envelopes, or stamps, and Mr. Grey would not give me any; in the second, knowing that she could really do very little for me, I was ashamed to make what might seem like an ill return for her kindness, by complaining of the condition of my home, when but for her I should have had no home at all.

In the meanwhile my MSS. began to accumulate on my hands. They were written on any old scrap of paper I could find. I should have sent them, in the hopes of earning a little money, to the editors of divers popular magazines, but those gentlemen were saved the trouble of perusing and returning them by the very considerate behaviour of my guardian, who informed his family in general, and me in particular, that postal correspondence was one of the most dangerous and idle habits that a person could acquire, and that however much we might petition for stamps, he would be compelled-owing partly to the reduced state of his income, coupled with the great number of existing demands on his purse-to meet our supplications with a flat refusal.

At last the secret of the extraordinary change that had taken place in my guardian's conduct oozed out.

One day, when her husband had been more than usually bearish, Mrs. Grey endeavoured to comfort me. I then learnt that the sum which Lady Darlington was able to afford for my maintenance was considerably less than that which had been allowed in times past by my uncle. In plain language, Mr. Grey was not satisfied with what my aunt gave him; but still, owing to the chronic embarrassment of his circumstances, he was scarcely in a position to forego the small monetary advantage he derived from it. Thus he made a profit out of me, and regarded me as a dead loss at the same time. I foresaw that my future career would hardly be one of unalloyed happiness.

THE MAIDEN AT THE WELL.

A FACE SO pure no gaze can vex,

Nor more confuse those eyes,

Than stars which learn from lowly streams
Their beauty in the skies.

No heart for love, what earth calls love,
No hopes, no yearnings vain :

No thoughts but come from holy things,
Then wander back again.

A life which is so calm and fair
That little is to tell :

Her history lies within our hearts

The Maiden at the Well.

REA.

TO THE ALPS.

ETERNAL hills, in your sublime abode

The soul goes forth untrammelled, and apart From little self expands and learns of God.

There it forgets awhile the busy mart

Where strength, heart, life, are joined with cunning art
To common currency; forgets the strife

For gold, place, power, and fame; the bitter smart

Of disappointment, pain, and sorrow rife,

Where poor frail nature treads the thorny paths of life.

Ye are unsullied by the " serpent's trail"

Of sin and death, with all their weary woes;

And ye do minister within the veil

Of an eternity that never knows

The changes of decay. Time overthrows

Man's proudest glory; but his hand has striven

In vain to mar your beauty; as ye rose

When form and light to the young earth were given,

With your white brows ye stand by the closed gates of heaven.

COMMONPLACE PAPERS.

BY A WOMAN.

66 THE WOMAN OF THE PERIOD."

No. II.

PASSING on to the evils of the defective system of training for women, I begin my second paper with rather a sweeping assertion; but I make it "subject to all exceptions." The school-teaching of girls in England is very inefficient; the school-training is very defective, the principle of it is instruction without education. A certain amount of "English branches," with "foreign languages, music and drawing," is gone through. The pupils do their "music;" do their "English branches;" do their "foreign languages;" and when they have done them, they do not altogether understand what they have been doing. The process has had the effect of making them believe that they have learned a good deal. They have certainly gone through a good deal, but the ordinary result of their labour is similar to Mr. Toots' knowledge, which was like ill-arranged luggage-so tightly packed that he never could get at anything he wanted.

We want, we greatly want, properly trained women as instructors and educators. When we remember to whom the education of most of the girls in England is entrusted, whether brought up at school or under governesses at home, can we wonder at the results? The scantily educated daughters of poor gentry, who have to earn their bread; the daughters of an inferior class, to whom it is a rise in their condition to be associated with the families they enter; to these, some who have been brought up to the work on defective principles, and who gradually work themselves up to being the heads of boarding-schools, managing to keep up an appearance with undiscriminating parents-and you will have a large proportion of the instructresses of the daughters of England. None of these do we blame; they are honestly gaining their livelihood to the best of their ability. But we deplore that they are so utterly unfit for the work they have in hand.

