“MY DEAR MISS BUSS, “I have a great favour to ask from you, though it affects your own sex more than it does me. I wish your consent to be nominated on the Council of Preceptors. The meetings, as you will observe from the card enclosed, are only eight in the year, and all these need not be attended. But no lady has ever yet been on the council, and some of us are determined to break through the barrier of custom which obstructs the doorway left open by the constitution of the council. You will have a large and powerful support, and success is almost certain, even at the first attempt. “This will be a battle worth fighting. I have written to every member of the council whom I have thought at all accessible to reason, and _every_ answer is favourable. Now, I confidently reckon on your _passive_ support. You are not required either to labour, or to wait, at least beyond the 11th inst., when the election will take place. Your consent is all that is needed, and I am sure, for the sake of the principle involved, you will not withhold it.” “Dec. 16, 1869. “You would see from the papers that you were elected on the council. Though you come _after_ the three gentlemen on the list, you came before them in the voting. You had fourteen votes, each of them had only twelve.” In 1871, apropos to a deputation from the College of Preceptors, Dr. Hodgson again writes— “MY DEAR MISS BUSS, “I am very sorry that you are in such a chaos. I think it extremely important that the claims of women to equality of recognition in all education should be kept in view. They are too apt to be forgotten by even those who are in principle favourable, so inveterate is the _inequity_, _i.e._ iniquity, of English practice in this respect. Your presence on the deputation will be a valuable protest as regards both the existence of the claims themselves and the fact of their being recognized by educational bodies. The nail must be struck on the head again, and again, and again. Wonderful has been the advance already made, but the battle is very far from being already won. “Yours ever truly, “W. B. HODGSON.” In 1873, Miss Buss sent me a letter from Mr. Christie, proposing to elect her a Life-governor of University College, in which she adds— “Could you write to Mr. Christie in such a way as to answer his question about my ‘services to education’? “I cannot well see my way to a fair estimate of my own work. At all events, it is easier for some one else to estimate it for me.” Her own letter to Mr. Christie may be given—