354 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
American ladies from the conference were Mrs. Fry, Mrs. Jameson, Lady Byron, and 
Mrs. Howitt. The seed germinated in their minds too, and the conviction grew that if 
liberty was good and a thing worth striving for, it would be good for women. The 
movement for political enfranchisement, equal laws, opportunities of employment and 
of education for women, received a most important impulse in England from the slight 
put upon the American ladies by the anti-slavery convention. 
[ propose to endeavor to trace in outline the development in England of one of these 
main branches of the women’s movement—the claim to share in higher education. 
The defective state of women’s education in the first half of the century, and still more 
in earlier times, it is difficult now to realize. Defoe had called attention to it in one of 
his essays on Projects. Mary Wollstonecraft had protested against it and against the 
mass of false theory and evil practice which supported it. Sydney Smith had assailed 
it with the keen shafts of ridicule. But very little had practically been done to place 
he education of women on a rational basis. The first definite piece of work in this 
direction was begun in 1846, and owed its initiative to the Rev. Frederick Denison 
Maurice, who was then one of the professors of King’s College, London. The idea 
securred to him that as it was part of his duty to teach young men at King’s College, it 
would be right and suitable to provide classes for their sisters. The practical outcome 
of this idea was the foundation of Queen’s College. The Dowager Lady Stanley of 
Alderley seconded Mr. Maurice’s efforts. He was also aided by Dr. Trench, afterward 
Archbishop of Dublin, * and by the Rev. C. G. Nicolay, then both professors of King’s 
College. Classes for young women were opened in 1846; in 1848 a house in Harley 
Street was taken, and in 1858 a Royal charter was obtained. The educational impor- 
tance of the foundation of Queen’s College is difficult to exaggerate. It opened a new 
life to those who profited by its instruction. Among its earliest pupils were Miss Buss, 
now of the North London Collegiate School for Girls, and Miss Dorothea Beale, now of 
she Ladies’ College, Cheltenham. These two ladies have devoted their whole life to 
raise the standard of girls’ education. They founded schools of their own which after- 
ward served as models for the schools of the Girls’ Public Day School Company, and 
nave had a most important influence on the development of education all over the 
Jnited Kingdom. 
Queen’s College, being in a sense a sister establishment to King’s College, was from its 
foundation a Church of England institution, whereas Bedford College, founded mainly 
oy Mrs. Reid, in 1849, was entirely undenominational. As Queen’s College is able to 
boast of Miss Buss and Miss Beale as among its earliest students, so Bedford College lays 
claim to the distinction of having provided part of the intellectual equipment of George 
Tliot, and of Barbara Leigh Smith, afterward Mme. Bodichon, one of the founders of 
Girton College. After the foundation of Queen’s and Bedford there was a long period 
of quiescence, when, if progress was made at all, it was so slow as to remind one of what 
Mr. Russell Lowell once said of the movement of public opinion in England. He said 
it was like the movement of glacial drift ; you could not see it move, but when you 
looked again, after an interval, you found it had moved. Possibly the slow rate of prog- 
ress in the development of higher education for women after the foundation of Queen’s 
and Bedford Colleges may be accounted for by the preoccupation of the national mind 
with the Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny of 1854-6 and 1857-8. Times of national 
crisis, ‘“ the glory and grief of battle, won or lost,” may solder a race together, but 
‘he years thus occupied are not usually the years when social movements make rapid 
progress. Such times, however, are great tests of character, national and personal. 
[n the presence of real danger, conventions and insincerities are at a discount ; any 
one, man or woman, who can do a stroke of work for the country is urged to do it. 
¥ Archbishop Trench afterward became one of the chief promoters of Alexandra College, Dublin.