THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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not be compelled in pursuit of learning to have recourse to foreign orations or to beg in other lands. Boniface VIII. established the University of Rome for the special benefit of poor foreign students, sojourning at the capital.

In the course of centuries, however, social changes, not necessary to trace here, gradually eliminated this principle of democracy, and the throngs of students of all grades, ages and nationalities ceased to gather, and the universities no longer reached the people. The old conditions have never been restored. .Learning is again impris­oned, this time not in the monasteries, but in the universities themselves. There are now barriers at their gates which exclude all but a favored few. To the masses these barriers are impassable. One of these barriers is the long and exhaustive preparation that must be made, and which only the few can undertake. Another barrier is that of age, only the young being now thought eligible as students. The continuity of work required is another barrier, for only the few can give such attendance; while still another insuperable obstacle is the lack of money to defray the large expense that residence at the university in our time involves. These are among the chief causes which have so diminished the number of students, and which have practically excluded the masses from the pursuit of knowledge under any competent guidance.

History is repeating itself. The popular need which anciently demanded that learning be brought out of the cloister, now requires that it be brought out of the university. The people can no longer go in crowds to the universities; therefore, we must bring the university instruction to the people.

Out of this need, which has now for many reasons become imperative, has grown the work which we call University Extension. It is nothing less than a revolution which will be as fruitful in intellectual results, as religious and political revolutions have been in their respective fields. We have today religious and political freedom, but both are practically useless without the trained and enlightened intellect. Uni­versity Extension, the emancipation of the popular mind, becomes therefore the com­plement of the liberties already won. The universities are now called to minister, as in early times, not to a class, but to all the people. And since the people, on account of the social and economic conditions of the times, can no longer go to the university, we must take the university to the people. That the people are intellectually hungry is manifest from the great number of study classes and clubs, for the most part under inefficient leadership, which have in recent years sprung into existence everywhere. And that the people are ready for the University Extension movement is abundantly shown by the large number who hasten to avail themselves of its aid.

The first lectures were given by professors of Cambridge University, England, in 1873, in response to the request of a company of women, that they might have the privi­lege of listening to lectures by the university instructors. Other courses followed, and the work has increased in extent and popularity up to the present time. Oxford University entered upon the active work in 1878. The annual reports show a steady growth of interest and attendance. There are now more than one hundred and fifty lecture centers, at each of which several courses of lectures are annually delivered. These courses are upon any and every subject upon which the university gives instruc­tion. The topic is in all cases determined by vote of the class desiring to attend and study. At first courses in history and literature were most popular, but recently the choice of subjects has taken a very wide range. At a recent summer school of Uni­versity Extension students at Oxford, there were classes in the Constitutional History of England, in practical chemistry and geology, in geographical mapping, in Homer’s Odyssey, in Herodotus, in Dante, in Gothic architecture with illustrative excursions, in instrumental astronomy, and many other subjects. A center composed of working men in one of the manufacturing districts has been engaged in the study of the classical novel. They were studying George Eliot’s “ Romola ” when the report was made. A course of six lectures on the Bible was given at Newcastle-upon-Tyne to immense audiences of iron workers. Courses upon electricity, agriculture, mining, social science and art, are also among the subjects commonly chosen.