g, but of my own inability
to carry it out. Indeed I cannot too strongly confess my own
ignorance or fear my own inability. I stand aghast when I compare my
means and my idea, but I believe that "by teaching thou shalt learn,"
is a rule of which I too shall take the benefit, and having begun
these lectures in the name of Him who is The Word, and with the firm
intention of asserting throughout His claims as the inspirer of all
language and of all art, I may perhaps hope for the fulfilment of His
own promise: "Be not anxious what you shall speak, for it shall be
given you in that day and in that hour what you shall speak."

ON ENGLISH LITERATURE

Introductory Lecture given at Queen's College, London, 1848.

An introductory lecture must, I suppose, be considered as a sort of
art-exhibition, or advertisement of the wares hereafter to be
furnished by the lecturer. If these, on actual use, should prove to
fall far short of the promise conveyed in the programme, hearers must
remember that the lecturer is bound, even to his own shame, to set
forth in all commencements the most perfect method of teaching which
he can devise, in order that human frailty may have something at
which to aim; at the same time begging all to consider that in this
piecemeal world, it is sufficient not so much to have realised one's
ideal, as earnestly to have tried to realise it, according to the
measure of each man's gifts. Besides, what may not be fulfilled in a
first course, or in a first generation of teachers, may still be
effected by those who follow them. It is but fair to expect that if
this Institution shall prove, as I pray God it may, a centre of
female education worthy of the wants of the coming age, the method
and the practice of the College will be developing, as years bring
experience and wider eye-range, till we become truly able to teach
the English woman of the nineteenth century to bear her part in an
era, which, as I believe, more and more bids fair to eclipse, in
faith and in art, in science and in polity, any and every period of
glory which Christendom has yet beheld.

The first requisite, I think, for a modern course of English
Literature is, that it be a whole course or none. The literary
education of woman has too often fallen into the fault of our
"Elegant Extracts," and "Beauties of British Poetry." It has neither
begun at the beginning nor ended at the end. The young have been
taught to admire the laure