versities, and other educational movements. There is a most
interesting chapter in the report of the Endowed Schools Commission of
1868 on girls' schools, and some valuable evidence collected by the
Assistant Commissioners. It is not ancient history yet, and therein lies
its great value to us. It shows us the evils from which we are only now
escaping in our High Schools: evils which still prevail to a formidable
extent in a large section of girls' education, and from which I can
scarcely imagine Bath is wholly free.

The report speaks of the general indifference of parents to the
education of their girls in our whole upper and middle class, both
absolutely and relatively to that of their boys. That indifference in
part remains. There was a strong prejudice that girls could not learn
the same subjects as boys, and that even if they could, such an
education was useless and even injurious. That prejudice still survives,
in face of facts.

The right education, it was thought, for girls, was one of
accomplishments and of routine work, with conversational knowledge of
French. The ideal of a girl's character was that she was to be merely
amiable, ready to please and be pleased; it was, as was somewhat
severely said by one of the Assistant Commissioners, not to be good and
useful when married, but to _get_ married. There was no ideal for single
women. They did not realize how much of the work of the world must go
undone unless there is a large class of highly educated single women.
This view of girls' education is not yet extinct.

Corresponding to the ideal on the part of the ordinary British parent
was, of course, the school itself. There was no high ideal of physical
health, and but little belief that it depended on physical conditions;
therefore the schools were neither large and airy, nor well provided
with recreation ground; not games and play, but an operation known as
"crocodiling" formed the daily and wearisome exercise of girls. That
defect also is common still. There was no ideal of art, or belief in the
effect of artistic surroundings, and therefore the schools were
unpretending even to ugliness and meanness. The walls were not
beautified with pictures, nor were the rooms furnished with taste. There
was no high ideal of cultivating the intelligence, and therefore most of
the lessons that were not devoted to accomplishments, such as music,
flower-painting, fancy work, hand-screen making, etc., were given to
memory