science in France, which up to that time had
remained unshaken, even by the ingenious addition of 1868.

III. The first care of the Faculties was to provide themselves with
students. This was not, to be sure, the main difficulty, for the Ecole
normale superieurs (in which twenty pupils are admitted every year,
chosen from among hundreds of candidates) was no longer sufficient for
the recruiting of the now numerous body of professors engaged in
secondary education. Many young men who had been candidates (along with
the pupils of the Ecole normale superieure) for the degrees which give
access to the scholastic profession, were thrown on their own resources.
Here was an assured supply of students. At the same time the military
laws, by attaching much-prized immunities to the title of _licencie es
lettres_, were calculated to attract to the Faculties, if they prepared
students for the licentiate, a large and very interesting class of young
men. Lastly, the foreigners (so numerous at the Ecole des hautes
etudes), who come to France to complete their scientific education, and
who up to that time were surprised to have no opportunity of profiting
by the Faculties, were sure to go to them as soon as they found there
something analogous to what they had been accustomed to find in the
German universities, and the kind of instruction they wanted.

Before students in any great number could be taught the way to the
Faculties, great efforts were necessary and several years passed; but it
was after the Faculties obtained the students they desired that the real
problems presented themselves for solution.

The great majority of the students in the Faculties of Letters have been
originally candidates for degrees, for the licentiate, and for
_agregation_, who entered with the avowed intention of "preparing" for
the licentiate and for _agregation_. The Faculties have not been able to
escape the obligation of helping them in this "preparation." But, twenty
years ago, examinations were still conceived in accordance with ancient
formulae. The licentiate was an attestation of advanced secondary study,
a kind of "higher baccalaureate"; for the _agregation_ in the classes of
history and geography (which became the real _licentia docendi_), the
candidates were required to show that they "had a very good knowledge of
the subjects they would be charged to teach." Henceforth there was a
danger lest the teaching of the Faculties, which must, like