Nevertheless, teachers are not wholly to blame in the matter; parents are equally guilty of producing this superficial system of education. Take, for instance, music. Few parents are willing that their children shall be kept to scales and exercises and studiesthey want them to "play tunes." Any nursery governess can teach them scales. "What," they argue, "is the use of paying for music if there is not something to show for it? Drawing meets with a similar argument. Parents are dissatisfied if their children are kept to straight lines, curves, cubes, ovals, &c., &c. "We expect them to draw landscapes," say the parents. The teachers, who have to make a living, give way; and the result is, a series of cramped houses, and frilled trees; or, worse, a series of excellent drawings "mounted" so skilfully by the drawing-master that the pupils fail to recognize their own handiwork, though the parents believe them to be the talented productions of their talented offspring.

And so through the various branches of knowledge. Parents want to see an early show of blossom; so they sacrifice the plant in order, by hot-house pressure, to produce for a short season an ephemeral bloom—the girl has been drilled into the performance of half a dozen "company pieces;" or she can show to admiring (?) visitors some half dozen of the skilfully "mounted" drawings: but when the glory of these is faded, her day is over. She does not understand how to learn a piece without the master; she does not know, when removed from the sustaining prop of masters and mistresses, how to set about drawing the simplest object before her.

With regard to music and drawing, I will here remark, in parenthesis, that much valuable time is lost in teaching either the one or the other to girls who have no taste for them. But then parents hold that a girl is not "finished" without accomplishments, and "music is such an amusement, and gives so much pleasure to others;" a sentiment from which I entirely differ. Music does not give pleasure unless it come from the heart of the performer. The best argument that can be advanced in favour of the music learned for society, is, that it promotes conversation.

There is also another difficulty with parents. Lord Lyttelton, in an excellent address, at one of our Social Science meetings, observed, that "the question of original stupidity was as puzzling to him as the question of original sin." Undoubtedly, there is a great deal of original stupidity" in the world; and if parents could only be persuaded, just for the sake of argument, to grant that a little of this original stupidity" might possibly be possessed by their children, it would often be of the very greatest advantage to them. But parents are apt to believe that their own geese are swans, and that it wants only a little skill on the part of the teacher to develope these 41

VOL VIL

remarkable creatures into geniuses of the first order. Teachers and parents alike are led to overlook the great primary demand in education that of disciplining and preparing the mind to receive and to grasp knowledge. Teachers believe that their great duty is to convey learning, instead of training their pupils to acquire learning for themselves. They overlook the fact that to teach a girl how to learn half-a-dozen lines is of far more value than to teach her to repeat fifty pages by rote.

Lord Lyttelton, in one of his addresses on education, said that "it was well for a boy to learn something that was distasteful to him." It is equally well for a girl to do the same. There is no discipline so good for the mind as to learn something that is difficult of attainment; and that one must exercise one's powers in order to understand, is a truth that must be learned and applied bit by bit. I speak from experience, and one's own experience is a very strong rock to give one argument-ground, though I am quite aware that it is the last thing that any one else is willing to profit by. Still, I believe that in this paper I cannot better plead the cause of the kind of training which I think most valuable, than by giving my own testimony as to its efficacy.

At the age of eleven or twelve I was fortunate enough to have for my instructress a most judicious lady, who advocated for my sister and myself the learning of the Latin grammar, “not,” said she, "that they will probably ever make much progress in Latin, but because it will give them some trouble to learn the grammar thoroughly." So we learned it bit by bit, line by line; and, what was more, it was so well explained to us that we understood it! Never was a new bit learned until the old was completely conquered. And so it came to pass, that at one period I could say the whole of the Latin grammar from beginning to end, scarcely making a mistake. As far as Latin itself was concerned, I did not progress far; I got through a few chapters of Cæsar and part of the first book of Virgil, and my labours were at an end. But the discipline I never regretted; it did me more good than the acquisition of a much greater amount of knowledge would ever have done.

I had been learning ever since I was four or five years old; and when I was placed with this wise lady I supposed that I had quite done with English grammar and the first rules of arithmetic, but great was my mortification when I found I had to begin both again from the very beginning, just as if I knew nothing at all. In arithmetic especially I remember feeling quite crestfallen (after having done sums for several years), to find myself set down to add up an addition sum of a single row of figures!