These steps were gradually leading up to a possible university education for women. At first sight, our beginnings may seem to have a non-academic and amateurish air. And part of what was accomplished in these early days would meet with scant approval from modern advocates of equal chances for women with men in learning and the learned professions. Inspection of schools by government is now by many regarded as a necessary evil. Popular courses of lectures without regular sequence or adaptation to the previous attainments of those who attend them suggest superficiality and lack of scientific method. Instruction by correspondence is by many associated with cram of the lowest sort. But to those who read the correspondence of the founders of these institutions, or whose memory carries them back to the days when they were not only novel but a very godsend to labourers at self-education, the whole movement wears a different aspect. All methods of imparting knowledge are apt to degenerate into tricks for hiding ignorance; even respect for universities and learned men may become mere toadyism. But the early forms, though now a little outworn, did indicate and partly supply a genuine need, and led on to even better things--especially to academic training and advanced study for women. (5) The general movement towards university education, on the other hand, begins with the inauguration of a series of lectures in Cambridge itself, somewhat like that already started in the north, but wider in scope and capable of being continued for the instruction of women far beyond the educational standard prescribed by the Local Examinations. This had its beginning in a drawing-room meeting held in Prof. and Mrs. Fawcett's house, late in 1869. If these beginnings seem less dignified than those of Colleges erected for students and organized from the first on University lines, it may be remarked that, after all, the beginnings of Newnham bear some analogy to those of the early European universities, including the English. Perhaps in all the greatest centres of learning there has been first the great teacher--then the scholars who flock to sit at his feet. Colleges and social student life and hostels and regulated grades of teachers and taught are an aftergrowth. So, we may say, the first Newnham students came to Cambridge because great teachers were there; it was not that suitable teachers came because the students had shown a demand for them or for collegiate houses and collegiate life. The university extension lecturers might be useful and stimulating missionaries of culture, but their greatest service was to kindle a desire to go and drink at the fountain-heads. The mountain could not come to Mahomet, but many touched by prophetic zeal might make all efforts to come to the mountain.