inherited his inborn genius, she being by far the more gifted of the parents-a woman of high spiritual faculty ' and worth.'

But there is yet a fiercer and more sweeping charge against all those women who have joined the movement for 'the higher education' which it is impossible to leave unnoticed, the rancour of which, coming, as it does, from one of their own sex, it is hard to understand.

They (says Mrs. Lynn Linton), wishing to reorganise society according to their own desires, have thrown off all sense of discipline in their own lives, and the once feminine virtues of devotion, patience, self-suppression, and obedience, as so much finery of a decayed and dishonoured idol !'

To so grave and astounding a charge as this it is not for us to reply, though we may venture to commend to the maker of it certain gracious words from the cover of the 'Girton Review '

Γυναικές εσμεν, φίλοφρον ἀλλήλαις γένος

whose happy message does not seem as yet to have reached her. It is not for us to defend the founders of Girton against such an accusation as that just quoted. They are well able to speak for themselves. Their cause is now fully before the world, and the life, work, and tone of girl graduates at Oxford and Cambridge and elsewhere must speak to the world as only facts can speak. There is certainly no necessary or natural connexion between the odious class of women who plunge into the excitement of politics and who appear on platforms with the exaggerated fury of party passion and extravagant opinions, and those who are trained in a better and wiser school by the culture of literature, art, or science.

Meanwhile we pause for a moment by the way, to enforce one point which the advocates of the higher education of women seem to treat as a question of secondary importance, and that is the question of marriage. It may be true, as statistics warn us, that a considerable number of the present generation of marriageable women cannot enter the happy state of matrimony. But a very large majority of them will become wives and mothers. It is their destined vocation, for which they were created, are born, and intended by nature; for which they are specially fitted by a character and intelligence in some respects differing essentially from those of men. The highly educated class of women must, by the very nature of things, after all, only constitute a

comparatively small class; and even of these only a few will 'dwell apart as stars and be content.' The great body will have to live by the work of their hands, as well as that of their brains; and marriage is the centre to which all these will gravitate. The bearing, the nurture, and education of children, and the government of a household will become, and must become, to most women the great and absorbing duties of life, in discharging which they will not only find, but rejoice to find, springs of pure hope and pleasure, tenderness and deep love of priceless and lasting value, and at last all the treasures that lie hidden under the word 'home.' This we take to be the keystone of the whole arch of woman's education, of which no true educator can possibly afford to lose sight.

That these girls' colleges are as yet only in their infancy, and on their trial, that some of their works and ways are marked by dashes of flippancy and feminine caprice, or of petty triumph at their success, is apparent at a glance. One lady, for example, who figures as our own London correspondent,' soars into a perfect rhapsody of exultation at the result of some recent London University examinations, in " which the women students had beaten the men out of time 'altogether. I am ashamed,' she adds, 'at the amount of crow'ing my soul insists on perpetrating. It begins to look as if men, after all, were the inferior sex; and reminds me of 'the first girl examined for a degree at one of the American 'colleges.' The examiner, it seems, set for translation a passage from the Antigone,' in which comes the phrase, Seeing, then, that we are women, ought we not to be modest, and not try to compete with men?' In dealing with these words, knowing herself to be far ahead of all the 'men in the class,' this audacious girl introduced into her paper the following dash of retort: Seeing, then, that we are men, ought we not to be ashamed of being vanquished by a woman?' What effect this had on the mind of the examiner we are not informed, but our own correspondent's share in the matter belongs to the order of hysterical highfaluting, at which the enemy will exult, but of which Girton will do well to keep utterly free.

6

As to the simple results of the London University examination itself, they show some striking figures. For the matriculation examination there were eleven hundred candidates-150 women, 950 men. Of these, 100 women passed to 515 men-i.e. two-thirds in the one case to little more than a half in the other. Nor is this all, for in the honour list

one-fifth were women, while one-ninth were men. Facts of this kind must speak for themselves, as evidence that the new régime is already bearing real fruit. It is early days as yet to speak of old University women, but some women are beginning already to talk of Alma Mater,' and to claim for past students a share in that subtle charm which many an Oxford and Cambridge man attaches to college life, and looks back upon with pride and pleasure. And, so far, all may be well. But, if women would win for themselves a true place, and prove themselves indeed worthy of it, it must be by utterly abjuring all such trashy nonsense as 'crowing at success, however earnestly their soul may long for that masculine accomplishment. Nothing can be gained by flippant outcries of gratulation, or shouts of Evye, Evye, over every morsel of success; far less by screaming

'Fœmineo generi cedere cuncta decet.'

