JOHN H. VINCENT, Chancellor, 613 Mooney Building, Buffalo, N. Y. All "personal" letters should be so marked on envelope. LEWIS MILLER, President. JESSE L. HURLBUT, Principal. Counselors: LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D.; BISHOP H. W. WARREN, D.D.; J. M. GIBSON, D.D.; W. C. WILKINSON, D.D.; EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D.D.; JAMES H. CARLISLE, LL.D. MISS K. F. KIMBALL, Executive Secretary. A. M. MARTIN, General Secretary.

REQUIRED READING FOR THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE. WOMEN AT THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES.*

H

AWTHORNE said of Oxford, when His tribute to Oxford is scarcely less he visited it many years ago, "It is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime, and more than one, to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily."

The Notes on the Required Reading in THE CHAUTAUQUAN C. L. S. C. Department of the magazine.

true of Cambridge, and it is amid these classic surroundings-the prerogative of their brothers for many generations—that the academic among English women have achieved so much in the past few years.

But we will put aside all allusions to these

will be found following those on the books of the course, in the historic university towns as the royal dwell

proper.

ing-place of king and queen, of court and teen at Cambridge constitute the university Parliament. We will ignore the hoary traditions which would fill their thousand-yearold streets with Briton, Saxon, Dane, and Norman.

It is the Oxford and Cambridge of today, each with its three thousand men and two hundred women students, which attract us, and the majestic old gray halls, in their ever-fresh setting of oak, ivy, and verdant lawn, are a fitting background for the vigorous young life which pulsates amid the time-honored associations of the past. Twenty-three colleges at Oxford and nine

At Cambridge, the women are housed at Girton and Newnham Colleges, the former opened in 1873, the latter in 1875, by Miss Clough, the sister of the poet. At Oxford, the four women's halls-Somerville, Lady Margaret, St. Hugh's, and St. Hilda's -are of even more recent origin, and have only been established since the formation. of the Association for the Education of Women in 1878, of which Mrs. Max Müller and Mrs. Humphry Ward were the worthy pioneers. These women's halls are, however, only residence halls. For unlike Cambridge, where most of the lectures are repeated to the women at Girton and Newnham, at Oxford the women attend the university lectures at the same time and place as the men, Magdalen College being the only exception, where courses are still closed to them.

At the lectures, which are given in the college dining or banquet-halls, the men wield pen, or more frequently the ancient quill, at long oaken "forms," extending the length of the hall, while the women sit at separate forms, or are elevated upon the platform at the dons' and fellows' tables. Time was, and that only a few years since, when conservative sentiment made it imperative that the women students should be accompanied to lectures by discreet and matronly chaperons (at sixpence per

hour), but the "lady students" increased always appear in like garb.

so rapidly that the demand for "sixpenny chaperons" far outran the supply, and the ignoble custom was wisely abandoned.

Apropos of chaperons, one of the Oxford dons tells with much relish the story of a request he received in the early days of the women students to lecture at one of the women's halls. As he was young, unmarried, and, therefore, unprotected, he replied he would be very pleased to come if he might bring his chaperon with him!

The women,

excluded still from the Bachelor's degree, are also excluded from its accompaniment -the cap and gown.

Even were this allowed, it would be a questionable dignity, since the undergraduate's gown is, in fact, "not all a " gown, but a short, sleeveless jacket, frequently bundled up in winter as a neck-muffler, and which to the glory of the undergraduate becomes very degenerate as to rents and scorches before it is exchanged for the dignified ermineIn its present curtailed

Other tutors tell with much amusement hooded B. A. robe.

of the days when they "coached," or lectured to, two or more fair students, while as many chaperons sat demurely by, intent on fancy work or something equally engross ing. But those days are past, and now the women visit the lecture room, laboratory, and library as freely as the men, with, perhaps, a certain coyness, or shyness, as to mutual recognitions which would hardly be observable in an American institution.

The lectures are given by the professors or tutors, as in Tom Brown's time, "in full fig of cap and gown," and the men must

condition, the undergraduate gown is a prerogative which the women can wisely forego, although the fascinating "trencher," or mortar-board, is an accompaniment which few would relinquish after once its charms were apparent.

To an American woman recently at either Oxford or Cambridge, the most absorbing question has been the much-mooted one of degrees. The royal road to a degree is by way of the examinations. The women take the same examinations as the men-but alas! as yet they do not take degrees.