Victoria, though interesting in itself, cannot be allowed any weight in determining so very different a question. The appeal, indeed, to the University of London, as a model to be followed in the regulation of studies in Cambridge, would be matter for sad reflection, if to one who has graduated and examined in both it were not so very ridiculous. The University of London certainly performs a very useful function; it catches the waifs and strays who could not otherwise gain an entrance into the graduated world, and it imposes upon them a stringent workhouse test. Their knowledge, indeed, must be up to a certain level; but about their training it is "supremely indifferent." Its effects upon education, as distinguished from acquisition, are sufficiently shown by the existence of the Victoria University, whose establishment was a revolt against its influence, and by the fact that a new secession is contemplated by the London institutions, notably University College (about which I can speak from internal knowledge) and King's College, which have so long drooped under its shadow. Oxford and Cambridge honour students, whether male or female, need fear no competition from London. Those who dispose of educational appointments will always consider in the first instance how candidates have been taught and trained, not where they have been examined; and when they take the results of examinations into account they will remember that there are four requisites for a satisfactory examination-competent examiners, a large and steady average of candidates, a continuous tradition, and a real connection between the subjects as taught and the subjects as tested in examination, and they will know that all of these requisites are found in the Honours examinations of Cambridge and Oxford, and only the first in the Honours examinations of London.

I have already said that the Committee do not ask only for the admission of women to the degrees of the University. They say that the experience of these universities (those already referred to) "furnishes abundant evidence that the unrestricted admission of women to membership, with its various obligations and privileges, is productive of most satisfactory results." At the end of the circular they ask the University "to take the further step of conferring its privileges on all persons, male or female, who are prepared to satisfy its requirements." They invite former students of Girton and Newnham Colleges to sign a statement that "the time may be considered to have arrived for extending to duly qualified students of the recognized Women's Colleges the privileges of membership of the University and admission to its degrees." (The italics throughout are mine). It is clear from this that they wish women to be admitted to the University; and their third

argument is only intelligible if they do. They urge that women have at present no right to attend the lectures of professors and other public teachers, or to use the laboratories and appliances provided for men; that to do so they have to obtain the permission of the officers concerned, and that this permission may at any time be refused. They do not allege that this right of refusal has ever been arbitrarily exercised, or to the detriment of bonâ fide students. And if this is the case, why cannot the teachers who have hitherto so liberally opened their classes, their museums and laboratories, to women, be trusted to do so in the future? If it is not likely now that female students would be excluded without reason from classes or demonstrations that are necessary to their studies, it will be less and less likely as time goes on; and custom will gradually secure them what, if not technically a right, will be as much respected as if it were. It must be remembered, further, that the objection only applies to one branch of study—that of the Natural Sciences. In Mathematics, Classics, Moral Science, History, and other studies to which the great bulk of the students devote themselves, they either have their own teachers or else the University teachers have admitted women to their classes from the beginning.*

The admission of women to membership would involve the most important consequences and changes in the University. Unless it was accompanied by a number of restrictions and disabilities, they would be eligible to all the degrees, offices, and powers of the University. It is conceivable that this revolution might be productive of good; but let some other body make the experiment. I am certain that our present Senate would not; nor do I think that the Committee believe that it would. Canon Davies, in a letter to the Daily News, of date July 5, 1887, reprinted by the Committee, says: "If women were admitted to the M.A. degree they would certainly not be entitled to vote, any more than graduates who are peers, for the Parliamentary representatives of the University. But it is further understood that the promoters of this movement are prepared to support any measure which, whilst admitting women to degrees on the same conditions as those laid down for men, might include further abatements of the privileges of women graduates." I do not think that many members of the Senate will take kindly to these "abatements" of Canon Davies. They will see that a scheme which places women in a limbo of half-membership must be an artificial one, and cannot be a permanent one. They will recognize the fact that there is no

* As regards the University Library, any woman student who is duly recommended by two members of the Senate can obtain free permission to work in it; and a large number from the Women's Colleges avail themselves of this privilege.

stable ground between membership and non-membership, that these "abatements," or rather disabilities, would be felt to be illogical and vexatious, and there would be a constant effort to remove them; and that, if the University concedes a portion, it must be prepared ultimately to concede the whole. There is one question which would at once emerge, unless the admission of women to the privileges of undergraduates were coupled with a special disqualification-that of medical degrees. There is little doubt that before long some female student would claim the right of an undergraduate to study in this subject, and this would excite those bitter and unseemly controversies from which we have hitherto happily been free.

