nowledge calculated to aid in the discovery, the understanding, and
the criticism of documents. The exact nature of this knowledge varies
from case to case according as the student specialises in one or another
part of universal history. The technical apprenticeship is relatively
short and easy for those who occupy themselves with modern or
contemporary history, long and laborious for those who occupy themselves
with ancient and mediaeval history.

This reform of the historian's technical apprenticeship which consists
in substituting the acquisition of positive knowledge, truly auxiliary
to historical research, for the study of the "great models," literary
and philosophical, is of quite recent date. In France, for the greater
part of the present century, students of history received none but a
literary education, after Daunou's pattern. Almost all of them were
contented with such a preparation, and did not look beyond it; some few
perceived and regretted, when it was too late for a remedy, the
insufficiency of their early training; with a few illustrious
exceptions, the best of them never rose to be more than distinguished
men of letters, incapable of scientific work. There was at that time no
organisation for teaching the "auxiliary sciences" and the technique of
research except in the case of French mediaeval history, and that in a
special school, the Ecole des chartes. This simple fact, moreover,
secured for this school during a period of fifty years a marked
superiority over all the other French (or even foreign) institutions of
higher education; excellent workers were there trained who contributed
many new results, while elsewhere people were idly discussing
problems.[50] To-day it is still at the Ecole des chartes that the
mediaevalist has the opportunity of going through his technical
apprenticeship in the best and most complete manner, thanks to the
combined and progressive three-years courses of Romance philology,
palaeography, archaeology, historiography, and mediaeval law. But the
"auxiliary sciences" are now taught everywhere more or less adequately;
they have been introduced into the university curricula. On the other
hand, students' handbooks of epigraphy, palaeography, diplomatic, and so
forth, have multiplied during the last twenty-five years. Twenty-five
years ago it would have been vain to look for a good book which should
supply the want of oral instruction on these subjects; since the
establishment o