Page:The study of history in Holland and Belgium (IA studyofhistoryin00frrich).pdf/23

 the councils of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in which sat the rich patricians who had great interests in the traffic in French wines. M. Fruin drew a strikingly clear picture of the confused strife of opposing interests in Holland, France and England, using only trustworthy documents, many of which are, I think, known to him alone, and using them at first hand.

Listening to these admirable lectures I could not help feeling regret at the exaggerated diffdence which causes M. Fruin to resist all the entreaties of his friends and former pupils that he should publish his course. So much research, such an acquaintance with the documents of the time and with all the literature on the subject, added to an extraordinary faculty of discovering the truth, and stating it without partiality and with lofty simplicity, all these rare qualifications of the historian are not.given to a man without imposinT upon him the duty of using them to construct a great scientific edifice, especially when all the stones are ready. Since the fine book which established his reputation and brought him to the chair at Leyden (Tien jaren uit den tachtig-jarigen vorlog, 1588–1598), M. Fruin has produced only detached monographs, some of which are masterpieces, but which certainly do not give his full measure; for still more than his writings, does his oral teaching make one feel the master.

I was not able to attend the free course which M. Fruin has given, if I am not mistaken, every two years upon the history of national institutions. The first year he takes up the political machinery of the Netherlands in the Middle Ages and up to the sixteenth century; the third year that of the brilliant Republic of the seventeenth century; the fifth year that of the eighteenth century and to the present time. Here, too, he must have all the materials gathered for a capital work which would fill a real gap in the historical literature of Holland.

Prof. P. L. Muller occupies the so-called chair of general history, which, according to the law, includes also political geography. He is a pupil of M. Fruin, and M. Blok, who