sion made by these preliminary examinations on
those who conducted them was this; that the grand desideratum for
the higher education of women was _regulation_, authoritative and
peremptory. Granting that the college system for young men,
coming down from an age of narrow prescription and rigid
uniformity, needed expansion, relaxation, a wider variety of
studies and freer scope for individual choice, there was
evidently no such call in a college for women. In the field of
'_female education_,' without endowments, without universities or
other institutions of recognized authority, without a history, or
even a generally accepted theory, there was really no established
_system_ at all; and a system was, of all things, the thing most
urgently demanded. That it should be a perfect system was less
important than that it should be definite and fixed, based upon
intelligent and well-considered principles, and adhered to,
irrespective of the taste and fancies and crude speculations of
the students or their friends. The young women who, all over the
land, were urging so importunate a claim for thorough
intellectual culture should first of all be taught what are the
unalterable conditions of a thorough culture, alike for women and
for men, and should be held to those conditions, just as young
men are held, whether they 'like' the discipline or not. The
rising interest in the subject of woman's education, which so
signally marked the recent progress of public sentiment, required
a channel through which it might be directed to positive results.
If Vassar College had a mission, was it not, clearly, to
contribute something to that consummation?

"To the task, therefore, of reducing to order the heterogeneous
medley before them, the Faculty set themselves with all
earnestness. Many have wondered why there should have been any
delay in doing this--why a collegiate course was not at once
marked out and the students forthwith formed into corresponding
classes. The reason will appear on a moment's reflection. It is
easy to build a college on paper. To produce the real thing
requires a variety of material, prepared and shaped for the
purpose. There must not only be buildings and apparatus, books
and learned professors, but there must be _students_--students