The Faculties of Letters formed part of a system established by the Napoleonic legislator. This legislator, in creating the Faculties, by no means entertained the design of encouraging scientific research. He had no great love for science. The Faculties of Law, of Medicine, and so on, were intended by him to be professional schools supplying society with the lawyers, physicians, and so on, which it needs. But three of the five Faculties were unable, from the beginning, to perform the part allotted them, while the other two, Law and Medicine, successfully performed theirs. The Faculties of Catholic Theology did not train the priests needed by society, because the State consented to the education 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 École normale, the École 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 _lycées_. Deprived of these special pupils, they found themselves in a situation analogous to that of those charged with historical instruction at the Collège 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.