SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 387 



woman's love for her children depended on her ignorance of Greek, and sho 

 •would be likely to desert an infant for a quadratic equation." Two of the 

 noblest instances of woman's home virtue and Avoman's philanthropic devotion 

 •were Mary Somerville and Mary Carpenter, the one the head of all her sex ia 

 science, and the other learned enough to have taught Homer and Virgil at 

 eighteen. A classical education did not make a woman masculine. It was as 

 absurd to teach a girl French because a boy learned Latin, as to to make her 

 eat mutton because the boy ate beef. The assimilation of mental and bodily 

 food both suited the natural constitution. A woman's mind is made by the 

 Creator wholly different from that of a man, and in everything else she does, 

 art, learning, or philanthropic labour, these differences come out. She works 

 not like a man, from without, by force of will and legislative power, but from 

 ■within, by persuading and inspiring. To educate -a woman to the utmost is only 

 more and more to educe her womanliness ; to make her more, not less, a 

 woman. A sound and solid education is even more needful for her than a man, 

 her natural quickness leading her to shallowness and hastiness of conclusions. 

 University examinations, which have long been admitted to be so useful for men, 

 can hardly prove less so for women. That of London, in particular, offers special 

 facilities for their admission, and we may hope that the late resolution of half 

 the Senate to reject them will ere long be reconsidered. London University will 

 assuredly suffer no derogation from following the course of the schools of 

 Alexandria, where Hypatia held the first chair of philosophy then existing in 

 the world; and in that of the University of Padua, where women taught and 

 learned besides Galileo, Petrarch, and Columbus. In conclusion Miss Cobbe 

 begged both men and women to put aside the prejudices which the obnoxious 

 and ludicrous ideas attached to that popular ogress the strong-misided female, 

 brought upon all subjects connected with the claims of women. In the old 

 times of chivalry, to help a woman in distress was deemed the highest honor for 

 the bravest knight. Assuredly it is not less an honor now to aid the whole sex 

 to rise to a better and nobler life, and to develop more perfectly, because more 

 freely and fully, that form outward which God has also made in His own image 

 — a divine and holy thing. The conclusion of the paper was followed by the 

 heartiest applause. 



The President : I may accept, I suppose, that acclamation as a wish that we 

 had the power of conferring degrees — (hear) — and if we had, I should be most 

 happy to propose that Miss Cobbe receive from us the degree of M.A. — (cheers 

 and laughter) — mistress of the art of discussing a subject with sound reason, 

 with infinite grace, and with perfect propriety — (hear). On one point only I 

 should wish to make an observation, and that is to confirm the statement of 

 Miss Cobbe as to the possibility of the union of the most perfect domestic vu:- 

 tues with the highest intellectual cultivation. I cannot venture with so many 

 ladies present, to open a discussion on the subject --(laughter). I should be sorry 

 to baulk any lady — (laughter) — but I hope what has been said has been so 

 full and satisfactory that they Avill accept it as a p3rfect statement of their case. 



At the meeting on the evening of the same day, Mr. Sbaen moved a resolution 

 to the effect that the council should represent to the Senate of the University of 



