ified its authenticity, if its
authenticity has not been already settled beyond a doubt. Now in order
to verify the authenticity or ascertain the origin of a document two
things are required--reasoning power and knowledge. In other words, it
is necessary to reason from certain positive data which represent the
condensed results of previous research, which cannot be improvised, and
must, therefore, be learnt. To distinguish a genuine from a spurious
charter would, in fact, be often an impossible task for the best trained
logician, if he were unacquainted with the practice of such and such a
chancery, at such and such a date, or with the features common to all
the admittedly genuine charters of a particular class. He would be
obliged to do what the first scholars did--ascertain for himself, by the
comparison of a great number of similar documents, what features
distinguish the admittedly genuine documents from the others, before
allowing himself to pronounce judgment in any special instance. Will not
his task be enormously simplified if there is in existence a body of
doctrine, a treasury of accumulated observations, a system of results
obtained by workers who have already made, repeated, and checked the
minute comparisons he would otherwise have been obliged to make for
himself? This body of doctrines, observations, and results, calculated
to assist the criticism of diplomas and charters, does exist; it is
called Diplomatic. We shall, therefore, assign to Diplomatic, along with
Epigraphy, Palaeography, and Philology, the character of a subject
auxiliary to historical research.

Epigraphy and Palaeography, Philology, and Diplomatic with its adjuncts
(technical Chronology and Sphragistic) are not the only subjects of
study which subserve historical research. It would be extremely
injudicious to undertake to deal critically with literary documents on
which no critical work has as yet been done without making oneself
familiar with the results obtained by those who have already dealt
critically with documents of the same class: the sum of these results
forms a department to itself, which has a name--the History of
Literature.[47] The critical treatment of illustrative documents, such
as the productions of architecture, sculpture, and painting, objects of
all kinds (arms, dress, utensils, coins, medals, armorial bearings, and
so forth), presupposes a thorough acquaintance with the rules and
observations which constitute Archae