In England, on the contrary, I think we often sacrifice our girls'good to the selfish pleasure of keeping them with us, making the girls'education the excuse. Broadly speaking, it is far better for a woman to be strong, healthy, intelligent, observant, and, above all, adaptable to the changes and chances of this mortal life, than that she should be well educated. Intelligence is no doubt inborn, a gift that belongs to no class; bad health may injure it, but no higher education will ever give it to those who are without it, nor will it ever make what I consider the ideal woman.

The longer I live, the more I believe that a woman's education, if she has not to learn some special trade, should be awakening and yet superficial, teaching her to stand alone and yet not destroying her adaptability for a woman's highest vocation, if she can get it-which is, of course, marriage and motherhood.

The word superficial, its dictionary synonym being shallow, is one that will, I fear, be a rock of offence to many; and yet I know none better. Mr. Morley, in his lecture on Popular Culture, expresses what I mean when he says: 'What I should like to see would be an attempt to compress the whole history of England into a dozen or fifteen lectures-lectures, of course, accompanied by catechetical instruction. I am not so extravagant as to dream that a short general course of this kind would be enough to go over so many of the details as it is desirable for men to know; but details in popular instruction, though not in the study of the writer or the University professor, are only important after you have imparted the largest general truths. It is the general truths that stir a life-like curiosity as to the particulars which they are the means of lighting up.' That is what I mean by superficial teaching, something which gives a desire in the child or the girl to learn. Instead of boring her to death with what teachers consider the roots and foundations of knowledge, and which no child can understand or appreciate, I would strive to arouse curiosity, and trust that she would go deeper herself when the desire for knowledge came.

Mr. Morley goes on to say: 'Another point is worth thinking of, besides the reduction of history for your purposes to a comprehensive body of rightly grouped generalities. Dr. Arnold says somewhere that he wishes the public might have a history of our present state of society traced backwards. It is the present that really interests us; it is the present that we seek to understand and to explain. I do not in the least want to know what happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my way more clearly through what is happening to-day. I want to know what men thought and did in the thirteenth century, not out of any dilettante or idle antiquarian's curiosity, but because the thirteenth century is at the root of what men think and do in the nineteenth. Well, then, it cannot be a bad educational rule to start from what is most interesting, and to work from that outwards and backwards.'

I mourned a good deal in my own youth over the fact that I had been very badly educated, and this certainly stimulated me, at a period when time was wanting, to do what I could for myself. But on looking back over the last thirty-five years-and speaking again, of course, only from my own very limited experience-I should say that all the women who have done best in life among my married kinsfolk and acquaintances were those who were most superficially and casually educated. Two women are known to me who have filled the highest positions admirably, who have been crowns of glory to their husbands, and have been universally recognised as women of the noblest type by all who have come in contact with them in many parts of the world. As children they were by no means exceptionally clever, and their regular governess education ceased at the extremely early age of twelve. They were left, with occasional masters, to learn what they could and improve themselves; but they had from their earliest years the great advantage of constantly moving about. Sometimes town, sometimes country, and often abroad, they were never in one place for six months at a time. Many parents are so afraid of making these breaks in the continuity of their girls' education, and-as is only human-the governesses and teachers are always against it. One of the disadvantages of classes and competitive education is that ambitious children themselves often object to their studies being broken into. But all the experience of moving about, the little hardships and privations that come even in our modern luxurious travelling, are an immense advantage and training to children, revealing their individual characters to their mother as no home life ever can. The impressions gained through the eyes and ears are incomparably more lasting and real than any information learnt from books.

Bad temper in children is a thing that, in my opinion, ought always to be treated with the utmost kindness, gentleness, tenderness, and consideration. It is generally a matter of health and nerves, and often may be, in some mysterious way, inherited from the mother's irritability during her pregnancy, which is caused very frequently by a feeling of dislike at having a child at all. Surely, then, this demands our utmost tenderness. I think that, in a family, the children with good and even tempers ought to be talked to in a way to make them understand that, if they tease and annoy the child with the hot temper, they are quite as much to blame as the irritable ones themselves. The even-tempered child generally means the indifferent one, and this in itself is an irritation to one who is excitable and highly strung. Thwarting and contradicting only do harm; love, tenderness, gentleness, and great attention to health may do good. In short, the true situation is revealed to us by the old Persian philosopher's prayer:-'O God ! be merciful to the wicked. To the good Thou hast already been sufficiently merciful in making them good.'