Even at the time of the Schools’ Inquiry Commission this question had been mooted, and a memorial had been sent up pointing out the want of a system of ‘instruction and discipline adapted to advanced students, combined with examinations testing and attesting the value of the education received.’ The report of the Commission and the discussion it aroused helped to give publicity to the proposal, and at last it was resolved to test the feasibility of the scheme by actual experiment. In 1867 a committee had been formed to consider the possibility of founding a college ‘designed to hold in relation to girls’ schools and home teaching a position analogous to that occupied by the universities towards the public schools for boys.’ It was resolved to try an experiment on a small scale, and proceed further as funds became available. At Hitchin, near Cambridge, a small house was hired for the six students who presented themselves, and in October 1869 they began the work prescribed to candidates for degrees by the University of Cambridge. Insignificant as these beginnings may seem, they were of momentous importance in the history of women’s education. The founders of this, the first women’s college in England, had to choose once for all between a women’s university, with its exclusive studies and degrees, and admission to the great universities of the country. The question of a women’s university debated and vetoed in 1897 had really been finally settled in 1870, when the first lady students requested and received permission to be examined in the papers set for the Previous Examination. The prospectus of the new college issued in the autumn of 1869 contained this clause: ‘The Council shall use such efforts as from time to time they may think most expedient and effectual to obtain for the students of the College admission to the examinations for the degrees of the University of Cambridge, and generally to place the College in connection with the University.’ This ambitious programme thus early laid down for the infant College must have provoked many smiles; and looking back now after the lapse of nearly thirty years, we hardly know whether to wonder most at the confidence placed by the founders in the hitherto untried abilities of girls or at the success which so abundantly justified their anticipations.