examinations for women. Emily Davies then started the college at Hitchin which, in 1873, was removed to Girton; in 1869, courses of lectures were begun in Cambridge, which led to the foundation of Newnham college. A period of great expansion followed. With the help of the Endowed Schools commissioners, many girls' schools were opened or revived, many endowments on revision were divided between boys' schools and girls' schools. In 1871, "The National Union for improving the education of women of all classes' (among whose founders lady Stanley of Alderley and Emily Shirreff, Mistress of Girton College, were prominent) took up the concurrent policy of starting good, cheap dayschools for girls and of making teaching by women a profession. The policy was realised in the creation of The Girls' Public Day School company in 1872 and of The Maria Grey Training college in 1878. The university of London threw open its degree examinations to women in 1878, Cambridge opened the triposes to them in 1881, and, three years later, Oxford allowed women to pass the examinations of certain of its 'schools.' Colleges for women had been instituted at Oxford in 1879. The new universities made no distinction of sex in respect of teaching, emoluments or degrees. The project of a women's university which animates Tennyson's Princess (1847) has failed to secure favour; but the less unsubstantial elements of the poet's 'medley' have come near to realisation.

No doubt, girls' schools, at the beginning, voluntarily handicapped themselves by trying to teach most of the things taught in boys' schools, as well as those things which women either need to know, or are conventionally expected to know, or to be skilled in. But this mistake was not slow to disclose itself and be corrected. On the other hand, they were not handicapped by traditional methods; and the professional bent encouraged by the advocates of a better education for girls gave the teachers a critical attitude towards educational principles and their own work which has resulted in a high level of teaching and of organisation, and a freedom from routine. If this professional bias also tended to present teaching as the most appropriate occupation of women -which could scarcely fail to affect courses of study-later experience has reduced these early tendencies to their due proportion.

Apart from its administrative character, the relation of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge to the universities underwent no great immediate change in consequence of the legislation of 1854—6. The energy of college tutors was expended on the education of

undergraduates; it was almost a commonplace of speakers and writers that, in striking contrast with some foreign universities, Oxford and Cambridge produced but little original work in science or learning. No reformers were more dissatisfied with the state of affairs than many of the university teachers themselves. Newman believed that a university could not at the same time be a place of education and a home of research and learning ; Mark Pattison, on the contrary, boldly asserted that, unless teachers were actively engaged in advancing knowledge, their teaching would be inadequate and barren.

All attempts to stimulate the teaching activity [of Oxford] without adding to its solid possession of the field of science will only feed the unwholesome system of examinations which is now undermining the educational value of the work we actually do1.

As Pattison read the early history of colleges, their founders intended them for the promotion of learning and the technical instruction of priests, ecclesiastical lawyers and men of affairs; the most urgently needed reform was the appropriation of a large part of the college revenues to the encouragement of research and the provision of the highest type of scientific technical instruction. It was Pattison's hope that such a readjustment of finances would ensure a numerous body of fairly paid teachers, who would have time and opportunity to continue their own studies, to the advantage of the world beyond their own lecture rooms. The act of 1877, which appointed, in both universities, commissions with executive powers to deal with college statutes, rendered possible the partial realisation of this policy. The abolition of religious tests at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham in 1871 removed the last disability which rested upon nonconformists, with the double advantage of admitting them into the full current of national education and of rendering university life a truer mirror of the life of the nation at large. The greatly increased activities of both universities since 1870 are reflected in the number and variety of 'schools' and 'triposes' instituted since that date.

The growth of 'university colleges' (under this or some similar name), which was remarkable during the period 1872-84, was the result of the development of physical science, of a better appreciation of the dependence of industry upon science and a more widely extended faith in the power conferred by knowledge and intellectual cultivation, added to a growing sense of our national deficiencies in these respects. In some places, these

1 Suggestions on academical organisation (1868).

currents of opinion were strengthened or liberalised by 'university extension,' the movement in favour of which was due, in the first place, to the desire, already described, of making teaching a profession for women. In 1872, James Stuart was invited to give lectures to women on the art of teaching. He preferred, however, to deliver a course on astronomy, which he repeated in several of the great northern cities. These lectures proved the existence of a demand for teaching which Cambridge met in the following year by inaugurating the plan of extra-mural lecturing and tuition, a plan adopted by the London society (instituted in 1876) and by Oxford in 1878. The development of all these new centres of intellectual life led, in due course, to the creation of new universities, none of which is confined to the study of science, applied or pure, while some have already made notable contributions to the advancement of letters in many directions.

