antiquity of Mexico from the antiquity of Chaldea. And
the man of thirty-five knows