history or from chronology, reveals records of phenomena which are cabilistic and useless. On the ground therefore, of utility alone, the two sciences are well and appropriately yoked together, as the examples mentioned prove.
117. The position of chronology as at the Middle Ages has been tersely put by the learned compilers of Le Grand Dictionnairé Universel. 'Chronology,'[1] they declare, 'as a science was till then (Scaliger's time, 16th century,) unknown. People wrote ancient history without any criterion, copying the dates, as everything else, from the authorities immediately under their notice, without so much as troubling themselves to reconcile the differences in these records, or indicating principles upon which the counting of years should be placed.' And who can tell what erroneous conclusions, founded upon errors in dates, have arisen and flourished?
118. It is noteworthy that the 'Father of History' as a title arose from the researches of Herodotus, who flourished in the fifth century B.C. In other words, his having existed would be as substantial to Julius Cæsar as the historic verity of the Julian calendar was to Dionysius the Little, when he invented the Christian era. Herodotus[2] opens his treatise in a manner worthy of all commendation, 'This is the publication,' the rubric runs, 'of the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, in order that the actions of men may not be effaced by time.' But when he slips into chronology, one is amazed to find that he approves of the data of Solon, who had 'put the terms of man's life at 70 years; these 70 years then gave 25,200 days, without
