7 DECEMBER 1878, Page 3

Girton College, Cambridge, is in luck. It does not, indeed,

get its new building fund as fast as it needs it, even for the pur- poses of the building immediately and urgently needed ; but Mrs. Russell Gurney—the widow of the late Recorder of London—has just done something even better for it than a direct addition to that most needful fund,—something which must extend the range of Girton's interests, of the classes directly identified with its success. She has promised £1,000 to endow a new entrance scholarship into Girton College. Lads and young men have so many aids of this kind to high education, that we believe it has been -calculated that of all the Oxford Undergraduates, a very large proportion,—we have heard it said to be as high as one in every four, if not higher,—obtain some kind of exhibition or scholar- ship, in aid of the resources of their parents. But girls are at present exceedingly poor in such educational help, though they seed it, as yet, far more than boys,—the parental mind still in- -dining to the idea that the girl is a superficial creature, whose learning should be more ornamental than solid. Thus, the un- successful competitors for Girton scholarships, though quite -competent to enter the college as ordinary students, very fre- quently have no chance of so entering it, their parents not being able, or being unwilling to afford the necessary funds.