already in progress, in which the encroachment, if it be an encroachment, is chiefly from the side of boys; for while Latin and mathematics are slowly making their way into girls' schools, we find that in the University local examinations, music, drawing, and modern languages have from the beginning been recognised as desirable for boys. It is,

than men have. But I cannot see any reason why our young men should not, while they have the advantage of public schools, at the same time be able to do a sum in the rule of three, and make themselves masters of the fact that James I. was not the son of Queen Elizabeth.'

In another place he says:-'It is to a dogged application to the Latin grammar perhaps that the precision of men, when compared to women, in this country is in great part to be attributed.'-Earl Russell on the English Government and Constitution, pp. 210, 208.

like most other things, very much a question of degree. The system of mutual isolation has never been thoroughly carried out. Even those who hold most strongly that classics and mathematics are proper for boys, and modern languages and the fine arts for girls, leave as common ground the wide field of English literature, in itself almost an education. To a large extent men and women read the same books, magazines, and newspapers; and though in the highest class of literature, written by scholars for scholars, and, therefore, full of classical and scientific allusions, there is much that women only half understand, the deficiency under which they labour is shared by many male readers.

Probably, after all, it matters less what is nominally taught, than that, whatever it is, it should be taught in the best way. Any subject may be made flat and unprofitable if unintelligently taught; and, on the other hand, there is scarcely anything which may not be made an instrument of intellectual discipline, if wisely used. Then, again, all branches of knowledge are so closely connected and mutually dependent, that it is scarcely possible to learn anything which will not be found more or less useful hereafter in learning something else. Even the much despised and denounced 'smattering of many things,' has its merits in this way, as well as in giving a certain breadth of vision, by opening vistas into innumerable fields

of knowledge, never to be explored by any single human being. The degree in which the study of certain subjects cultivates certain faculties is a matter on which we are far from agreeing. Nor is it decided-in fact we have scarcely begun to discuss-what faculties most need cultivation. In the middle classes the imagination seems to be the one in which the deficiency is most marked. Every now and then some one recommends mathematics for girls as a curb to the imagination. It might be as well first to ascertain whether the imaginations of commonplace girls want to be curbed; whether, on the contrary, they do not want rather to be awakened and set to work, with something to work

upon. The business of the imagination is not merely to build castles in the air, though that is, no doubt, a useful and commendable exercise; it has other and most important duties to perform. For, manifestly, an unimaginative person is destitute of one of the main elements of sympathy. Probably, if the truth were known, it would be found that injustice and unkindness are comparatively seldom caused by harshness of disposition. They are the result of an incapacity for imagining ourselves to be somebody else. Any one who has tried it must be aware of the enormous difficulty of conceiving the state of mind of a pauper or a thief. The same difficulty is experienced in a degree by any one in easy circumstances