Owens college, founded so far back as 1851 in response to demands very like those which had led to the creation of the university of London, was the earliest of the university colleges outside the capital to seek academical independence. In 1880, a royal charter was granted to Victoria university with its seat in Manchester, and Owens college was, at first, its only college. In 1884, it was joined by University college, Liverpool, and, in 1887, by the Yorkshire college, Leeds, as constituted colleges of the university. A university charter having been granted to Mason's college, Birmingham, in 1900, the three colleges of Victoria university were by fresh charters created the Victoria university of Manchester (1903), the university of Liverpool (1903) and that of Leeds (1904) respectively. The university of Sheffield was founded in 1905, and that of Bristol in 1909. University college, Dundee, had been affiliated to the university of St Andrews in 1897; and the Irish university system had been remodelled in 1880 and 1908-9.

The University of London act of 1898 led to the restoration of its teaching function and the possibility of unifying the higher education of the metropolis. It is worth remarking that, of the eleven universities now existing south of Tweed, nine were founded later than the reign of George IV. 'I wish we had several more universities,' said Seeley, 'our material progress has outrun our intellectual1.' The worship of material success and the indifference to 'ideas' with which Mill, Arnold, Pattison, Seeley and others charged the English middle class are, perhaps, not much less 1 Essays on a liberal education (1867).

prevalent today than they were fifty years ago; but the agents for overcoming them and the reasons why they should be overcome have, in the interval, been greatly multiplied.

Wales preceded England in the organisation of secondary education. The Welsh Intermediate Education act of 1889 gave the principality a scheme which filled the gap between public elementary schools and her three colleges, Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Bangor; the system was completed by the incorporation of these colleges as the university of Wales in 1893. English legislation of 1889-90, dealing with technical instruction, brought about a chaos which rendered organisation imperative. The immediate consequence of the acts of parliament was to stimulate the Science and Art department's mischievous system of examination grants, the transformation of all but the strongest grammar schools into schools of science, the entire discouragement of literary instruction and ruinous competition between new and old institutions. The great school boards, assisted by the Education department, had endeavoured to compensate for the lack of secondary education within their areas by the creation of 'higher grade schools,' which, in some respects, partook of the nature of secondary schools, while, in others, they resembled the higher primary schools of the continent. These, also, became competitors, in some places, with the older schools under boards of governors, while they bred confusion in the public mind as to the respective functions of 'elementary' and 'secondary' instruction. The Bryce commission, appointed in 1894 to review the whole field of secondary instruction, reported in 1896, the chief measures proposed being first, the creation of a Board of Education, under a minister, to absorb the functions of the Education department, the Science and Art department and the educational side of the Charity commission, the new body thus becoming the central authority for elementary, technical and secondary education; second, the institution of a consultative committee of independent persons competent to advise the minister; and the erection in counties and county boroughs of Local Education authorities. In the meantime, 'voluntary schools' had fallen into financial distress and denominational education suffered correspondingly. The general policy long before indicated by Matthew Arnold, reiterated by the Bryce commission and emphasised by the condition of the country and the menace of foreign competition was at length embodied in the Board of Education act of 1899 and the Education acts of 1902-3. The English state had, after a century of hesitation, consented to accept full responsibility for national education.

E. L. XIV. CH. XIV.

28

CHAPTER XV

CHANGES IN THE LANGUAGE SINCE

SHAKESPEARE'S TIME

IN a general view of the fortunes of the English language since Shakespeare's time, one of the first things to strike an observer is the world-wide expansion of its use. At the beginning of the seventeenth century it was, with slight exceptions, confined to England. The exceptions were Ireland, where English colonisation had begun in the previous century, and Scotland, where literary English was already influencing the speakers of a tongue descended from the old Northumbrian dialect. Even today, English does not completely occupy the whole of the United Kingdom. Celtic exists in Ireland, in Wales and in the Scottish Highlands, while, in the Channel islands, Norman-French has by no means disappeared. Till into the eighteenth century, Cornish survived in Cornwall, and Norse in Orkney and Shetland. Outside the British isles, the language has followed the flag, and is spoken all over the empire-in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, in Africa, and in the East and West Indies. Beyond the boundaries of the empire, it possesses a vigorous life and literature among many millions in the United States of North America1.

Since in those regions English was planted at different times and has been subjected to varying influences, the types of language, especially as spoken, differ from standard English and from one another. The vocabulary, in particular, is notably dissimilar. Strange objects, new conditions of life, have either added native words, or caused special adaptations of old words or extensions of meaning. Sometimes, also, as in the United States, the language is splitting

1 Attempts have been made to calculate how many persons employ English. Exact figures are not obtainable; but, in round numbers, 120,000,000 may be considered a tolerably safe estimate about double the aggregate of those who speak French, or Italian, or Spanish; and half as many again as speak German, or Russian. It is believed that, in 1600, English was spoken by about 6,000,000, much fewer than then spoke French, or German, or Italian, or Spanish.