Lord Granville was as usual the most lively of the
speakers. He dwelt with much entertaining illustration on the determination avowed by the College to prepare women for the degrees now opened to them by the University, but appeared not to be aware that the medical Faculty of the College has not as yet followed the Faculties of Arts and Laws in resolving on this wise and prudent course. University College, he said, had got beyond both Milton and Cowley, who had both sketched out schemes for a Metro- politan University, but had neither of them included women :- " Indeed, Milton was as bad as that Arab chief who not many years ago refused an invitation to a great banquet which M. Lesseps gave in the Egyptian desert, because he understood that M. Lesseps meant to give precedence to an English lady,—' a woman,' as he styled it, without a soul.' But Milton was almost worse than this Arab chief, for I have never heard that Milton expressed the slightest regret for having inflicted that frightful cruelty upon his own daughters, of making them perpetually read to him books in classical languages of which they did not understand one word. Whereas, I am bound to say, as regards the Arab chief, that when he saw the admirable horsemanship of the English lady, he .at once suggested, to her that he was ready to dismiss all his
wives in her favour, the moment she became tired of her Christian husband." The other speakers tended to dulness, which is very pardonable in praising education ; but when you must be dull, you should be brief, and they were some of them far from brief. The Dean of Westminster, indeed, hit upon a new reason for thank- fulness, in the fact that Professor Huxley is not so immersed in science but that he can enjoy literature,—from which the Dean inferred that his scepticism could not be as thorough-going as it seemed,—an inference which he did not make clear. Professor Huxley himself deprecated all onesidedness in education, but held science to be the only basis of the distinction between the real and the unreal, and spoke of literature as if it were nothing but the art of expression,—a view, we venture to think, essentially unreal. On the whole, the ornamental speaking at University College was not quite so good as the solid teaching ; but we trust it may answer its purpose of bringing in funds. Few London under- takings need generous help more, or deserve it so much.
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