Since those quaintly simple and emphatic statements which, under the
name of Froissart's Chronicles, seem to perpetuate the instinctive
notion of History, as an honest and earnest, but unadorned and
unelaborate narrative of military and political facts,--not only has
there been a continual refinement of style and enlargement of scope and
art, but a greater complexity and subdivision in the historian's labors.
Abstract political ideas, purely intellectual phenomena, have found
their annalists, as well as executive enterprise; events have been
analyzed, as well as described,--characters discussed, as well as
pictured,--the elements of society laid bare with as much zeal and
scrutiny as its development has been traced and delineated. European
historical students read anew the records of the past by the light
of philosophy; more subtile divisions than the geographer indicates
organize the record; events are narrated with reference to a dominant
idea; governments are chronicled through their ultimate results, and
not exclusively with regard to their locality; rulers are considered
in groups; a faith is made the nucleus of an historical development,
instead of a nation. Thus, we have Ranke's "Popes" and D'Aubigne's
"Reformation," Hallam's "Middle Ages" and "English Constitution"; De
Quincey treats of "The Caesars"; Vico demonstrates that History is a
science with positive laws; Gervinus illustrates it as a development of
certain inevitably progressive ideas; Niebuhr interprets it by fresh
tests and ordeals; Dr.
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