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Rh the impulsive girl, thus introduced to an order of ideas possessing so much attraction for tender and sensitive minds, but for a counter influence developed at the same time. Mathilde had another school friend: —

"Blanche often broached the subject of the plenary inspiration of the Bible, and as we had some books on geology in concert she again and again came back to the strange discrepancies between the account of Creation in Genesis and the history of our globe as revealed to us by the rocks and stones. She prompted me to look up evidences on the subject in works to which I had access and she had none. I went to work with a headlong eagerness which kept me up night after night for many months till the small hours, reading, comparing, annotating; nothing came amiss to me, from Butler's 'Analogy' and Paley's 'Evidences' to Max Müller's 'Comparative Mythology.' The veil of Christian sentiments in which I had tried to envelop myself dispersed like a vapour. The results of these nocturnal researches were communicated to Blanche every day during our hour of recreation and thirstily received by her. "When we read Cain together one evening the magnificent speech of Lucifer put us in such a transport that we fell into each other's arms with a sob of delight. It was the last time we were destined to see each other."

Apart from its personal interest, this chapter of our heroine's experience illustrates questions which will soon become acute in the management of public education. No wise or right-thinkmg person would wish religious instruction omitted from the school course, but how is religious instruction to be defined? The great majority of ministers of religion would understand by it such a course of instruction as that which in Mathilde Blind's case, and that of thousands besides, was dissipated by the