Among this week's new Project Gutenberg releases is a document nobody would shelve under literature: Adresse à l'Assemblée nationale pour les maîtres de poste du royaume, actuellemens présens à Paris — an address to the French National Assembly from the kingdom's postmasters, "currently present in Paris." It is paperwork. It is also now free to anyone with a browser, sitting on the same shelf as the epics.
In the same week, the Smithsonian reports from the opposite end of the spectrum: in 1735, Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach commissioned a cottage called Merlin's Cave, linking the German House of Hanover to Britain's ancient heritage and to its future success. One country held together by relay stations and signatures; another by a story about a king. Both are load-bearing, and this week's reading is full of the difference between them.
Caroline's cave was a public-relations instrument with a thatched roof: King Arthur enlisted, as the Smithsonian puts it, to promote her dynasty's claim to the throne.