ment.

There seems to be as yet no body of opinion formed out of the floating mass, unanimous enough to be authoritative and competent to pronounce upon what branches of study are in themselves most worthy, what are most useful as educational instruments, what proportion of time should be allotted to each, and the many other complicated questions which must be answered before a perfect scheme of education can be produced. When that happy discovery shall at last have been made, it will probably be found also that the same course is, in the main, the best for both boys and girls, the object being substantially the same, that of awakening and strengthening and adorning the human spirit. That this great work should at least be well begun during the period allotted to secondary instruction, is especially necessary in the case of women, because with this first stage their education ends. I do not mean, of course, that a girl necessarily lays aside all study on leaving school, any more than a man does on taking his degree, but that the end of the school course is the same kind of educational terminus to a woman that

graduation is to a man. When a girl leaves school, her strictly professional studies assume a greater prominence. In using the word professional, I do not refer to any trade or business, but to the profession which absorbs the great majority of women, that of marriage. For this calling, some technical preparation is required. The amount cannot be great, as under existing social arrangements, a thorough acquaintance with needle-work and cookery-the very easiest of arts-includes I believe all the special knowledge required by the mistress of a household. But setting aside the question, whether it is desirable that the merely professional training should begin so early-"the second and finishing stage of a liberal education" being altogether omitted-it seems obvious enough, that if regular, methodical instruction is to cease at the age of eighteen, it is the more imperative that the culture, up to that period, should be wide and deep and humane in the highest possible degree. A man has some chance of making up at the university the deficiencies of his school training; or if he passes direct from school to business, there is a possibility that he may find in his daily work something of the mental and moral discipline that he needs. But a girl who leaves school unawakened, is not likely to be roused from her lethargy by anything in her home life. The dissipation to which, in the absence of any spur to wholesome activity, so many girls give themselves up, completes the deadening process begun at

school.

I have endeavoured to set forth, very imperfectly, but at least without exaggeration, some of the reasons for devoting to this subject more attention than has hitherto been bestowed upon it. Once again I would venture to urge, with the utmost insistance, that it is not a "woman's question." Let me entreat thinking men to dismiss from their minds the belief, that this is a thing with which they have no concern. They cannot help exerting a most serious influence upon it. Silence sometimes teaches more elo

quently than words, and while they refrain from giving encouragement, their apparent indifference damps and chills. The matter is in their hands, whether they choose it or not. So long as they thrust it aside, it will not come before the mind of the nation as worthy of serious thought. The Scriptural maxim, "That the soul be without knowledge is not good" will still be interpreted as applying to the souls of men only. We want to have the question settled. If the proposition, often enough vaguely affirmed, that the true greatness of a nation depends as much on its women as on its men, be anything more than a rhetorical flourish, let it be acted upon. Let it be accepted as a fact, if it be a fact, and if not, let it be contradicted and disproved, that in so far as education is worth anything at all, it is just as desirable for girls as it is for boys. We have little fear but that when once the question gets its fair share of consideration, something, and probably the right thing, will be done. Some efforts have indeed already been made, and so far as they have gone the results have been encouraging. In London, the ladies' colleges, in which men of the highest ability take part, have done much, not only within their own walls but by their influence over other teachers, to raise the standard and improve the tone of education generally. In the country, we have the school at Chantry, near Frome, founded in 1857 by Mr. Allen and Mr. Fussell-the training-school for governesses at Bolham, in Devonshire, where "teaching to teach" is made a prominent study-Miss Clough's school at Ambleside and others of greater or less importance, all steps in the right direction. But these isolated attempts require to be followed up. The provision of secondary instruction for girls is impeded by the usual hindrance, the want of funds. It is found very difficult to supply really good teaching on such terms as middleclass parents are able and willing to pay, and there is scarcely any assistance forthcoming in the shape of old endowments. The 547 ancient grammar schools scattered throughout England are, as is well known, almost entirely filled by boys. The other endowed schools, of which there are about 2,000, take in a much larger proportion of girls, but they are of the poorer class. The endowed schools which are attended by pupils of the upper and middle classes do not include girls. It may be a question for consideration whether some of these endowments might not, without much divergence from the intentions of the original donors, be used for the foundation of a few first-rate girls' schools, or in some other way be made available for the advancement of female education. At any rate, wherever a new institution, such for instance as the Albert Memorial School, in Suffolk, is being founded, it would seem reasonable to make a fair division of the funds, of course taking into consideration any special local circumstances. Again, where we have a St Nicolas' College, or a first-rate proprietary school, for boys, let there be some corresponding foundation for girls. Let schemes of examination and inspection designed to raise the character of boys' schools be extended to girls also. In a word, let female education be

encouraged let it be understood that the public really cares whether the work is done well or ill-and the minor practical questions will ere long find for themselves a satisfactory solution.

On the Proposed Examination of Girls of the Professional and Middle Classes. By the REV. J. P. NORRIS. OUR attention has been lately called to this subject by a circular of the London Committee formed to promote the admission of girls to the university local examinations. The formation of this committee for such a purpose and the general attention which the subject has received of late in our magazines and journals, are significant facts indicating a want, and (what is more) the consciousness of that want on the part of those whom it most concerns. The higher education of girls is not what it ought to be; and women are themselves convinced of it. Nor need this backwardness of girls' education excite surprise. It was only in the last generation that England began to be ashamed of the dead low water in which, for a whole century or more, education of all kinds had been stranded. Slowly the tide of public opinion was seen to rise. The first to be floated into more intellectual life were the two ancient universities. Twenty years later our great public schools were launched on a career of reform not yet completed. During another twenty years the rising flood swept over the parishes of the land, and our elementary dayschools were reorganised. Quite lately the tidal wave of improvement has been trying to force its way into the great Mediterranean of middle-class schools so long closed to it. What wonder if now at length, and not till now, we see it rippling into the narrow creeks and shallow bays in which the education of our sisters and daughters has, wisely or unwisely, been hitherto secluded?

