Humphrey stepped aside, and looked on while the room filled up. The students, he remarked, who were all dressed in white, with ribbons of their own individual choice, appeared to be a cheerful company of damsels. To be sure, cheerfulness belongs to their time of life, and to the profession of student, about which there should cling a certain lawless joyousness--a buoyancy not found in the domestic circle, a touch of the barrack, something of the camp, because they are recruits in the armies that fight against ignorance and prejudice. These white-robed students were full of cheerfulness, which bubbled over in laughter and happy faces. One is told that in some colleges there are students entirely given over to their studies, who wear dowdy dresses, who push back their hair anyhow behind their spectacles, who present faces of more than possible thoughtfulness. Here there were none such; none were oppressed with study. Rightly considered, every college for young persons should be interesting. We have forgotten that there used formerly to be colleges for old persons; for priests, as Jesus Commons and the Papey on London Wall; for physicians; for surgeons; for serjeants-at-law; for debtors, as the Fleet; for the decayed, as an almshouse; for criminals, as Newgate; for paupers, as the workhouse. A college for girls is naturally more interesting than one for young men: first, because they are girls; next, because the male college contains so much that is disquieting,--ambition and impatience, with effort; strenuous endeavour to conciliate Fame, a goddess who presents to all comers at first a deaf ear, eyes that see nothing, and a trumpet silently dangling at her wrist; the resolution to compel Fortune, even against her will, to turn round that wheel which is to bear them up aloft. The strength of these ambitions stimulates the air--you may note this effect in any of the courts at Cambridge. One remembers, also, that in most cases Fame, however persistently wooed, continues to dangle the silent trumpet; while Fortune, however passionately invoked, refuses to turn the wheel; and that the resolution and determination of the petitioner go for nothing. One observes, also, that the courts of the colleges are paved with shattered resolutions, which make a much better pavement than the finest granite. One remembers, also, that there are found in the young man's college the Prig and the Smug, the Wallower, the Sloth, the Creeping Thing, and the Contented Creature. But pass across the road to the Woman's College. Heavens! what possibilities are there! What ambitions are hers! For her field is not man's field, though some pretend. Not hers to direct the throbbing engine, and make that thing of steel a thing of intelligence; not hers to command a fleet; not hers to make the laws. She does not construct lighthouses; she does not create new sciences; she does not advance the old; she never invents, nor creates, nor advances; she receives,