Page:The study of history in Holland and Belgium (IA studyofhistoryin00frrich).pdf/17

 institute a doctorate in history, although the creation of this degree was unanimously demanded by all the universities. It is, therefore, not in Belgium alone that the government manages to make itself detestable in matters of higher education.

The result has been fatal to history in the Dutch universities. While the division in the doctorate gave a new impetus to study of literature and ancient and modern philology, history, cinderella-like, has led for the last ten years a miserable existence. She has no students of her own, as have the other sciences of the Faculty of Arts. She is only the servant of the others. The students for the degree in classical literature attend the courses in history and Greek and Roman antiquities; those for the degree in Germanic literature pursue the course in national and universal history; but all, especially those in the latter category, are overloaded with other courses more important for them and cannot devote themselves seriously to history. How could one wish that a student should take time to dip into history and be initiated in scientific method by history professors when he is plunged into the comparative grammar of Indo-Germanic languages, mediæval Netherlandish, Sanscrit, Gothic or Anglo-Saxon or Middle High German, as the case may be?.

There is thus in Holland no special preparation, I will not say for historians, but even for future professors of history and geography in the gymnasiums and hoogere burgerscholen which correspond to the two sections of our Belgian athenæums. Such professors are recruited, as best may be, from the doctors or fellows in classical philology or Germanic literature. Indeed, have they not taken some courses in history that have, from time to time, interrupted their deep literary and philological studies? Sometimes, also, they are recruited from among