But when all the endowments hitherto made available are considered, the share of the girls is still far too small. In some counties there is hardly anything available for them. Against this disparity must be set the benefactions of recent years, many of which are specially meant for girls and women. The foundation of the City of London Girls’ School, by William Ward, in 1881, with an endowment of £20,000; the Pfeiffer Charity of £59,000, for the benefit of women’s education, the numerous scholarships given by city companies, the establishment of Holloway and Westfield Colleges, and of many other foundations for both sexes, belong to the twenty years between 1875 and 1895. If girls have lacked much in the past, they are inheriting the present. As the Charity Commissioners remarked, when reviewing a record of a quarter a century: ‘As to one particular branch of educational endowments, viz. that for the advancement of the secondary and superior education of girls and women, it may be anticipated that future generations will look back to the period immediately following upon the Schools’ Inquiry Commission, and the consequent passing of the Endowed Schools Act, as marking an epoch in the creation and application of endowments for that branch of education, similar to that which is marked for the education of boys and men by the Reformation.’ CHAPTER VI THE WOMEN’S COLLEGES The chief gain that this half-century has brought to women’s education is their admission to the universities. It is the key-stone of the arch, without which the rest of the fabric could have neither stability nor permanence. The schools look to them for their teachers and their standard, and gain thereby an element of fixity hitherto lacking. If boys’ education may be blamed for excessive conservatism, that of girls has suffered from extreme mobility. Since girls’ schools led nowhere, and acknowledged no outside guidance, their aim was perpetually changing, according to the ever-varying dictates of sentiment or expediency. Independent and unorganised, they lacked all connection with past and future; and it is this that the universities are now giving them.