If the destiny of woman be in any degree to regenerate the coming age, and to infuse into a race yet unborn a nobler, more gracious, and less sordid spirit than that of the present era, there is but one pathway to success. Women must win their way, maintain and hold it, dauntless to the end, not by trying to become men, but by being more than ever women-women in the truest sense-by self-respect, discipline, and self-restraint, by search for the truth, by purity of aim, by faith in all goodness, and by the radiance of a spotless life. The fight may be no easy one; the victory will be certain, final, and complete. If they need encouragement by the way, let them take it from the Laureate's words:

We turn now to another section of our subject which at all events shows how widely the movement for higher and more systematic education has stirred even the quiet domains of home life. Within the last few years there have suddenly started up into active life some sixty or seventy Girls' Clubs,' or Reading Societies,' scattered here and there through the country, for the express purpose of encouraging habits of regular, diligent study. The founder, in each case a private lady, draws up the rules, and acts as president or secretary, carrying on the correspondence with the various

members. These societies are alike in aim and general management, so that one will serve as a type of the rest. The Utopians,' for example, pledge themselves to read, for one hour per diem, some standard book (English or foreign) of science, art, history, biography, philosophy, travels, or essays, not after 10.30 P.M. Novels, magazines, and poetry do not count. The session lasts for about six months, and a fine of 1d. is incurred for every quarter of an hour omitted, or 2d. for a whole day of idleness. The entrance fees and fines all go towards providing prizes, which are awarded in exact proportion to each member's freedom from fines. Every girl is bound to send in a monthly account of her total work, and every wasted hour-for which her bare word is accepted. Essay clubs, and magazine societies, as their name implies, produce essays, poems and stories, criticisins, and paintings, all of which are examined and weighed by an appointed judge with full power to reward or condemn. In a similar fashion, other clubs devote themselves to languages, quotations, handwriting, early rising, music, etching, skating, &c., as Miss Caulfield explains in her useful little handbook, 'The Girls' Directory.'

It may be that from such societies as these no great, immediate, practical result is visible, or to be expected; but their general tendency is in a right direction, and it is no small good if they lead girls, after leaving school, into regular habits of industry, discipline, and economy of time, as well as to a higher range of literature than the trash of modern novels and the dregs of Mudie's catalogue. For 'the choice of books, for leisure time, is more or less the choice of our education, of a moral and intellectual ideal. If any girl kept a true register of all the printed stuff she consumes in a year, all the fugitive trifling about silly things and empty people, memoirs of the immemorable, and lives of those who never really lived at all, what a mountain of rubbish would be the issue!'

If, as statistics tell us, there are upwards of fifty thousand girls in England, of the middle class, between the ages of fifteen and eighteen years, the question of what kind of books and of literature is provided for their especial benefit is one of vital importance. Taken as a whole, and when compared with that provided for boys of the corresponding class, it cannot be regarded otherwise than as meagre and

* For still further information as to women's work, of all kinds, vide the Englishwoman's Year-Book' for 1887, an admirable

summary.

unsatisfactory. There is no one special periodical or journal, no one set of books, worthy of the name or of the cause. They have no Jules Verne, nor Ballantyne, nor Stevenson, nor Rider Haggard. It will be said, no doubt, they have Walter Scott, both poetry and prose, Shakespeare, Charles Lamb's Tales, the Lives of Famous Women, and innumerable handbooks of history. But all these belong more or less to the genus of schoolbooks, given as prizes at the yearly examination, and therefore apt to be regarded as tasks. Even Walter Scott-alas that it should be so !-is sometimes counted as old-fashioned, ponderous, and unexciting by the modern schoolgirl. She shares in the common craving for something more racy and sensational-more like what her brother rejoices in after school, when Monte "Cristo,' or 'King Solomon's Mines,' keeps him a willing prisoner by the fireside, and makes him forget the very existence of the Latin primer. Her books are, for the most part, mawkish and sad in tone, deficient in backbone, and full of pictures of life, where most of the virtuous people die young, because they are too good to live, and most of the wicked, because they are too naughty to escape death. It is, however, a false and narrow view of literature to suppose that a class of books must be called into existence for a particular class of readers. The great landmarks of literature are common to all. Life is too short for us to make acquaintance with half the books which every well-educated person ought to know, and the first condition of a vigorous mind is to drink deep at the fountains of knowledge and truth.

As for the sorrows, miseries, and evils of real life, the sudden deaths of heroes and heroines, and the manifold calamities of this naughty world, soon enough in all conscience will women become practically acquainted with the sad mystery in all its bitterness, and find out that, incomprehensible or not, it must be faced and endured. Time enough for that when it comes. Meanwhile, a schoolgirl's life in these days of eternal cramming, over-pressure, and competitive examinations has need to be made strong with eager and bright hope-hope in the present, hope for the future. What fiction she has-and have it she must and will-should be of the best possible kind, radiant with the vigour, grace, and sparkle of truth and beauty. And these are especially to be found in the great poets and dramatists of England, Italy, Germany, and France. It is pitiful to waste the best hours of life on paltry and trivial publications.