The work of this Commission lasted from 1864 to 1869, and, later, many of the same gentlemen were appointed on the Endowed Schools Commission, and may be said to have carried on the same work, since they here applied the remedy to ills previously discovered by their researches. There are few of these names which will not be held in lasting honour by all thoughtful women who know how much is due for steady help in every cause most concerning their welfare. It has, nevertheless, taken thirty years—since that same November 30, 1865—to give women a place side by side with men, on a Royal Commission, when, in 1894, Mrs. Bryant, D.Sc., took the seat Miss Buss was no longer able to fill on the second Royal Commission of Inquiry into Secondary Education. It is not difficult to imagine the feeling of satisfaction with which Miss Buss saw her “brilliant young fellow-worker,” as she delighted to call her, taking this proud position. Further to mark the contrast between 1865 and 1894, we may take a passage in a letter from Miss Buss to Miss Davies, dated December 5, 1865, whilst still waiting for the Commissioners’ Report, in which she says— “When will the evidence come, I wonder? I am so curious to know what I said, and what you said too. It is very odd, but the mist which surrounds that interview does not clear. “They were indeed kind, and more than kind, as you say. As for Mr. Acland, he is what the ‘Home and Colonial’ consider you to be! “I can’t get over my astonishment at their civility; and it is such fun to be told to ‘take a chair,’ as if we were the ‘party’ whom servants are so fond of announcing.” This is the one side. Wherever it was possible to see “fun” Miss Buss would see it. But there was another side too, revealed in a little remark made by Mr. Fearon to Mrs. Bryant, when the prize-giving was over at which he gave his reminiscences of that November day: “We were all so much struck by their perfect womanliness. Why, there were tears in Miss Buss’ eyes!” And small wonder if this were so! In 1865—thirty years ago—it was an event to cause a heart-thrill when a woman was summoned, not to meekly receive information, but actually to give it; not to listen, but to speak, and before so important a body. It is quite conceivable that as they paused on the threshold these two ladies may have felt far more than a merely imaginative flash of sympathy with brave women of old, who had faced sterner tribunals to pay forfeit with life itself for the holding of new and strange doctrines. To say that great events may hang on smallest incidents is a mere truism, trite as true. But we cannot doubt that a real turning point in the history of the English people was reached in the first official recognition of the equal share of women in the task of training the young. From this date what was before impossible became fact, and education takes rank as a true science.