be such only as a man has a right to make on a woman's composition.

And if I may seem to be asking any thing new or troublesome, I beg you to remember, that it is the primary idea of this College to vindicate women's right to an education in all points equal to that of men; the difference between them being determined not by any fancied inferiority of mind, but simply by the distinct offices and character of the sexes. And surely when you recollect the long drudgery at Greek and Latin verses which is required of every highly educated man, and the high importance which has attached to them for centuries in the opinion of Englishmen, you cannot think that I am too exigent in asking you for a few sets of English verses. Believe me, that you ought to find their beneficial effect in producing, as I said before, a measured deliberate style of expression, a habit of calling up clear and distinct images on all subjects, a power of condensing and arranging your thoughts, such as no practice in prose themes can ever give. If you are disappointed of these results it will not be the fault of this long proved method of teaching, but of my own inability to carry it out. Indeed I cannot too strongly confess my own ignorance or fear my own imbecility. 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."

III.

ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.

BY THE

REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY,

RECTOR OF EVERSLEY.

N introductory Lecture must, I suppose, be con

ment 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 realized one's ideal, as earnestly to have tried to realize 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 19th 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 laurels of Parnassus, but only after they have been clipt and pollarded like a Dutch shrubbery. The roots which connect them with mythic antiquity, and the fresh leaves and flowers of the growing present, have been generally cut off with care, and the middle part only has been allowed to be used-too often, of course, a sufficiently tough and dry stem. This method is no doubt easy, because it saves teachers the trouble of investigating antiquity, and saves them too the still more delicate task of judging contemporaneous authors-but like all half measures, it has bred less good than evil. If we could silence a free press, and the very free

tongues of modern society; if we could clip the busy, imaginative craving mind of youth on the Procrustean bed of use and want, the method might succeed; but we can do neither the young will read, and will hear; and the consequence is, a general complaint, that the minds of young women are out-growing their mothers' guidance, that they are reading books which their mothers never dreamt of reading, of many of which they never heard, many at least whose good and evil they have had no means of investigating; that the authors which really interest and influence the minds of the young are just the ones which have formed no part of their education, and therefore those for judging of which they have received no adequate rules; that, in short, in literature as in many things, education in England is far behind the wants of the age.

Now this is all wrong and ruinous. The mother's mind should be the lode-star of the daughter's. Any thing which loosens the bond of filial reverence, of filial resignation, is even more destructive, if possible, to womanhood than to manhood-the certain bane of both. And the evil fruits are evident enough— self-will and self-conceit in the less gentle, restlessness and dissatisfaction in many of the meekest and gentlest; talents seem with most a curse instead of a blessing; clever and earnest young women, like young men, are beginning to wander up and down in all sorts of eclecticisms and dilettantiisms-one