HIGHER EDUCATION FOR "WOMAN. 311 



and as for political economy, tlie " wealth of nations," and the science 

 of government : it is unmannerly to name them in her company. She 

 shrinks from a discussion of those principles on which national freedom 

 depends ; and resents the epithet learned, as though high mental cul- 

 ture were an unwomanly thing. The young man, on the contrary, is 

 taught to regard the change from school to college as his " coming 

 out/' and emerging into manhood. He learns to recognise it in the 

 very transference from the state of pupilage, in which he was compelled 

 to learn, and to learn whatever was prescribed for him : to that student- 

 life in which he is assumed to covet learning for its own sake ; is 

 invited to accept the cooperation of tutors to aid him in its mastery ; 

 and, to an ever increasing extent, is admitted to exercise an intelligent 

 discrimination in the choice of his studies. 



The practical importance of this distinction cannot, I believe, be 

 exaggerated. I am accustomed yearly to watch with interest the com- 

 mencement of this novel experiment on our University matriculants ; 

 and to observe the change when they fairly catch the idea that school- 

 boy life is at an end, and respond to the new incentives which appeal 

 to them for intelligent cooperation in the work of mental culture. 

 From this all-important influence our present system of female educa- 

 tion entirely excludes woman. Sooner or later every college student 

 recognizes the change involved in this transitional stage between youth 

 and manhood; learns to " put away childish things ;'' to become his 

 own instructor; and- to perceive that the ablest professor can do no 

 more than supplement his own efforts : co-operate with him in so far 

 as he is himself willing arduously to climb the heights on which alone 

 knowledge is to be won. 



Nor is the influence on the teacher to be overlooked. The girl 

 tarries to the close under the care of those who must bend all their 

 faculties to the communication of rudimentary knowledge to the pas- 

 sive, if not the reluctant mind ; whereas the boy passes from such 

 instructors to others, not necessirily superior in gifts or acquire- 

 ments to many who are labouring with devoted zeal in the preparatory 

 stages of youthful culture ; but who are elevated into a more genial, 

 and, therefore, a more influential relationship, by learning to regard 

 themselves as fellow-workers with the student : the pilots of a barque 

 manned by willing hearts and hands, eager to urge it onward in a 

 prosperous voyage. 



And let me here guard against the assumption that there is anything 



