| <The Saturday Review, Dec. 15, 1855>
| <Lectures to Ladies on Practical Subjects>
| <pb n="116>
| It is now some time since a College for Working Men was 
| established at 31 Red Lion Square. The excellent persons 
| who originated and carried out the idea of this institution 
| had at first contemplated including the wives of working 
| men in the scheme, but this project was ultimately 
| abandoned in consequence of the many difficulties lying 
| in the way to its accomplishment. Still it seemed hard and 
| unjust, in the opinion of the founders of the College, that 
| women should be utterly shut out from the enjoyment of 
| the advantages offered to their husbands; and, after much 
| consideration and discussion of the subject, not only 
| amongst themselves, but also with the members of the 
| Men's College, who showed a strong wish that their wives 
| and sisters should be partakers of their advantages, a plan 
| was determined upon which appeared to them to be 
| feasible, and the nature of which is described at length by 
| Mr. Maurice in an address introductory to a series of 
| Lectures to Ladies on Practical Subjects delivered during 
| last spring.
| If a College for Working Women is to be set on foot, say 
| the projectors, it is necessary that there should be a body 
| of ladies, not only to superintend, but to take a direct part 
| in the education carried on there. But at the very outset a 
| difficulty presented itself. It is requisite to know, in order 
| to be able to teach ~~ to have, in order to communicate; 
| and the ladies who were consulted on the subject, and 
| requested to give their assistance, asserted that they were 
| called upon to perform a task for which they felt 
| themselves insufficient, and maintained that the proper 
| foundation of a College for Working Women would be 
| one in which they themselves should learn to teach. Now 
| it seems to us that, if such a preparation be really required, 
| it is the most painful and mortifying confession of 
| women's ignorance of their first and highest duties that we 
| have met with for a long time. If it were intended, in the 
| contemplated College, that ladies should teach the arts and 
| sciences, then, indeed we could understand that some 
| training might be required to fit them for their office; but 
| when we find that the objects aimed at are to impart a 
| knowledge of <p> "practical subjects" </p> ~~ to enable working 
| women to become better wives, and mothers, and nurses 
| ~~ we cannot but feel that if women in the higher ranks of 
| society are unable to teach these things from the 
| experience they ought to have gained in their own homes, 
| they will scarcely be able to do so from what they may 
| learn anywhere else. The knowledge they will acquire in a 
| College will be merely head, not heart-knowledge; and 
| however fruitful the soil in which they may afterwards 
| endeavour to implant the knowledge so obtained, the seed, 
| being barren, will fail to take root. If women only be what 
| St. Timothy would have them ~~ grave, not slanderers, 
| sober, faithful in all things, guiding their own houses well, 
| giving no occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully 
| ~~ if they be well reported of for good works, if they have 
| brought up children well, have lodged strangers, and 
| relieved the afflicted ~~ all which things may be learnt 
| and done at home ~~ we need not fear that they will 
| require the training of a college to teach them how to raise 
| those beneath them to a higher level. Such women ~~ and 
| all women ought to be such ~~ will know how to 
| sympathize with the trials of their poor, and the 
| temptations of their erring sisters; to lighten their burdens, 
| and to show them how to transform a house where 
| disorder and discontent and every evil passion have 
| dominion, into a home of order and peace and love ~~ a 
| real home for their husbands and their children. They 
| would not need to attend lectures to give them <p> "hints 
| respecting the care of health, the management of children, 
| the economy of the house, the keeping of accounts, 
| singing, what may be called domestic or practical ethics, 
| and lastly, the reading of the Bible" </p> ~~ these being the 
| <p> "main heads of instruction" </p> which Mr. Maurice believes 
| the working women to require, and to provide which he 
| proposes the institution of the Working Women's College.
| Again, looking at the matter in another point of view, it 
| seems very doubtful to us whether anything which draws 
| women away from their own firesides may not, in the end, 
| be more productive of harm than good. It is stated that the 
| lessons at the College must be given in the evening, 
| because at no other time can working women attend. How 
| may of these, we would ask, can or ought to leave their 
| homes at night? To whose care are they to commit the 
| children too young to accompany them? No! do not tempt 
| the working woman from her home; raise and instruct her 
| to the utmost of your power and of her capability, but let it 
| be at her own fireside. Visit her, we would say to the 
| ladies who are anxious to engage in so noble a work, in 
| her home, and try whether, sitting by her side, you will not 
| be able to teach her far more during a quiet half-hour's talk 
| than by a whole course of college teaching. Depend upon 
| it you will, if you are a good wife, and mother, and sister, 
| and daughter yourself, and if you possess that divine gift 
| of sympathy which makes the whole world gained of 
| intellectual things of which she is ignorant; he will prove 
| her best teacher ~~ a far more effectual one than you can 
| ever hope to become, however excellent may be your 
| intentions, however earnest your efforts. Establish lending 
| libraries rather than reading rooms. Give the working man 
| every facility for carrying on his studies at home, and do 
| not doubt but that he will make his wife and family 
| partakers in them.
| Far be it from us to speak disparagingly of any sincere 
| attempt to raise the character of the working classes. Yet 
| we cannot help looking with doubt on some of the ways in 
| which it is endeavoured to effect this object; and we must 
| ask whether more is not to be done by private efforts than 
| by public associations and colleges, into which it is very 
| difficult to prevent a doctrinaire spirit from gaining 
| admission, and which have a tendency to destroy 
| individuality in some degree by transforming the members 
| of them into parts of one great machine. They also run the 
| risk of unconsciously attaching a greater importance to the 
| work of the head than to that of the heart, forgetting that it 
| is by the heart alone ~~ heart appealing to heart ~~ that 
| anything great, good, or lasting has ever been 
| accomplished. Whilst, however, there is room for question 
| whether the scheme proposed by Mr. Maurice is likely to 
| produce the good he has in view, it is impossible to read 
| his lectures, or indeed any of those contained in the 
| volume before us, without feeling a large amount of 
| admiration and esteem for him and his friends.
| In conclusion, we have only to say that we do not by any 
| means consider that there are not practical subjects on 
| which women of the higher classes require more 
| instruction than they can obtain in their own homes. In this 
| respect, Lectures on Dispensaries, on Hospital practice, on 
| the State of the Law as it affects the Poor, on Sanitary 
| Law, <reg orig="&c.",> etcetera, </reg>
| will be highly valuable; we only 
| regret that, in addition to these, ladies should, by their own 
| admission, require to be taught about their "Every-Day 
| Work" by one dignitary of the church, and to have a 
| "Lecture on Words" administered to them by another. 
| Without a knowledge of these things, we confess that we 
| cannot understand how they manage to get through their 
| home duties for a single day with credit to themselves or
| advantage to their families.