It has been a usual practice to rank those who, by such critical inquiries, ascertain the truth regarding minute historical propositions, in the category of "harmless drudges." But perhaps the character has been applied to the really useful workers in this field, as inaptly as it was appropriated by Dr. Johnson to the race of Lexicographers, in a moment of bitter cynicism. Antiquarianism, archæology, palæology, or whatever name it may receive, is a field in which there are many paltry workers; and these are sometimes, from adventitious circumstances, conspicuous enough to give a tone in popular estimation to the science. Dates are but one, and perhaps an inferior branch, of the subject; yet the labours of Petau, of Antine Durand and Clemencet the authors of the "Art de vérifier les dates," of Newton, Hailes, and Nicolas, would be enough to vindicate the dignity of this species of inquiry. It is, indeed, an essential one to history; and where it has been vaguely or unscientifically applied, the foundations of historical speculation are rotten. The prevalent failing of antiquaries is the inability to distinguish the important from the trifling; to perceive that the labour which might be necessary to fix the era of the restoration of the study of the civil law in Europe, would be ill bestowed on an inquiry into the foundation of some inconsiderable rectorship, or the birth of some undistinguished landed proprietor. But there is perhaps as much worthless historical Speculation as trifling Antiquarianism extant in literature. But it does not follow in either case, from the defects of the injudicious, that the able and accomplished followers of the subject were ill employed. A late and signal instance may be adduced of the intimate connexion of the speculative and the minute departments of history. Dr. Allen, in his "Inquiry into the rise and progress of the royal prerogative," maintaining that the older kings of England did not perform public acts until they had taken the coronation oath of fidelity to the people, found that there was just one exception, in the case of Richard II. which disconcerted his theory. It was subsequently shown by Sir Harris Nicolas, in his "Chronology of History," that in "Rymer's Fœdera," and other public documents, the regnal years of that reign had been by mistake antedated a year.