in matters of Literature, a species of history, which relates events in the chronological order wherein they happened. They differ from perfect history in this, that annals are but a bare relation of what passes every year, as a journal is of what passes every day; whereas history relates not only the transactions themselves, but also the causes, motives, and springs of actions. Annals require nothing but brevity; history demands ornament.—Cicero informs us of the origin of annals. To preserve the memory of events, the Pontifex Maximus, says he, wrote what passed each year, and exposed it on tables in his own house, wherever one was at liberty to read: this they called annales.