INTRODUCTORY

LECTURES,

DELIVERED AT

QUEEN'S COLLEGE,

LONDON.

LONDON:

JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND.

M. DCCC. XLIX.

PREFACE.

THESE Lectures, with the exception of those on Language, Drawing, and Mathematics, were delivered in the course of last Spring. They express the views with which the teachers at Queen's College entered upon their Work. The tone of one must often differ from that of another; even opposite sentiments may possibly be found in them. They were composed without concert or supervision; each Lecturer felt that he was speaking to his Class, not to the Public. Nevertheless, the Committee which conducts the Education of the College believes that there is a unity of purpose in its Teachers, which is not affected by their individual feelings and modes of thinking, which would be much less real than it is, if they had aimed at an exact uniformity. They think that those who

have sent their children to the College, or are in doubt whether they should send them, ought to have an opportunity of knowing what the Lecturers mean; whether they have in any degree succeeded in carrying out their meaning, must be ascertained by other testimony than their

own.

The short Address at the end of the Volume does not properly belong to a set of Introductory Lectures. Why it has been added, will be understood by those who have read the Article on Governesses in the last number of the Quarterly Review. A writer, who cannot be regarded otherwise than as very friendly to the general objects of Queen's College, has hinted that the mode of examining Governesses, which the Committee have adopted, indicates a wish to exalt intellectual above moral qualifications. This charge, if it is true, cannot be too publicly proclaimed. Any institution, as the reviewer intimates, ought to be viewed with great suspicion which is possessed by a spirit so unenglish and unchristian. The intentions of the

Committee are exactly the reverse of those which have been imputed to them.

They have de

clined to give certificates respecting the general capacity of Governesses of whom they had no previous knowledge, because they felt that such certificates must be worthless; because they wished to discourage the practice of recommending any lady to do any work for which she had not proved her competency; because they wished to awaken in parents a sense of their tremendous responsibility, to seek for satisfactory evidence, that those to whom they commit their children possess the highest gifts of all. They thought that an examination honestly and kindly conducted, might help to save some Governesses from the sin of pretending to a knowledge which they did not possess, and some children from the moral evil of an unwholesome and insincere indoctrination. More than this it could not do. The regular teaching of a College ought to effect much more. What we suppose, it can effect, what are the limits of its influence, how it may