Girton College.

Such an effort was made a year or two later in the proposition to establish at Girton, in the vicinity of Cambridge, a college for young women, "designed to hold in relation to girls' schools and home teaching a position analogous to that occupied by the universities toward the public schools for boys ;" and further, "to take such steps as from time to time may be thought most expedient and effectual, to obtain for the student of the college admission to the examinations for degrees of the University of Cambridge, and generally to place the college in connection with that university." It was further understood, and was a part of the plan, that the immediate instruction should be given in great part by professors, lecturers, and fellows of the university and its colleges, who should visit the new college daily for that purpose. The effort was promptly sustained, no difficulty having been found in securing the assistance of a sufficient number of the gentlemen of the university, and the college went into operation in a building hired for the purpose in October, 1869. Four years later it occupied a building of its own, which it has been necessary since twice successively to enlarge. From the opening of the college, up to June, 1879, eightysix students had been admitted, of whom forty-two remained in residence during the ensuing year (1881); and of the rest nineteen obtained honors according to the university standard: six in classics, five in mathematics, four in natural sciences, three in moral sciences, and one in history; and eleven passed the examinations which qualify for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In the examination for the more recent mathematical tripos of December, 1879, it has been announced that a Girton student ranked as eighth wrangler.

It is only a degree-standard or honor-standard, however, which is thus secured. The degrees are not granted nor the honors officially proclaimed, for the reason that the college has not as yet attained the recognized connection to which it aspires with the corporation of Cambridge University. Instead of diplomas the college gives to its graduates what are called degree certificates. In the tripos examinations for 1879, two students attained second-class honors in natural history, one a third-class in mathematics, and one a third-class in history. Of the regular instructors and lecturers in Girton College, being at the same time university or college professors, lecturers, tutors, or fellows in Cambridge, there are twelve, and in 1879 fully thirty more gave occasional instruction or special courses in their respective departments.

The success of Girton produced a profound impression in England. It did not satisfy but rather stimulated the zeal of the advocates of the higher education of women. It was soon followed by the formation of a National Union for the Improvement of Women's Education," embracing among its members many men and women of high distinction, which established an organ for the inculcation of its views, and stimulated the erection of girls' schools for superior instruction in dif

ferent parts of the kingdom, under the direction and control of a corporation organized for that purpose.

A more important movement having the same general end in view, but tending more directly to secure ultimately to women not merely university education, but education in the university, was the formation, about ten years ago, in the town of Cambridge, of an "Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women." In the articles of association of this body it is set forth as its primary object, "to maintain and develop the system of lectures for women instituted in January, 1870, on the subjects of the Cambridge higher local examinations and in other branches of academic study." The president of the association is the distinguished astronomer, Prof. John Couch Adams; and in the list of its membership are enrolled most of the professors of the university. Practically under this association the same advantages were offered to young women at their homes in Cambridge, as were attainable at Girton with the disadvantage of residing away from home. In one respect it presently appeared that these advantages were really greater; inasmuch as the professors of the university began very soon and very generally to open their lecture rooms to the young women engaging in study under the auspices of the association. In consequence of this, students began to be attracted to Cambridge from a distance; and for these a modest hall was opened in 1871; but as the members rapidly increased, a building was specially erected for the purpose sufficiently spacious to accommodate upwards of thirty, which, under the name of Newnham Hall, was occupied in 1875. This building also was soon found to be overflowing; and accordingly, in the spring of 1879, it was decided to erect another in the immediate vicin ity of the first, to be called Newnham Hostel, which will be ready for occupation in October of the present year. Though Newnham Hall was established for the accommodation of students coming to Cambridge to take advantage of the educational opportunities created by the Cambridge "association," the council of the hall and the association were two separate and independent organizations. For the better accomplishment of their common object it was resolved, during the year 1879, to unite the two into one under title of Newnham College. It is stated in the prospectus of Newnham Hall that " the public lectures of thirty of the university professors are now open to women, and the permission to attend the lectures of the professors of natural science includes the privilege of gaining access to some of the natural science museums and laboratories." More particularly a letter recently received from Miss Anne J. Clough, the Principal of the College, states as follows: "Our students are allowed to attend most of the university lectures in preparation for the natural sciences tripos, and for the historical tripos. They attend some of the moral science lectures with the men, and some lectures are repeated for the benefit of the women at a different hour.

"The women are also allowed to attend some of the classical lectures, and others are repeated.* The women students have not been admitted to any mathematical lectures. They study by means of private help. Some of the Newnham Hall students have been allowed, by the kindness of university friends of the higher education of women, to have the papers on the honor examinations in classics, the mathematics, the moral sciences, history, and the natural sciences. Eighteen of our students have come out in honors, and there have been four first classes in this number, and eight second classes. One was placed in the first class by two examiners, and in the second by two. These examinations are informal as yet, and should always be so spoken of. But the papers are the same as those given to the men, and are looked over by the same examiners."

Higher Education of Women at Oxford.