It is doubtless to the privacy and retirement of girls' education that its comparative backwardness is to be ascribed. Wherever circumstances have brought it forward into the light of day, it has quickly appropriated and profited by all the best influences of the age. The measure of success which has attended the classes at Queen's College in Harley Street, and the Ladies' College in Bedford Square; and still more strikingly the efficiency of those highly organised institutions-the like of which no other nation can as yet show our training colleges for schoolmistresses, afford evidence how capable of improvement is this feminine side of national education.

Let any one who wishes to be convinced of the inferiority of the private education now for the most part given to our girls, especially those of the middle classes, visit these training colleges, and contrast what he will there find with what goes on in his own schoolroom at home, or in the boarding school to which he may have sent his daughters. In the training colleges he finds all the methods and

appliances which the latest experience has suggested; an apparatus and a literature which their own intelligent requirements may be said to have created; animated collective lectures alternated with silent study; oral instruction with written reproduction; a staff of teachers who have not only much mental cultivation, but also professional skill in developing the intelligence of those whom they teach; and, above all, the results of this teaching frequently tested and fixed by a searching and thorough-going system of examination.

It may be very safely asserted, and without any imputation of blame when all the circumstances are taken into account, that in our own daughters' schoolrooms or boarding schools we should find little or nothing of all this. We should find highly accomplished most painstaking governesses; here and there an apt pupil advancing rapidly under their care. But, as a rule, a very small amount of professional skill, an inferior set of schoolbooks, a vast deal of dry uninteresting task-work, rules put into the memory with no explanation of their principles, no system of examination worthy of the name; a very false estimate of the relative value of the several kinds of acquirement, a reference to effect much more than to solid worth; a tendency to fill or adorn rather than to strengthen the mind. Many of our best governesses would be among the first to confess the truth of this contrast. How should they, with their limited sphere of opportunities, compete with those professionallytrained teachers? How few of our governesses-how few of the teachers in our girls' boarding schools-have had any kind of specific training for their work! And if more of them had it how very few parents would value them one whit the more on that account! Here, in truth, in the parent far more than in the teacher, lies the blame. In any reform there is much more hope of having the teachers than of having the parents on our side.

How, then, are we to reach the parents? How are we to open their eyes generally to the worthlessness of mere accomplishment as a means of mental training? It is to be done in three ways:-first by the discussion of the subject in such meetings as this, and in our periodical literature; secondly and chiefly, by a judicious and very carefully organised system of examination, conducted by some body of examiners whose reports will at once carry weight and authority; and lastly, by the silent but surely progressive influence of example.

With regard to the first-the public discussion of the subject; where the matter itself is so delicate, and where the sensibilities of the public are naturally so susceptible, it is most important that it should be treated simply, modestly, and practically; any declamation, or mere theory, or admixture of what may be called ulterior matter, will only damage the cause. An essay or an address that began with a comparison of the intellectual powers, or of the social status of men and women respectively, would do nothing but harm; would set all the more sensible of the public dead against us.

Whereas a writer or speaker who fastened on some particular bloton arithmetic, for instance, in which it is admitted on all hands that girls are very defectively instructed-and proceeded to teach us how to mend the defect, would do great good, would be far more likely to arrest and conciliate the attention of parents, and so lead on to further reform.

Some, however, there are who speak with a weight of authority on this subject that none will venture to gainsay. All sensible people will listen with deference, when a man like Professor Faraday tells us that the credulity which ascribes to supernatural influences the thaumaturgic tricks of table-turning, spirit-rapping, second sight, and the like, argues an amount of ignorance, and a confusion of thought, which would be ridiculous if they were not so deplorable. Parents will hearken with anxiety when men of the highest medical eminence-like the late Sir Benjamin Brodie-tell us that very much of the hysteria and hypochondria of women is due to the want of a more invigorating discipline of the mind in early life. Economists and philanthropists will admit the logic of our statistics, which reveal hundreds of thousands of women compelled to earn their livelihood at unfairest disadvantage, owing to the incompleteness and inaccuracy of their education. A homely proverb often goes further than all the reasoning in the world; and A man is what a woman makes him," is a truth that might well (one would think) lead us to consider very seriously the quality of the education that we are giving to the mothers of the next generation.

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In an age of free inquiry, and almost boundless mental activity, it behoves us to remember a fact which history most surely teaches, that the moral and spiritual progress of mankind has ever been the healthiest when mothers, wives, and sisters have been the intellectual companions of their sons, their husbands, and their brothers. Two such periods, notably, England has seen; the Elizabethan age, and the present. In both it was her good fortune to be governed by a woman of great intellectual power and statesmanlike training. Such example in such high place did not fail three hundred years ago, and is not now failing to stimulate the women of England. The age of Elizabeth produced Lady Jane Grey, whose knowledge of Greek so delighted the venerable Ascham; Sir Anthony Cook's four illustrious daughters, one, the mother of Bacon, another, the wife of Burleigh; that "subject of all verse, Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother;" the blighted Mary of Scotland; the Killigrews, famous through three successive generations; and many others; a constellation of women such as we have rarely seen, who far more largely than is supposed influenced the destiny of this nation. Let us hope -we have already good ground to hope that our present age will be similarly distinguished. But much has yet to be done to remove the unreasonable prejudices which a hundred and fifty years of indifference to woman's mental culture have ingrained in modern public opinion. And as was before said, the more quietly, and