MISCELLANEA.

PHYSICAL TRAINING OF GIRLS.-On Monday, the 11th ult., Miss Garrett delivered to the London Association of Schoolmistresses a lecture on the physical training of girls. Miss Garrett pointed out that physical training necessarily included all that related to the care of health, as well as to the development of strength and grace. The various points of ventilation, food, exercise, clothing, cleanliness, rest, and mental exertion, were all considered practically; also the difficulties in the way of accomplishing what is acknowledged to be right, and how best to overcome such difficulties, which are usually greater in schools than in private families. A considerable part of the lecture was occupied with the problem of ventilation. Miss Garrett demonstrated the inadequacy of the means commonly relied on for ensuring the ingress and egress of air, and described several of the better. methods either already partially in use, or which might be advantageously adopted. When speaking on the subject of cleanliness, Miss Garrett submitted a diagram of a lavatory, designed to secure sufficient bathing convenience for each pupil, with due regard to saving labour, litter, and expense. From this, the sleeping and other domestic arrangements came under consideration. Then food-variety of it as well as wholesomeness, and better organisation with regard to meals, rather than increased expense. Exercise to be varied, frequent, and never fatiguing. Walks to be taken briskly in small parties (under a teacher respectively), not en masse. Ten minutes' quick dancing, as waltzing, and galloping, every evening. Gymnastics might be made much more of. Not one lesson or two lessons a week, as part of the school routine, but a certain amount daily, and quickly, rather than weightily. A system of musical gymnastics lately introduced into some schools, and which Miss Garrett had seen in operation, was admirably adapted to this purpose. It had other incidental advantages-in cultivating a sense of time and rhythm, and, what was a very strong point, the girls liked it. If such a thing is to be done heartily, every day, you must have it pleasant. As to games, this question of plenty of exercise must come in. Croquêt never afforded sufficient; battledore and shuttlecock or prisoner's bass was better. In considering the collateral question of rest, Miss Garrett remarked that in past times too many schools gave neither exercise nor rest, and seemed to think that two negatives made an affirmative. But both exercise and rest must be thorough. There should be comfortable chairs, and narrow mattresses might be placed on forms, to allow fast-growing girls to lie down for a few minutes after gymnastics. As to rest at night, it should not only

be long enough, but really easy. Time was saved thus. Besides good ventilation, the bedclothing should be adequate, and the windows shielded in summer by green blinds from over light. Dress should be warm, loose, and strong, and thick boots all day enforced. Miss Garrett thought, with regard to the question of overwork, that there had been some excuse in popular fears on this ground. Exerting merely or chiefly the receptive faculty was not like exerting original thought, in the midst of interruptions and perhaps anxiety, which were mainly the causes of brain exhaustion farther on in life. Miss Garrett concluded her lecture by deprecating the exaggeration occasionally used in speaking of the value of health. Health was to be regarded as a means and a power rather than as an end in itself, and what was wanted from the body was that it should become a strong and willing slave instead of a tyrannical and capricious master.

ANOTHER LADY AT APOTHECARIES' HALL.-Mrs. Isabella Thorne, of 18, Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, presented herself for the recent arts examination at Apothecaries' Hall, in company with sixtysix gentlemen. Out of the sixty-seven candidates forty-seven passed. Mrs. Thorne came out among the first six, and her papers were so excellent that the usual viva voce examination was dispensed with. Last May Mrs. Thorne finished the curriculum at the Ladies' Medical College, by carrying off double first honours in the medical and obstetrical classes. She has since been practising with marked success as an accoucheuse, and will continue to do so.

THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN OF THE MIDDLE AND UPPER Classes. -At a time like the present, when the education of the people is engaging so much attention, and when it becomes daily more evident from speeches delivered both in and out of the House of Commons, by men of all political creeds, that the reform and extension of national education will assume, in the future, supreme importance, it seems not inappropriate that something should be said regarding the education of

women.

When such phrases as "national education," and "the education of the people," are made use of, it is usually implied that they mean the extension of education to the working classes; and it is also implied when the reform of national education is spoken of, that the only part of the nation whose education is neglected, and which therefore needs reform, is that part which receives the designation of "the lower orders." We think that the education of women in the middle and upper classes is at least as important, almost as much neglected, and that it needs even more strenuous efforts to effect reform in it. For scarcely any one now openly opposes, in theory, the education of the poor; but

with regard to women, before substantial and national reform is effected in their education, an immense amount of opposition, prejudice, and undisguised hostility must be overcome.

Let it therefore be considered what is the present state of education among women of the upper and middle classes; what are the results of such education; what reforms it is desirable to introduce; and what results may be expected from them. We will first endeavour to give a fair representation of the education girls usually receive, and then proceed to enumerate some of the consequences to which such an education inevitably leads. A girl, between the ages of twelve and seventeen, generally gives from five to seven hours a day to study. This time is devoted chiefly to music, French, German, and sometimes Latin, and to committing to memory and repeating the ordinary schoollessons; a very small portion of her time is given to arithmetic, or rather to cyphering. If this list of studies is analysed and examined, it is found that a girl usually spends her time, not in learning music, but in acquiring dexterity in playing upon the piano; not in studying language, but in obtaining conversational fluency in French and perhaps German; and, with regard to the ordinary school-lessons, the object of these seems to be to cultivate not the understanding but the memory. The cyphering is still worse; it is seldom that a girl has the advantage of being taught arithmetic well, and it is almost an unknown. thing for her ever to enter upon the far higher intellectual study of mathematics. To the loss of the discipline which this great science affords the mind may be attributed the defects so common in a woman's intellect as to be by many considered inherent in it, viz., a certain looseness of thought and incapability of close logical reasoning.

