The carvings on the cabin have lost lustre (faded) long before , the slates on the road have been outworn to their slipperiness by to-and-fros of generations.
Every historian — sometimes unconsciously, but always inevitably — must have put to himself the question: How long could such-or-such an outworn system last?
上的雕花早已泛旧，青
板也被几代人的脚磨
。
惫不堪，筋
。
——有时是不自觉地， 但总是不可避免地——
向自己提出这样一个问题：这样或那样的过时系统能持续多久？
