n that the
founders of the _Revue Critique d'histoire et de litterature_ undertook
to combat a state of things which they lightly deemed demoralising.
With this object they administered public chastisement to those scholars
who showed lack of conscience or method, in a manner calculated to
disgust them with erudition for ever. They performed sundry notable
executions, not for the pleasure of it, but with the firm resolve to
establish a censorship and a wholesome dread of justice, in the domain
of historical study. Bad workers henceforth received no quarter, and
though the _Revue_ did not exert any great influence on the public at
large, its police-operations covered a wide enough radius to impress
most of those concerned with the necessity of sincerity and respect for
method. During the last twenty-five years the impulse thus given has
spread beyond all expectation.

It is now a matter of great difficulty to impose on the world of
scholars, in matters connected with their studies, or at least to keep
up the deception for any length of time. In the case of the historical
sciences, as well as the sciences proper, it is now too late to found a
new error or to discredit an old truth. It may be a few months, possibly
a few years, before a bungled experiment in chemistry or a scamped
edition is recognised as such; but inexact results, though temporarily
accepted under reserve, are always sooner or later, and generally very
soon, discovered, denounced, and eliminated. The theory of the
operations of external criticism is now so well established, the number
of specialists thoroughly versed in them is now so great in every
country, that, with rare exceptions, descriptive catalogues of
documents, editions, _regesta_, monographs, are scrutinised, dissected,
and judged as soon as they appear. It is well to be warned. It will for
the future be the height of imprudence to risk publishing a work of
erudition without having first done everything possible to make it
unassailable; otherwise it will immediately, or after brief delay, be
attacked and demolished. Not knowing this, certain well-meaning persons
still show themselves, from time to time, simple enough to enter the
lists of critical scholarship insufficiently prepared; they are filled
with a desire to be useful, and are apparently convinced that here, as
in politics and elsewhere, it is possible to work by extemporised and
approximate methods without any "special knowledge." The