If hers were a common nature
Women would all have wings.

"Talent she may not have,
Beauty, nor wit, nor grace,
But until she's among the angels
She cannot be commonplace."

There is something to remember: cultivate sympathy, gentleness,
forgiveness, purity, truth, love: and then, though you may have no other
gifts, "until you're among the angels, you cannot be commonplace."

And here I might conclude. But I should not satisfy myself or you, if I
did so without paying my tribute of genuine commendation to the High
School, and of hearty respect for the Head-mistress and her staff of
teachers. Clifton owes Miss Woods a great debt for the tone of
high-mindedness and loyalty, for the moral and intellectual stamp that
she has set on the School. She has won, as we all know, the sincere
respect and attachment of her mistresses and her old pupils; and the
older and wiser you grow the more you all will learn to honour and love
her. And you will please her best by thorough loyalty to the highest
aims of the School which she puts before you by her words and by her
example.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: An Address given at the High School, Clifton, Oct. 25,
1887.]

II.

HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION FOR GIRLS.

HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION FOR GIRLS.[2]

It is a real pleasure to find myself in Bath on an educational mission.
I have ancestral and personal educational connections with Bath of very
old standing. My father was curate of St. Michael's before I was born;
my grandfather and uncle were in succession head-masters of the Grammar
School here, fine scholars both, of the old school. My first visit to
Bath was when I was nine years old, and on that occasion I had my first
real stand-up fight with a small Bath Grammar School boy. I think that
if the old house is still standing I could find the place where we
fought, and where a master brutally interrupted us with a
walking-stick. Since those days, my relations with Bath have been rare,
but peaceful; unless, indeed, the honourable competition between Clifton
College and its brilliant daughter, Bath College, may be regarded as a
ceaseless but a friendly combat between their two head-masters whom you
see so peaceably side by side.

I propose, first, to say a few words about the condition of schools
twenty years ago, before the present impulse towards the higher
education of women gave us High Schools and Colleges at the
Uni