sent as well as in the past centuries.

In the British Museum there is a curious manuscript of the fourteenth
century, afterwards translated "into our maternall englisshe by me
William Caxton, and emprynted at Westminstre the last day of Januer, the
first yere of the regne of King Richard the thyrd," called "the booke
which the Knight of the Towere made for the enseygnement and teching of
his doughtres."

The Knight of the Tower was Geoffory Landry, surnamed De la Tour, of a
noble family of Anjou. In the month of April, 1371, he was one day
reflecting beneath the shade of some trees on various passages in his
life, and upon the memory of his wife, whose early death had caused him
sorrow, when his three daughters walked into the garden. The sight of
these motherless girls naturally turned his thoughts to the condition of
woman in society, and he resolved to write a treatise, enforced by
examples of both good and evil, for their instruction. The state of
society which the "evil" examples portray might well cause a father's
heart to tremble.

The education of young ladies, as we have before stated, was in that age
usually assigned to convents or to families of higher rank. It consisted
of instruction in needle-work, confectionery, surgery, and the rudiments
of church music. Men were strongly opposed to any high degree of mental
culture for women; and although the Knight of the Tower thinks it good
for women to be taught to read their Bibles, yet the pen is too
dangerous an instrument to trust to their hands. The art of writing he
disapproves,--"Better women can naught of it." Religious observances he
strictly recommends; but we shudder at some of the stories which even
this well-meaning father relates as illustrations of the efficacy of
religious austerities. Extravagance in dress prevailed at that time
among men and women to such a degree that Parliament was appealed to on
the subject in 1363. From the Knight's exhortations on the subject, this
mania seems to have affected the women alarmingly, and the examples
given of the passion for dress appear to surpass what is acknowledged in
our day. Yet the vast increase of materials, as well as the extended
interests and objects opened to woman now, renders the extravagance of
dress in the Middle Ages far less reprehensible.

The record of woman's work in the Middle Ages includes far more than the
account of what her needle accomplished. The position of the mistress of
a fam