320 HiaHER EDUCATION FOU WOMAN. 



very nobleness of true womanhood so strong a sense of duty, tliat she 

 learns to look with jealousy on any movement that seems to tempt her 

 away from those ministering services which will constitute her most 

 honourable vocation •while the world endures. It is not therefore, 

 unmeet that I should aim by every argument to enforce the idea that, 

 as high culture and profound scholarship interfere in no degree with 

 man's fitness for the roughest and most prosaic duties ; but rather that 

 the cultivated intellect quickens into renewed vigour every inferior 

 power : so is it with woman also. Tl^e development of her highest 

 faculties, her powers of reasoning, her range of observation, and compass 

 of knowledge, will only make mind and hand work together the more 

 promptly, in obedience to every tender impulse, and every voice of duty. 

 Once satisfied of this, I doubt not your hearty cooperation may be 

 relied upon : without which all efibrts on our part for the higher educa- 

 tion of woman must be vain. Yet I feel assured that, in spite of every 

 impediment, such a scheme lies among the inevitable purposes of the 

 future. It may be rejected now; it may be delayed and frowned on 

 still by the prejudices inherited from a dead past ', but it cannot be 

 prevented. It is one of the grand promises which make thoughtful 

 men almost envious of those who are now entering on the life, for some 

 of us so nearly an accomplished thing. 



" Its triumphs will be sung, 

 By some yet unmoulded tongue, 

 Far on in summers that we shall not see." 



The thoughts of men are widening ; and we stand in special need of 

 this as an element which will accelerate the world's progress onward 

 and upward to noblest ends. Whether or no this generation shall, ia 

 our own province at least, share in any degree in the effort, or partake 

 of its rewards, rests mainly with yourselves. 



THE AUROKA AND THE SPECTROSCOPE. 



Those who are in the habit of watching the splendid auroral dis- 

 plays occasionally witnessed in Canada, will read with interest the 

 following article from the London Spectator : — 



" Men of science have long felt that a strange secret lay hidden in the 

 brilliant folds of the aurora. The magic arch, with its pointed streamers, 

 shifting silently but swiftly across the heavens, pulsating mysteriously as 

 though illuminated by the fitfully changing glow of some concealed furnace, 

 and rendered supassingly beautiful by the brilliancy of its colours, has 



