han are their brothers.

The opening of Queen's College in 1848 marked the beginning of an
attempt to give a wider education to women. This college grew out of
the Governesses' Benevolent Institution. It was a training school for
teachers, a normal institute; but, besides this, it was open to all
who cared to enter. The name of that leader in modern educational
movements, Frederick Denison Maurice, was identified with this
departure. In the face of hostile comment, he defended the system
which was adopted by himself and his brother professors, all of whom
had come from King's College. The educational opportunities offered
by this college were exceptional; the fees were low, and many students
hastened to avail themselves of the new privilege.

It was twenty years later, however, before there was fought out the
issue through which women came to be admitted to the universities. In
1856, Miss Jessie Merriton White was applying vainly for admittance
to the matriculation examination of the University of London. In 1869,
Girton College, the building of which cost fourteen thousand seven
hundred pounds sterling, was established largely through the
efforts of women. It was intended to afford training for women along
university lines, and the plan of study was modelled on that of
Cambridge University; the idea in the adoption of this parallel course
was to establish beyond doubt women's fitness for pursuing the same
studies as men. Other colleges of the same nature were founded soon
after.

In the last century, the old theory that women were not capable of
higher education on account of the "moisture of their brains" was not
one of the pleas upon which was based the opposition to the higher
education of women. The more plausible ground was taken that women
ought to avoid certain lines of study which are a part of a university
course. But it is coming to be realized that the proprieties
of knowledge do not reside in the subject or in the sex of the
student--that whatever is important for higher investigation is worthy
of the pursuit of women as well as men, and can be pursued by them
at the point of ripened discretion to which they have arrived when
capable of meeting the requirements for entrance into a university.

The high-school system that has developed in England during the last
quarter of a century has done much for the education of the middle
classes, affording sound instruction and mental discipline for all.
At the p