ation
of the priests being conducted in the diocesan seminaries. The Faculties
of Sciences and of Letters did not train the professors for secondary
education, the engineers, and so on, needed by society, because they
were here met by the triumphant competition of "special schools"
previously instituted: the Ecole normale, the Ecole polytechnique. The
Faculties of Catholic Theology, of Sciences, and of Letters were
therefore obliged to justify their existence by other modes of activity.
In particular, the professors of history in the Faculties of Letters
could not undertake the instruction of the young men who were destined
to teach history in the _lycees_. Deprived of these special pupils, they
found themselves in a situation analogous to that of those charged with
historical instruction at the College de France. They too were not, as a
rule, technical experts. For half a century they carried on the work of
higher popularisation in lectures delivered to large audiences of
leisured persons (since much abused), who were attracted by the force,
the elegance, and the pleasing style of their diction.

The function of training the future teachers for secondary education was
reserved for the Ecole normale superieure. Now at this epoch it was an
admitted principle that to be a good secondary teacher it is necessary
for a man to know, and sufficient to know perfectly, the subject he is
charged to teach. The one is certainly necessary, but the other is not
sufficient: knowledge of a different, of a higher, order is no less
indispensable than the regular "scholastic" equipment. At the Ecole
there was never any question of such higher knowledge, but, in
accordance with the prevailing theory, preparation was made for
secondary teaching simply by imparting it. However, as the Ecole normale
has always been excellently recruited, the system in vogue has not
prevented it from numbering among its former pupils men of the first
order, not only as professors, thinkers, or writers, but even as
critical scholars. But it must be recognised that they made their way
for themselves, in spite of the system, not thanks to it, after, not
during, their pupilage, and principally when they had the advantage,
during a stay at the French School at Athens, of the wholesome contact
with documents which they had not enjoyed at the Rue d'Ulm. "Does it not
seem strange," it has been said, "that so many generations of professors
should have been turned out b