conceptions of that time are still so well known and so near to us, so persistent in so many of our narratives and historical manuals, that it would be useless to describe them. When we direct our thoughts to the historical works of the eighteenth century, there immediately rises to the memory the general outline of a history in which priests deceive, courtiers intrigue, wise monarchs conceive and realize good institutions, combated and rendered almost vain through the malignity of others and the ignorance of the people, though they remain nevertheless a perpetual object of admiration for enlightened spirits. The image of chance or caprice appears with the evocation of that image, and mingling with the histories of these conflicts makes them yet more complicated, their results yet stranger and more astonishing. And what was the use, that is to say, the end, of historical narrative in the view of those historians? Here also the reading of a few lines of Voltaire affords the explanation: _Cet avantage consiste surtout dans la comparaison qu'un homme d'état, un citoyen, peut faire des lois et des mours étrangères avec celles de son pays: c'est ce qui excite l'émulation des nations modernes dans les arts, dans l''agriculture, dans le commerce. Les grandes fautes passées servent beaucoup à tout genre. On ne saurait trop remettre devant les yeux les crimes et les malheurs: on peut, quoi qu'on en dise, prévenir les uns et les autres._ This thought is repeated with many verbal variations and is to be found in nearly all the books of historiographie theory of the time, continuing the Italian mode of the Renaissance in an easier and more popular style. The words 'philosophy of history,' which had later so much success, at first served to describe the assistance obtainable from history in the shape of advice and useful precepts, when investigated without prejudice--that is to say, with the one 'assumption' of reason.