I have already pointed out that many of the most influential authorities in the University have pronounced the action of the Committee to be inopportune. Those who are acquainted with its interior workings are well aware that it is overloaded with business. So much has been crowded on it within the last few years that it has neither the right nor the power to assume fresh cares or new responsibilities. This is so well known that I need not dwell upon it here, the more especially as it has been already referred to by others. It is also, I think, desirable to wait a little longer from the point of view of the Women's Colleges themselves. There have been no difficulties as yet; and I think that there is good reason to hope that there will be none in the future. But it is possible to be a little too sanguine; and the experience of the next few years will be of special importance. In seven years from now, if the present rate of increase continues, there will be about four hundred women studying in Cambridge. These numbers will greatly increase the work of supervision; and, while admitting that the arrangements have hitherto been quite satisfactory, we must be careful in such a vital matter not to presume upon our experience.

I will now leave the University, and turn to a point which principally affects the individual students themselves and their friends. This is the question of expense. At present, the fees paid by certificated students to the University amount, in the aggregate, to £9. Those who take the B.A. degree pay for the same course £19 3s. This difference of £10 will have to come from somewhere. If it is paid by the students, the addition, though not

* As by Mr. Shaw, one of the on-coming Proctors, in a letter to the Daily News, August 23, 1887.

†The £9 is made up as follows: Previous examination and additional subject fees, £3; Tripos examination, £6. Those women (very few in number) who take the second part of the Mathematical or Classical Triposes pay £2 besides. The £19 3s. is made up as follows: Matriculation, £5; annual payments to the University for three years. £2 118.; Previous examination, £2 108.; Tripos, £2 28.; B.A., £7.

large in itself, will mean a good deal to many who are ill able to afford the present outlay. If it is paid by the Colleges (as I have heard suggested is possible), then it is clear that either the value of what they provide will be diminished by that amount, or else that their present charges are in excess of what they need be. On p. 13 of the Girton Report, it is said that "the Scholarship examinations of the College continue to attract many candidates, to whom failure means that the hope of entering the College must be relinquished. It is much to be desired that assistance to promising students in the form of entrance scholarships should be largely increased." How much better is it, in the interests of the higher education of women, that these sums should be devoted to these purposes, than that they should go into the common revenues of the University?

Before closing this article, I desire to say that I am not opposed on principle to the granting of degrees to women; and if Cambridge were only a university resembling the universities referred to by the Committee, I should be glad to vote for this extension. I believe that many, perhaps the majority, of our certificated students desire the degree, and some desire it very much. As a class, I think that they are deserving of every privilege that it is in the power of the University to bestow. It is hardly possible to speak too highly of the enthusiasm which they throw into their work, and their loyalty to learning for learning's sake. Not a few of them have made considerable sacrifices in order to gain the higher education of a university; and when they leave Cambridge to take or resume their position as teachers, they show the same devotedness and self-sacrifice. Their work is already bearing good fruit; their pupils come to the University with a far more thorough training than they had themselves. The majority of these, I feel confident, have no desire to import themselves into a men's university; it is the title only that they want, and this, if it were possible, I should personally be so glad to concede, that I almost feel tempted to regret that Cambridge is a university in a higher sense than those to which it has been compared. Perhaps, however, they may obtain the object of their aspirations in another way. An article in the St. James's Gazette of July 25, 1887, which is understood to have been written by a member of the University of especial authority and experience, and a true friend of women's education, suggests that a charter should be granted to "a central educational council, empowering them to confer degrees on women who have duly fulfilled all conditions necessary for a degree in universities which do not confer degrees on women. The central council need have no trouble of examination on its hands; it could accept the honour examinations of Oxford and Cambridge.

Indeed, all could go on exactly as now, except that the young women of whose successes we have been speaking would receive, in addition to a parchment from Cambridge or Oxford, a B.A. degree from the Central Council. In a few years' time the Central Council would become one of the most important educational bodies in the kingdom, exercising an influence on women's education such as no body now exercises, or can exercise." I do not know whether this suggestion will meet with acceptance; it is, at any rate, deserving of the most careful consideration, if only for this, that it points to the true way of solving the difficulty, which is that the women's colleges should take up this matter themselves, and that women's degrees should be conferred by a women's university.

J. P. POSTGATE.

VOL. X.

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