We have received two communications from " Lady-Visitors " with
reference to our criticisms last week on their functions and their influence on the Professors of Ladies' Colleges. In one of them a very eminent lady-visitor at one of the London Ladies' Colleges admits that there is truth in what we said, illustrating it by her own experience, as she herself had been both lectured at by one of the Professors, and, as we understood, even answered at by the girls. In the other letter, however, we are sternly reproved, and, to a certain extent, even cruelly threatened and placed in bodily fear by our fair, and, we will still say, with Christian generosity, our respected correspondent,—knock-down as are her expressions of wrath against the writer. She remarks with great justice that these lady-visitors "are self-denying women, who trudge through all weathers to fulfil their self-imposed duties in the great cause of education." But that is absolutely consistent with the tenour of our remarks. We threw no doubt on the disagreeableness of most London weather, and we asserted strongly the dis- agreeableness of listening to fragments of lessons of which both the antecedents and consequents were unknown. We threw no sort of ridicule on the persons of lady-visitors, but only on the Eng- lish prudery which renders the institution necessary, as we believe it still is. Our correspondent says that in one college they have been a check on a flirting professor, who went in for the display of his personal attractions. That is quite possible, but the girls would soon have reported his follies, if they had been left to them- selves. An ordinary class of girls is quite sensible enough for that. Wherever study is real, foreign Presences are in the way. Where it is unreal, the professor should be got rid of as soon as possible, for it must be his fault.
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