312 HIGHER EDUCATION FOE WOMAN, 



in this movement antagonistic to the Ladies' Schools already in ex- 

 istence in our midst. On the contrary, should this scheme succeed, 

 it will give a fresh impetus to the higher branches of education in the 

 schools ; and call the best energies of their teachers into play, to train 

 up pupils fitted to take advantage of facilities akin to those now sup- 

 plied by the Universities for the other sex ; and which, by so doing, 

 have already contributed largely to the improvement of the Grammar 

 Schools. A competition among Ladies' Schools, as to which shall turn 

 out the best educated candidates for higher honours, could not fail to 

 react on teachers and pupils with a stimulus wholly wanting at present 

 in our institutions for female education. 



It is not, therefore, without reason that complaints are urged of the 

 great disadvantages under which woman labours in relation to ali 

 higher culture. It is from no lack of appreciation of the excellence 

 of some of our Ladies' Schools and so-called '• Female Colleges," that 

 I affirm the want in Canada, and elsewhere, in the true sense of the 

 term, of any college for ladies, to be one of the greatest impediments 

 to the attainment of high culture by women. The functions of school 

 and college cannot be carried on in combination without grievous 

 injury and impediment to true progress in the higher departments of 

 study. Let us not be deceived by names. The institution may be a 

 mere school, though numbering its pupils by hundreds, and giving 

 them its valediction with honours borrowed from the academic usages 

 of medieval Europe ; it may be an excellent college, with no more 

 than ten diligent students toiling willingly, with the aid of their tutors, 

 and leaving at length, neither with diploma of Spinsterhood in Arts, 

 nor any like foolish anachronism ; but with the substantial scholarship : 

 wanting which, all University degrees are mere frauds and badges of 

 shame. 



Whilst, therefore, we may smile at the pleasant fancy of our 



Laureate : — 



" Pretty were the siglit, 

 If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt 

 With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, 

 And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair :" 



we discern beneath the seeming jest, the real beauty of girl-gradu- 

 ates in whom all that most gracefully adapts itself to the retiring 

 virtues and true modesty of womanhood, shall prove perfectly com- 

 patible with the highest mental culture, and a scholarship such as was 



