Page:Thirty years' progress in female education.djvu/12

8 every religious communion, and gives no formal religious teaching. Another new College of the same class as Queen's, the Alexandra College at Dublin, was founded by our Principal, Dr. Trench, when he became Archbishop of Dublin. It is difficult to draw a line between colleges and schools; but at Queen's College, certainly, whilst the methods of teaching have had in view students of more advanced years, the great majority of the actual pupils have been of schoolgirl age. I therefore mention here the creation of public girls' schools, such are becoming daily more numerous and more important. I am not sure whether I ought to call the Cheltenham College a school; but the large institutions in Camden Town, under Miss Buss's direction, and the vigorous schools planted throughout the country by the Girls' Day School Company, expressly aim to be for girls what our older public schools are for boys. A step of another kind was taken, when the Cambridge Local Examinations were opened to girls. This was done tentatively at first. There was a good deal of trepidation in many minds, as to what might happen if girls were examined by University Examiners. It was feared that they might faint and be made ill, or that the domestic bloom would be rubbed off their minds. By a private and personal arrangement, a certain number of girls were examined by friendly Cambridge Examiners in just the same way as the boys, until experience showed that such an examination was a safe and innocuous process. The University of Cambridge, thereupon, with little hesitation, undertook to put no difference between girls and boys in respect of its Local Examinations. I am proud of the generosity manifested throughout this whole movement by my own University. I remember Mr. Maurice telling me, after he had gone to reside at Cambridge as Professor of Moral Philosophy, that there was nothing about which he found the younger graduates more zealous, than in endeavouring to put every academical advantage at the service of women. It is impossible to say for how much this cause is indebted to the sympathy and courage of a number of Cambridge men. The experimental examination which I have just mentioned was the beginning of a long series of helpful acts, which only wait now to be crowned by the formal admission of women to Cambridge University degrees. I say their formal admission, because