*

*

Oxford was nearly ten years later than Cambridge in yielding to the steadily growing demand for the university education of women. An association for the promotion of this object, formed on the plan of that of Cambridge, was organized in 1878 or 1879. Its scheme of lectures has been as yet in operation only for a single year. Two halls have been opened for the reception of women students, the Lady Margaret' Hall, of which Miss E. Wordsworth is principal, and Somerville Hall, under Miss Madelein Shaw Lefevre. The first is governed by a supervisory board, of which the Rev. Edward Stuart Talbot, Warden of Keble College, is the chairman; and the other by a similar board, under the chairmanship of S. W. Waite, B. D., President of Trinity College. As yet, the women students in Oxford have not been as freely admitted to the university lectures as in Cambridge. Miss Shaw Lefevre writes that "the university professors have, in some cases, agreed to admit women to their lectures, but for the present lectures are provided expressly for the students of the association." And Miss Wordsworth observes that "the students attend lectures quite apart from the men, though, in some cases, the same professor instructs them." When the instructor is a university professor or lecturer, however, he does not receive the women in his university or college lecture-room, but in a building temporarily engaged for that purpose by the association. The two great and venerable universities of England thus illustrate the modern remarkable movement toward the higher education of women in two distinct stages of its progress. In Oxford we see the movement just beginning; in Cambridge it appears in a highly advanced state of transition. If, from these, we turn to the University of London, established half a century ago, in vigorous and indignant protest against the exclusiveness and bigotry of the older institutions, which would deny to half the men of the United Kingdom, to say

* A gentleman residing in Cambridge writes, in a letter of recent date, that "most of the university professors have opened their lecture-rooms to women, and this has been done in a few cases with college lecturers."

nothing of the women, the advantages of a liberal education, we shall find the movement in its final stage of accomplished purpose. It is now several years since University College, London, opened its doors freely for the admission of women students; but, though the instruction it gave them was identical with that given to men, it taught them altogether separately and at different hours. No very long experience was necessary to make it manifest that an arrangement of this kind is exceedingly uneconomical, in regard both to time and to labor; or that the reasons which had been supposed to make it necessary or proper, were without substantial foundation. By the spontaneous act of the professors themselves, the classes were one after another combined, until at length there is no longer any class in University College, in which young women and young men do not receive instruction together.* The university has been as liberal as the college. It examines young women on precisely the same terms as young meu; and grants them the same degrees. In the first examination of women, by this university, for the degree of B. A., held two or three years ago, one of the alumnæ of Newnham Hall, of the year 1875, who had attained a second class grade in the classical tripos of Cambridge, and a third class in the mathematical tripos, secured the degree, and gained along with it first class honors in Latin and English.

From this cursory review of the extraordinary progress made in this movement in England during the brief period of the past ten years, the conclusion seems to be irresistible that the barriers which have so long closed the British universities against women are destined at no distant period to fall away, and that perhaps it may be given to the present rising generation to see the time when not university education only, but the universities themselves will be freely open to all without distinction of sex.

The movement in England, which it has been endeavored briefly to describe, was a movement designed strictly and solely to promote the higher education of women; not regarding the consequent possible presence of men and women in the same school as anything more than an incident, which for its own sake was neither to be sought nor avoided. In England, therefore, the term "co-education" is scarcely known; for, considered as defining succinctly an object to be aimed at, there has been no need of it, since no such idea existed. The light in which the undersigned has always regarded this subject has been that in which it has been viewed in Great Britain.

Of what has taken place or is taking place in our own country it is not necessary to say much. The facts of progress are too palpable to require comment. One or two points may be mentioned briefly. The number of institutions professing to give university education, and

The number of students in University College is very large. Six years ago it embraced more than fifteen hundred, of whom nearly nine hundred were in the Collegiate Department.

possessing the strictly university power of conferring degrees in Arts, in the United States, is very great, and more than half of them admit students of both sexes impartially. It is common to dispose of this fact summarily by remarking that these colleges are in the West. To a dweller upon Beacon Hill, very possibly the West is Boeotia. But what shall we say when we see growing up, right under the shadow of Beacon Hill itself, a university which admits young women as freely as Oberlin, or Antioch, or Berea? And yet this very thing has happened in Boston within the past ten years. The Boston University numbers for the year 1880 in its College of the liberal Arts, one hundred and twenty-seven students, of whom one-third are women.

The University of Michigan is a Western university. It was founded more than forty years ago. From the beginning it has been among the most prosperous of American educational institutions, and few have gained a higher or enjoyed a more well-deserved reputation. Michigan University receives women as students, but it had been thirty years in successful operation before it began to do so; and when it began, it did it under the constraint of a public opinion expressed through the legislature and the public journals, which the trustees and the teaching body could not resist, and to which they unwillingly yielded. Ten years have passed since the change of system, and the university, with seventy-five women in the department of Arts, and nearly fifty in its medical schools, is now more prosperous than before. In May, 1879, the Board of Overseers of Harvard University adopted a resolution declaring, that, in the opinion of that Board, women ought to be instructed in medicine by Harvard University in its Medical School, the president concurring, though he has pronounced himself strongly against the admission of women into the college. Moreover, under the gentle urgency of some of the ladies of Cambridge, several of whom are members of the families of the professors, a Newnham Hall has grown up within the heart of the university town itself, in which all the instruction is given by university officers. It looks somewhat as if King Priam had allowed the Trojan horse to be admitted within his walls. There are even some of the garrison who, it is surmised, are already disposed to take part with the enemy.

In an address delivered at the semi-centennial anniversary of the Andover Female Academy, in 1879, Dr. Andrew P. Peabody, the eminent professor of Christian Morals in the university, is reported to have used the following language: "Every professor has assented to the arrangement with the determination to give to the young women the very best of their ability. Whether the young men and young women will meet in the same class-room is a question yet to be answered. I cannot myself believe that the time is very far distant when they will. I can see no reason why young men and young women may not study and recite together as well as talk, sing, and dance together. The reason usually given why they should not is purely a relic of some