"The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cock-crow. This is the most-familiar and certain fact about life, but it has never ceased to entrance me, and to throw a halo of poetry round the dustiest record that Dry as Dust can bring to light."
~GMTrevelyan
