his is an ancient mediaeval attitude long since
buried in more up-to-date places under successive strata of compulsory
education, state teaching, the democratisation of knowledge and the
substitution of the shadow for the substance, and the casket for the
gem. No doubt, in newer places the thing has got to be so. Higher
education in America flourishes chiefly as a qualification for entrance
into a money-making profession, and not as a thing in itself. But in
Oxford one can still see the surviving outline of a nobler type of
structure and a higher inspiration.

I do not mean to say, however, that my judgment of Oxford is one
undiluted stream of praise. In one respect at least I think that Oxford
has fallen away from the high ideals of the Middle Ages. I refer to the
fact that it admits women students to its studies. In the Middle Ages
women were regarded with a peculiar chivalry long since lost. It was
taken for granted that their brains were too delicately poised to
allow them to learn anything. It was presumed that their minds were
so exquisitely hung that intellectual effort might disturb them. The
present age has gone to the other extreme: and this is seen nowhere more
than in the crowding of women into colleges originally designed for men.
Oxford, I regret to find, has not stood out against this change.

To a profound scholar like myself, the presence of these young women,
many of them most attractive, flittering up and down the streets of
Oxford in their caps and gowns, is very distressing.

Who is to blame for this and how they first got in I do not know. But I
understand that they first of all built a private college of their own
close to Oxford, and then edged themselves in foot by foot. If this is
so they only followed up the precedent of the recognised method in use
in America. When an American college is established, the women go and
build a college of their own overlooking the grounds. Then they put on
becoming caps and gowns and stand and look over the fence at the college
athletics. The male undergraduates, who were originally and by nature a
hardy lot, were not easily disturbed. But inevitably some of the senior
trustees fell in love with the first year girls and became convinced
that coeducation was a noble cause. American statistics show that
between 1880 and 1900 the number of trustees and senior professors who
married girl undergraduates or who wanted to do so reached a percentage
of,--I forget the