ays that the improvement of
female education is the most urgent question of the day. In France,
Mad. Kergomard has been elected a member of the Superior Council of
Public Instruction by a large majority.

In the London University this year, there were 340 successful
candidates, sixty-one of whom were ladies. They were rather more
successful than the men in gaining honors.

Emily S. Bouton says, "In England a society has been formed of young
women, some of them belonging to families of wealth and distinction.
Each member binds herself upon entering to learn some one thing,
whether art, profession or trade, so thoroughly, that if misfortune
comes she will be able to maintain herself by its exercise. It is the
beginning of a realization by women themselves, that for any work that
demands wages, there must be, not a superficial knowledge which is
sure to fail when the test is applied, but a training that will give
the mastery of all the faculties, and enable the worker to labor to a
definite purpose."

BAD SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS.--An Eastern correspondent of the St. Louis
Globe has been talking with a Sunday-school superintendent about the
bad books in the Sunday-school library, as follows:

"But that isn't all or the worst of it," continued the
superintendent. "Not long ago one of the teachers came to me and
said her faith in orthodoxy had been very much shaken, and she
did not know that she could conscientiously remain longer in the
school. Several of her class were also losing their confidence
in the old creed. She said this result had been reached by
reading one of the books in the Sunday-school library. It was
'Bluffton,' and was the account of how a young Presbyterian
minister had gradually been converted to rationalism, and had
finally taken his congregation with him over to liberalism. I
hunted up the work and read it. The author is Rev. Minot J.
Savage, the prominent and eloquent Boston Unitarian clergyman.
The book is a remarkable one, and even made me feel
uncomfortable, as hide-bound in Calvinism as I supposed I was.
Investigation showed that a score of our older scholars and
several of the teachers had been very much impressed by the
story, and had been talking the subject over. The book is all
the more effective because it is a faithful portrayal, so I
understand, of Mr. Savage's experience. How the book got into
our library I