15 MAY 1880, Page 2

Lord Granville presided, as usual, on Wednesday at the public

day for the presentation to the new graduates of the University of London of their degrees and the various honours obtained by them, and in the speech which he made he re- marked that, as Christians, we had long admitted that women had souls ; as men, our instincts told us that they had hearts ; but that we had only recently learnt to acknowledge that they also had minds, which would not be deteriorated by the highest. possible education. This observation received additional point from the fact that Lord Granville had just presented to Miss Janet Greener, of Milton Mount College, Gravesend, her moiety in the third prize won by her at the January matriculation examination, and which she had won in competition with hun- dreds of the best educated young men of the same age. Lord Granville could hardly have put his point better, for a little exaggeration is needful to make people see what is really meant on such a subject as this. Of course, those who have been the steady opponents of the admission of women to degrees, would not admit that they ever had any doubt as to the ezistence of feminine minds. But unquestionably they had, and have, doubts on the point whether women's minds are of the kind to derive the same sort of benefit as men's from the kind of discipline to which men's are usually subjected, and that is virtually a doubt as to the unity of the mental type in men and women,—a very close approach indeed to Lord Gran- ville's innuendo.