Henceforth the management was vested in members of the college, with a Council elected from the number and a President, to be called the Visitor. This office has been held successively by Erasmus Darwin, Mark Pattison, and Miss Anna Swanwick. Bedford, like Queen’s, was happy in its founders, but to none does it owe more than to Miss Bostock. After Mrs. Reid’s death she took over the care of the college as a sacred trust, devoting to it the greater part of her time, and helping it with money and good counsel. Happily she lived to see the fruit of her labours, and to know that Bedford College had won an assured position through its connection with the London University. Its beginnings, like that of most women’s institutions, had to be tentative. The first lectures probably had a more popular character than those now given; and since they aimed rather at general culture than a systematic course of study, Literature, History, and Language would draw the largest audiences. But from the very first Latin, Science, and Mathematics were taught, and the college remembers with due pride that George Eliot was a member of its earliest Latin class. At any rate the promoters were quite sure of their aims. The daring words, ‘a liberal education for women,’ had been uttered without extenuation or apology. But in those days Bedford College stood alone, with no academic body to test its work and direct its curriculum. Nor was public opinion yet fully ripe for a real University education for women. Bedford had to wait another ten years before the opening of the London degrees came to fix its position and define its studies. They were not wasted years. The college was giving numbers of intelligent and eager girls their first insight into real knowledge, and teaching them to be dissatisfied with narrow, cramping instruction. Many of them have gone out into the world to hand on the impulse and inspiration gained here, and help to influence that public opinion which alone has made admission to the Universities possible. In 1874 the college was helped by a move to better premises. When in 1879 London opened its degrees to women, the opportunity of Bedford had come, and it was ready to use it. From this date onward its history belongs to that of Women’s University Education.