314 HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMAN, 



much wider field than anything now attempted. Meanwhile, let me 

 invite your attention to our present very limited aim. 



It has been decided to provide, during the present season, one brief 

 course in each of the three departments of Literature, Mental Science, 

 and Natural Philosophy. In carrying out this plan. Professor Young 

 proposes to take up Logic, presenting an analysis of Thought, as regu- 

 lated by its formal laws, and the methods by which it is applied in the 

 process of inductive research, and in the formation of our scientific 

 beliefs. Professor Cherriman has selected Astronomy as one depart- 

 ment of the comprehensive scientific studies pursued under his guidance 

 in the University course, which admits of treatment within the brief 

 period you are invited to devote to his lectures. He proposes to deal 

 with the subject, so far as may be, exactly as he would treat it with 

 his regular undergraduate class. Nor can I conceive of a more attrac- 

 tive study. You will tread in the steps of Newton ; review the 

 triumphs of Leverrier and Adam, — anticipated by Mary Somerville ; 

 — and follow out processes by which the problem of the true arrange- 

 ment of the universe has been solved, and the combined results of all 

 the progress achieved in Optics, Mechanics, and Mathematics, are 

 brought to bear on those brilliant phenomena of the Heavens which 

 attracted the devout wonder of Hebrew patriarchs and prophets, and 

 baffled the science of Greece's wisest philosophers. 



Among old questions which come up for fresh solution under altered 

 circumstances, that one is being presented anew with peculiar force : 

 What is civilization ? If it consists in fine architecture, rich dresses, 

 luxuriant viands, and all the material appliances which wealth can 

 furnish, we have no lack of the evidence of high civilization in our 

 midst. But if mental, and not material resources are to furnish the 

 standard of our civilization, it becomes us to bear in memory : — 



" What has tamed 

 Great nations ; how ennobling thoughts depart, 

 When men change swords for ledgers, and desert 

 The student's bower for gold." 



Yet inevitably, in young countries like this, the whole energies of 

 the community are liable to be absorbed in the -working-day business 

 of life. We can scarcely spare, as yet, that leisure class, devoted to 

 study for its own sake. Higher education is apt to assume, accord- 

 ingly, too professional an aspect. We have as promising a set of young 

 men among our undergraduates as any University could desire. Yet 



