It is of good omen that the precedent thus set in America is finding a following in our own isle also. All honour to the University of St. Andrews, concerning which sundry newspapers of 15th March, 1892, relate that: “The Senatus Academicus of the University of St. Andrews has agreed to open its classes in arts, science, and theology to women, who will be taught along with men. The University will receive next year a sum of over £30,000 to be spent on bursaries, one half of the sum to be devoted to women exclusively. Steps are being taken to secure a hall of residence in which the women students may live while attending the University classes.”
Id.—“... in purity and truth,
Through plastic childhood and retentive youth.”
“Je voudrais que ce petit volume apportât au lecteur un peu de la jouissance que j’ai goûtée en le composant. Il complète mes Souvenirs, et mes souvenirs sont une partie essentielle de mon œuvre. Qu’ils augmentent ou qu’ils diminuent mon autorité philosophique, ils expliquent, ils montrent l’origine de mes jugements, vrais ou faux. Ma mère, avec laquelle j’ai été si pauvre, à côté de laquelle j’ai travaillé des heures, n’interrompant mon travail que pour lui dire: ‘Maman, êtes-vous contente de moi?’ mes petites amies d’enfance qui m’enchantaient par leur gentillesse discrète, ma sœur Henriette, si haute, si pure, qui, à vingt ans, m’entraîna dans la voie de la raison et me tendit la main pour franchir un passage difficile, ont embaumé le commencement de ma vie d’un arôme qui durera jusqu’à la mort.”—Ernest Renan (“Souvenirs d’Enfance.”).
5.—“Their mutual sports of sinew and of brain.”
“No boy nor girl should leave school without possessing a grasp of the general character of science, and without having been disciplined more or less in the methods of all sciences; so that when turned into the world to make their own way, they shall be prepared to face scientific problems, not by knowing at once the conditions of every problem, or by being able at once to solve it, but by being familiar with the general current of scientific thought, and by being able to apply the methods of science in the proper way, when they have acquainted themselves with the conditions of the special problem.”—T. H. Huxley (“Essay on Scientific Education”).
And the same learned professor tells us, on another occasion:—“A liberal education is an artificial education which has not only prepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties. That man, I think,” (shall we not include “woman” also, on his own showing as above?) “has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine, with all its parts in equal strength and in smooth working order, ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to every kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature, and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.
“Such an one, and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education, for he is as completely as a man can be in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever beneficent mother, he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister, and interpreter.”—Id. (“Essay on a Liberal Education.”)
6.—“In strength alike the sturdy comrades train; ...”
How largely strength is simply a matter of training may be instanced by a case or two:—