It must not be supposed that we at all despise the above-mentioned accomplishments, of facility in playing upon a musical instrument, the power of conversing in a foreign language, and strength of memory; on the contrary, we consider all of these most charming and useful appen dages to a cultivated mind. But they do not form a substitute for education, and no one can pursue them to the exclusion of real mental training, without bringing on themselves great, nay, irreparable loss.

At many schools, girls are now taught either a little botany or a little geology. But what does this really amount to? It is contrary to the first principles of women's education to teach them anything scientifically; so the young lady botanist is generally a mere collector of plants, and geology is reduced to the power of repeating by heart the names of the various rocks to be found in the earth's crust, together with a knowledge of some geologist's opinion as to whether they are igneous or aqueous, and to a vague impression that the first chapter of Genesis does not contain all that it is desirable to know about the

creation of the world. When we hear from men whose education and mental faculties have enabled them really to pursue astronomy, botany, chemistry, or geology, scientifically, that these studies afford to them. an unparalleled amount of the highest intellectual happiness, we cannot but regret that access to these branches of knowledge is practically denied to women through the superficiality of their education.

The effect of this lack of mental training in women has been to produce such a deterioration in their intellects as, in some measure, to justify the widely-spread opinion that they are innately possessed of less powerful minds than men, that they are incapable of the highest mental culture, that they are born illogical, created more impetuous and rash than men. This it is at present, owing to the want of education amongst women, impossible absolutely to disprove. If this inferiority really exists, society must abide the consequences; but in this case, surely, everything which education could do should be done to produce in women the highest mental development of which they are capable ; whereas, the present system of education heightens and aggravates the difference between the intellectual acquirements of men and women.

The belief, however, in the innate inferiority of women's minds, though it is impossible from want of sufficient data to prove its absurdity, we do not for one instant hold. All reasoning from analogy points to the fallacy of such a belief. There is no marked difference in the minds and characters of male and female children. When they are all in the nursery together the stereotyped characteristics, in the boys of caution and sound judgment, in the girls of impetuosity and excitability, are not observable. On the contrary, I have frequently noticed more difference in character and disposition between two boys of the same family, than exists between either of them and one of their sisters; and when in the members of a family there is a marked and invariable difference between the two sexes, it is sometimes amusing to find the little girls manly, and the little boys what is usually called girlish. All this, however, changes as soon as the divergence of a girl's from a boy's education begins to exert its influence. Let any man, however gifted and whatever intellectual distinction he may have attained, consider what the state of his mind would have been, had he been subjected to the treatment which ninety-nine out of a hundred of the woman of his acquaintance have undergone. He probably, from the time he was ten years old, or younger, had the advantage of possessing a real stimulus to mental exertion; he has spent years probably at some great school where there were many rewards in the shape of exhibitions and scholarships given to those boys who distinguished themselves by special proficiency, and where he has perhaps been taught by such men as Arnold, Temple, or Kennedy. At eighteen or nineteen, he probably went to one of the universities, where

not only great and almost unparalleled distinction is the reward of the most highly gifted, but where intellects of not extraordinary powers are capable, by perseverance, of carrying off valuable pecuniary prizes. But a far higher advantage than any pecuniary prize can afford is possessed by the university student; at Oxford and Cambridge, and at the Scotch universities, the highest branches of knowledge may be studied under the guidance of men whose scientific fame is European, and all the enthusiasm with which genius in the teacher can inspire the pupil is thus awakened. But these pecuniary and educational advantages are not the only benefits which a young man derives from a university training. Many men, who have not sufficient intellectual power to obtain the former or appreciate the latter, nevertheless would not be justified in thinking that the years they have spent at Oxford or Cambridge have been thrown away. The social and moral advantages conferred by free intercourse among young men of all shades of character, talent, and position cannot be easily exaggerated. Friendships, which last through life, are thus frequently formed; and many lessons are thus learned which are never forgotten, and which no other teaching could have imparted. Nor, in enumerating the benefits to be derived from a university life, must the inspiring and ennobling associations be forgotten which are always connected with an ancient seat of learning.

We have now mentioned some of the principal educational and social advantages which form part of the mental training of a large proportion of the young men of the middle and upper classes. What a contrast does the education of girls in the same social position present! They can by no possibility obtain any pecuniary stimulus to mental exertion, neither do they share with boys the immense advantage of being the pupils of the foremost minds of the age. At about eighteen, when a boy is just beginning his university career, a girl is supposed to have "completed her education." She is too often practically debarred from further intellectual progress by entering into a society where pleasure, in the shape of balls, fêtes, etc., engrosses all her time; or, hers being a country life, and it being her supposed duty to be what is called domesticated, she devotes her life to fancy needlework, or to doing badly the work of a curate, a nurse, or a cook. If she does attempt to carry on her education by means of reading, many almost insuperable difficulties beset her. For example, she probably finds it nearly impossible to secure her time against those who consider any sort of idleness better for a woman than mental culture; she also has to endure the reproach which a woman incurs when she exhibits a wish to quit the ignorance to which society has consigned her. It may be denied that a woman does incur reproach by desiring to improve herself; but there is implied contempt in the term "bluestocking," though this originally meant