Page:On Secondary Instruction, as relating to Girls.djvu/8

 quickeneth"—our daily domestic intercourse like iron sharpening iron, mutually kindling, and stimulating to noble thoughts and deeds? What a change would then come over the whole aspect of our national life! What problem would be solved, what terrible enigmas disappear! How little need should we then have of philanthropic schemes for elevating the poor! How naturally would they share in all social reforms, how inevitably would they be refined and civilised by the insensible influence—the best of all influences—of the employing class, whose ideas, unconsciously communicated to their subordinates, gradually leaven all the classes below them. Masters and mistresses reveal in their everyday life in what their ideal of blessedness consists, and that ideal becomes, with some modifications, that of the humbler homes of working men and women. I say with modifications, because working men are through their mutual association subject to counteracting influences, and it is chiefly in so far as that of wives and mothers prevails over others scarcely less strong, that the ideas of the employing class penetrate and govern. That through this medium they do act, inconspicuously but most powerfully, on the labouring class, will probably be admitted. It cannot, I am afraid, with truth be denied, that the principle, "Every man for himself"—or, to say the least, every family and order for itself—of which mistresses complain so loudly when it is adopted by servants, but upon which they too commonly rule their own households, is by their example extended into circles far beyond the range of their direct and conscious influence. The want of hearty sympathy, not only between the classes which are divided by broad and easily recognised distinctions, but between those which are separated by lines so shadowy that, looked at from above or below, they are scarcely discernible—is one of the most serious impediments to social progress, and it is one which a better and more widely diffused culture might do much to remove. Not, indeed, that the education of youth, even taking the word in its deepest sense, is to be regarded as the only, or even the chief, agency for the improvement of society; but it happens to be the point towards which attention is at this moment directed. We are taught to expect great things from a reform in secondary instruction, and this being so, it is surely reasonable to ask that such reforms as may be possible shall be on the widest basis, not omitting any really important section of society.

It will be understood, I hope, that those who make this appeal on behalf of girls, are not proposing the introduction or the enforcement of any particular scheme of instruction. It may be that the curriculum most commonly pursued, or at least professed, is as good as any that is likely to be devised, and that we only want better methods and more encouragement. On questions of detail we are not in the least inclined to dogmatise. It would be rash indeed to fix upon any particular course of instruction as absolutely the best for girls, while as to that of boys, on which so much more thought has been bestowed, we are still in a state of confusion and