Anomalous as is their position, the students of Girton and Newnham have many and great advantages. For a comparatively low fee they receive all the advantages of a University education; they enjoy the manifold privileges that belong to residence in Cambridge, they may attend nearly all professorial and very many college lectures, their own colleges also provide excellent lecturing and coaching; and they may enter for any of the Tripos Examinations, and for those that lead to the degrees of Doc. and Bac. Mus. They have the advantage of life in beautiful buildings, with plentiful opportunities for recreation, exercise, and social intercourse, while the very fact of belonging to Girton or Newnham confers a certain prestige which is an advantage professionally and socially. However much we may desire the degree, and regret its indefinite postponement, it may yet safely be said that nowhere else can women obtain such advantages as at Cambridge. No anxiety need be felt about the future of the colleges. The success of their students, the influence their ‘graduates’ have had on the teaching profession, and the good work done by them in other fields, have amply justified the new departure. If success has come too quickly, public opinion may lag behind a few years longer. Meantime the work goes on.
At this period of their history it is no longer necessary to describe the colleges. Everybody who knows Cambridge is familiar with them. Both have increased greatly since their first beginnings. Girton has added fresh wings and a tower; changed its entrance and built a library which is full to overflowing. The trees have grown up around it and offer pleasant shade to summer tea-parties and afternoon loungers, the ‘woodland walk’ that encircles the grounds is gay at almost all seasons with pretty blossoms and flowering shrubs. Newnham has enlarged its first (Old) hall and built two new ones, called by names that will ever be held in honour, Clough and Sidgwick Halls. One library has been outgrown, and another—a generous gift—has been lately added; a road has been diverted allowing an addition to the grounds, and a fresh approach made under a tower gateway with beautiful iron gates presented by old students in memory of their first Principal. Girton has once more outgrown its accommodation, and is appealing for building funds. The colleges are growing both outwardly and in their aims. Not the least hopeful feature is the number of ‘graduate’ students who continue their studies in Cambridge or at one of the foreign universities, or devote to research or social problems that leisure and freedom from responsibility which women possess in a greater share than men. The founders have been abundantly justified in their resolve to establish no mere training-school for governesses, but to offer a wide and liberal education to all.