ABSTRACT
Historiography is a term to which it is impossible to assign a content that will apply equally to all periods. Like most conceptions outside the narrow range of mathematical science, it depends, to a large degree, on the general intellectual environment to which it stands related, and of which it is, in some sense, a specialized product. To the student of historiography nothing is more instructive than to observe the degree to which history in the nineteenth century has been affected by subjective and pragmatic considerations. In all probability there has never been a period when history was so much in demand among the reading public in all European countries as the latter part of the eighteenth century. It seems feasible to assert that one of the important ingredients in the popularity of history in the eighteenth century is the fact that it was a species of literature, a humane study, an art rather than a science.
