to be so. Higher education in America flourishes chiefly as a
qualification for entrance into a money-making profession, and not as
a thing in itself. But in Oxford one can still see the surviving
outline of a nobler type of structure and a higher inspiration.

I do not mean to say, however, that my judgment of Oxford is one
undiluted stream of praise. In one respect at least I think that
Oxford has fallen away from the high ideals of the Middle Ages. I
refer to the fact that it admits women students to its studies. In
the Middle Ages women were regarded with a peculiar chivalry long
since lost. It was taken for granted that their brains were too
delicately poised to allow them to learn anything. It was presumed
that their minds were so exquisitely hung that intellectual effort
might disturb them. The present age has gone to the other extreme:
and this is seen nowhere more than in the crowding of women into
colleges originally designed for men. Oxford, I regret to find,
has not stood out against this change.

To a profound scholar like myself, the presence of these young women,
many of them most attractive, flittering up and down the streets of
Oxford in their caps and gowns, is very distressing.

Who is to blame for this and how they first got in I do not know.
But I understand that they first of all built a private college of
their own close to Oxford, and then edged themselves in foot by foot.
If this is so they only followed up the precedent of the recognised
method in use in America. When an American college is established,
the women go and build a college of their own overlooking the
grounds. Then they put on becoming caps and gowns and stand and look
over the fence at the college athletics. The male undergraduates, who