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178 say their catechism and darn stockings; all very good, but not quite enough, according to our notions. The pupils themselves, when parents, desired more for their children; and there was a movement—I remember it well, because it involved my sisters and cousins—in favour of an education more like that of boys, and conducted chiefly by masters. It was a great blessing to the girls, but it was a random effort. In one town, most of the middle-class girls would be taught Latin, if not Greek and mathematics, really well; while in other towns, a miserable smattering of French (as English French was before the Peace) was considered enough in the way of languages, and even arithmetic, beyond the four first rules, was postponed to the piano. There was, however, a marked improvement: and the hardness of the times, introducing competition into the governess department, directed more attention upon education. From that day to this the whole conception of the objects and methods of education has been expanding and improving; and perhaps not even the city Arabs now gathered into ragged schools have more reason to be thankful for the change than the girlhood of England and Scotland. As Mr. Cowper justly observed at Harley Street, it is the well-grounded and systematic instruction, the habit of co-ordinated study, which is so valuable to the minds of women. Our Ladies’ Colleges are rapidly familiarising society with this view of female study; schools are formed for the purpose of preparing pupils for the college, and the quality of governesses is rising in full proportion to the new means of training now put within their reach. Through them, as well as by natural incitements of example and sympathy, the improvement will spread from the middle classes upwards. If aristocratic parents will not as yet send their daughters to colleges, where future governesses and professional and mercantile men’s daughters study together, they will soon demand a higher order of instruction from the exclusive schoolmistresses, governesses, and masters whom they employ. Hitherto their children have undoubtedly had the advantage in learning well what they do learn,—modern languages, English reading and writing, and the practice of the arts. Now, they must extend their scheme.

This brings us to my last topic,—the recent exciting discussion about Belgravian young ladies. The only part of it that I need notice here is that which seems to have excited least interest elsewhere; and that is, the actual quality of the Belgravian young ladies whose interests have been so freely discussed.

I regret the discussion, because I believe it will be injurious to English reputation abroad. No Englishman, in any part of the world, will believe, any more than his wife or mother, that “the Belgravian Lament” was written by a woman, or any number of women: but we cannot expect the same true instinct in Americans, French, Italians, or even Germans. I regret that a statement, practically libellous, has been floated at home, which will go the round of the world, and be harboured in some corner of it for future mischief. This is enough to say of the original incident, and of the mischievous introduction to newspaper treatment of the gravest and most perplexing of moral questions.

What concerns us now is,—the view taken, all round, of the young ladies of the upper classes. The notion that the aim of their lives is an advantageous marriage can be held only by men who have no acquaintance with them. Those who have may be indignant when the conception of the low-bred satirist is sent forth into the world as fact, and left uncontradicted, as the libel in this case necessarily is; but none of the associates of those young ladies will feel less respect for them now than they did six weeks ago. It needs no explaining in Belgravian, any more than other society, that mothers and daughters are not always thinking of and planning for advantageous marriage. If observation is newly excited by what has been said, it will take the turn of noting what is the aim, and therefore what the quality, of female education in that class.

I have seen something of that order of young ladies; and what I have observed obliges me to believe that they are at least as well provided with independent objects and interests as middle-class girls. One family rises up before my mind,—sensible parents and their five daughters (saying nothing here of the sons). The parents provided instruction for each girl, according to her turn and ability: and when each grew up to womanhood, she had free scope for her own pursuit. One was provided with a painting-room, and another with a music-room, and all appliances and means: a third had a conservatory and garden; and all lived in a society of the highest cultivation. They had as much as they wished of the balls and fêtes we hear so much about; and there was nothing to distinguish them from other young ladies who are now subjected to such insolent speculation from below: but I am confident that it could never have entered the head of the veriest coxcomb of their acquaintance that any of the family were speculating in marriage. Four of them married well, in the best sense, though not all grandly. The fifth died, after many years of illness. There is every reason to believe that English girls have the simplicity, intelligence, and kindliness of their order in one rank of life as in another; and certainly not least in that class which is surrounded, from its birth upwards, by an atmosphere of refinement derived from intelligence.

What, then, are they educated for? This is the great question, in their case as in that of middle-class girls.

For the most part, their education is probably a matter of sympathy and imitation. In this or that way they may best learn what every girl is expected to learn. Beyond this, there is usually but a dim notion of the object, and as little notion as elsewhere of the great single or paramount aim of education,—to raise the quality of the individual to the highest attainable point. I believe that the parents fall short of this conception, like most other parents of daughters: but I am confident that they are yet further from the other extreme,—of universally and audaciously breeding up their daughters for the matrimonial market. One evidence that is before our eyes tells a great deal. The unmarried women of the upper classes