Page:Thirty years' progress in female education.djvu/9

5 to the writings of Maurice. Never was there a reformer or founder so full of faith, so intolerant of all mercenary and mechanical and timorous views, so resolute to regard all persons, women and men, girls and boys, in their highest character and relations. To read what Maurice had in mind when he took the chief part in creating our College is to feel all vulgar thoughts and aims put to shame. If you will go with him, he compels you to breathe a somewhat difficult air, but one which you must confess to be heavenly and invigorating. Maurice would not have been content, on behalf of himself and his fellow-labourers, that they should be regarded as seeking to place women on a level with men in respect of educational advantages. It was not any equality of women with men that they set before themselves. What they desired was that women should have the best and highest education which could be provided for them, and should not be debarred because they were women from any studies which might enlarge and inform the human mind, and give culture to human faculties. But, as a matter of fact, their plan was that the same Professors should give the same kind of instruction to young women at Queen's College as they were giving to young men at King's College. And the movement of the last thirty years, to the results of which I am to day calling your attention, has had very definitely the character of assimilating the methods of education in use for both sexes. The approximation has not been exclusively on the side of female education. The studies of boys have borrowed from what was formerly thought to be the girls' province. From both sides, though far more decidedly from the feminine side, there has been movement towards common forms and methods of education. In this movement Queen's College took the lead.

To obtain for women a share in the education thought good for men was, in fact, the practical thing to be done. The question whether the existing methods of education were satisfactory, and what improvements might be made in them, was one which might be considered independently, and in the interest of both sexes; but every inquiry of this kind was sure to have boys and young men chiefly in view. It was an obvious policy for those who wished women to be better educated, to claim in the first place that they should be admitted to the studies, the teaching, the educational