‘ ... Formerly we had no women Guardians, but one who is called in her own town “the Guardian Angel”[92] visited us and won all hearts, and then there were elected two ladies, who have been re-elected ever since, who by their insight and gentleness and wisdom have destroyed the last vestige of prejudice. ‘ ... Mrs. Owen was also a link between the Ladies’ College and the Cheltenham College, that elder brother, under whose protection alone our College could have grown up. It is a strange thing that women are threatened with exclusion from the projected Educational Authority; women, who are born to the care of children, who are so much needed to hold the outposts in our educational army, which are being deserted by men. Visions I have of a closer union between all the schools of our town.... Cheltenham, too, has made progress intellectually. A Literary Institution died a natural death shortly after I came; it was, I hope, only a case of _post hoc_. In my early days the provision of books was scanty indeed. I tried to get Tennyson’s last poem in one of the principal shops of the Promenade. I was told, “We never have had any poetic effusions in our library, and I do not think we shall begin now.” There was no Permanent Library, and a Free Library was impossible and unthought of, and in our own College I was fain to be content with a grant of £5 for books. But more than all the material and intellectual progress has been the raising of public opinion regarding the moral law. Much there is still to deplore, much to amend, and we long to see more efforts made to promote temperance, but I am sure that the higher education of women, the opening to them of larger opportunities of usefulness, has helped to lift many above the unsatisfying pleasures of a frivolous life, and won for them the respect which is always a blessing both to “him that gives and him that takes.” We have, indeed, reason to thank God and take courage.’ In the same year Miss Beale was co-opted a member of the Advisory Board of the University of London.