A few words must be devoted to these foundations, which, it cannot be doubted, are destined to play so important a part in the future life of the University. In the last chapter, I said that some of the founders would have rejoiced to see a ceremony so much in keeping with traditional usage as the consecration of Selwyn Chapel. It is at least doubtful whether Henry VI. would have looked with approval on the lady students who are so assiduous worshippers at his chapel; and even his imperious consort, the foundress of Queens’, and the Lady Margaret herself, with her rooms in Christ’s, would have probably hesitated to admit their own sex to the privileges of University life. But “the old order changeth,” and colleges for women are not only accomplished facts, but facts which are very lively indeed. Till within the last half century, the University’s estimate of the rights of women was very oriental: unmarried fellows were the rule, and masters’ wives formed a very distinct social clique. But the breaking-down of these barriers came in time, and, with the ensuing civilisation, came the project for giving women the privileges of University education. “You[273] know what women’s minds are,” wrote Erasmus scornfully of his patroness to a friend. The Professors who to-day occupy Erasmus’ numerous chairs have plenty of opportunity of seeing that women’s minds are not to be dismissed in a phrase. At any rate, woman has stormed Cambridge, and made a considerable breach in the fortifications, and the most doctrinaire of conservatives cannot keep her from the closely guarded citadel of the degree.

Girton is the earlier of the two colleges. It was started at Hitchin in 1869, and was removed to Cambridge in 1873. Even then it planted itself outside the hallowed precinct, on the brow of a hill, beside the straightest of all straight roads. Every Girton student knows, to her cost, the long avenue of telegraph posts which separates her from Cambridge; and although this approach, in fine weather, provides excellent landscapes in Hobbéma’s be............