Publisher's Synopsis
We know more of the early days of the Pyramids or of ancient Babylon than we do of our own. The Stone age, the dragons of the prime, are not more remote from us than is our earliest childhood. It is not so long ago for any of us; and yet, our memories of it are but veiled spectres wandering in the mazes of some foregone existence. Are we really trailing clouds of glory from afar? Or are our 'forgettings' of the outer Eden only? Or, setting poetry aside, are they perhaps the quickening germs of all past heredity-an epitome of our race and its descent? At any rate then, if ever, our lives are such stuff as dreams are made of. There is no connected story of events, thoughts, acts, or feelings. We try in vain to re-collect; but the secrets of the grave are not more inviolable, -for the beginnings, like the endings, of life are lost in darkness.
