The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2639, 2 August 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1871.

We scarcely like to use the term memorial in connection with the request made by a large number of ladies to participate in the benefits to be derived from the University course of lectures. A memorial may be a petition; in which case the Council of the University is charged, by implication, with withholding from women that which is conceived to be essential to the highest intellectual training of men. A memorial may be a remonstrance: in which case it charges the University Council by implication with an act of injustice towards women, in not conceding that to which they have a clear and perfect right. It may be a mere expression of a desire for knowledge of the highest class ; in which case it is so laudable an ambition that none but fools would repress it. It is not much to the credit of the age that provision was not made for the admission of women to the collegiate course when the rules were established. But we are only just shaking oft' our old notions about female education, and have not yet learned the valuable lesson that the welfare of a country depends more upon the women being right-minded and intelligent, than it does upen the perfect training of a few picked men. We do not suppose that many ladies will be found anxious to compete for honors. Notoriety seeking is not characteristic of their sex : but nothing can be more discreditable to our civilisation than the virtual condemnation of women being highly intellectually trained, implied in making no provision for their participation in studies, which are acknowledged to aid in developing the noblest mental and moral faculties of man. Yet such is really our policy, and it pervades our Avhole social system. It is not merely in the exclusion of women from the College course, but from other sources of intellectual enjoyment, that this feeling exhibits itself, A Bums’s festival, a Waweb

Scott’s Centenary, form no exception to the rule. Men may feast—women may not even smell the viands. Men may be eloquent in the praise of the poet or the novelist; but women are not even to listen. Men may recal the memory of the dead ; may tell of the influences that led to the development of those talents they are met to honor; may trace the steps that led to their success in life ; may tell of their geniality of temper, of pleasing anecdotes illustrative of their characters ; may analyse those characters, and shew what there was in them noble, generous, and good; may incite each other to emulation to follow in their brilliant career : but women are not privileged to do no more than to dance in their honor, with partners fresh from the dinner table, whose stomachs and heads are so filled with the material and spiritual (1 ons) that they are unable even to impart an outline of the proceedings in which they have been engaged. But we deceive ourselves if we suppose that the passion for knowledge once aroused can be repressed. In this, as well as other matters, it may be truly said of woman — If she will she will, you may depend on’t; And if she wont she wont, and there’s an end on’t. Just the same difficulties as are now experienced in admission to collegiate studies had to be encountered in getting the High School for girls established. It did not prevent study on the part of the women. It is true many of them take as great pains to hide their acquirements as some men do to parade their’s. They say the men are frightened of a clever woman, and therefore they are obliged to dissemble and play the part of pretty dawdlers—a phase of character we believe most sincerely detested by every true woman j but one that must be perpetuated so long as the dance is supposed to be the highest intellectual enjoyment in which they are permitted to participate in common with men. The women have flattered the Council of the University by memorialising it; we cannot doubt the success of the movement, and the highest good may be anticipated from it.