THREE ADDRESSES TO GIRLS AT SCHOOL THREE ADDRESSES TO GIRLS AT SCHOOL BY THE REV. J. M. WILSON, M. A. HEAD MASTER OF CLIFTON COLLEGEAND VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE CLIFTON HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS London PERCIVAL & CO. _KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN_1890 PREFACE. The following addresses were printed for private circulation among thoseto whom they were delivered. But they fell also into other hands; and Ihave been frequently asked to publish them. I hesitated, on account ofthe personal and local allusions; but I have found it impossible toremove these allusions, and I have therefore reprinted the addresses intheir original form. J. M. W. CLIFTON COLLEGE, _Sept. 1890. _ CONTENTS. PAGE I. EDUCATION 1 _October 25, 1887. _ THE HIGH SCHOOL, CLIFTON. II. HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION FOR GIRLS 21 _December, 1889. _ THE HIGH SCHOOLS AT BATH AND CLIFTON. III. RELIGION 53 _April 13, 1890. _ ST. LEONARD'S SCHOOL, ST. ANDREWS, FIFE. THREE ADDRESSES TO GIRLS AT SCHOOL I. EDUCATION. EDUCATION. [1] Now that I have given away the certificates it will be expected that Ishould make a few remarks on that inexhaustible subject, Education. Myremarks will be brief. I take this opportunity of explaining to our visitors the nature of theHigher Certificate examination. It is an examination institutedoriginally to test the efficiency of the highest forms of our publicschools, and to enable boys to pass the earlier University examinationswhile still at school. The subjects of study are divided into fourgroups. In order to obtain a certificate it is necessary to pass in foursubjects taken from not less than three groups. A certificate thereforeensures a sound and fairly wide education. The subjects of the groupsare languages, mathematics, English history, and lastly science. Oneconcession is made to girls which is not made to boys. They are allowedto pass in two subjects one year, and two others the next, and thusobtain their certificates piecemeal. Boys have to pass in all foursubjects the same year. The High School sent in seventeen candidates forthe examination in two or three of the subjects--History, ElementaryMathematics, French, German, and Latin, --and fifteen of these passed intwo subjects at least: and, inasmuch as seven of them had in a previousyear passed in two other subjects, they obtained their certificates. Therest carry on their two subjects, and will, we hope, obtain theircertificates next summer; six of them appear to be still in the school. This is a very satisfactory result. The value of these certificates tothe public is the testimony they give to the very high efficiency of theteaching. These examinations are not of the standard of the Junior orSenior Local Examinations. They are very much harder. And all who knowabout these matters see at a glance that a school that ventures to sendin its girls for this examination only is aiming very high. Thecertificates for Music, given by the Harrow Music School examiners, arealso recognised by the profession as having a considerable value. But onthis subject I cannot speak with the same knowledge. The value of these examinations to the mistresses is that they serve asa guide and standard for teaching. We are all of us the better for beingthus kept up to the mark. Their value to you is that they help to makeyour work definite and sound: and that, if it is slipshod, you shall atany rate know that it is slipshod. Therefore, speaking for the Council, and as the parent of a High Schoolgirl, and as one of the public, I may say that we set a very high valueon these examinations and their results. They test and prove absolutemerit. Now, you may have noticed that one of the characteristics ofthis school is the absence of all prizes and personal competitionswithin the school itself; all that only brings out the relative merit ofindividuals. I dare say you have wondered why this should be so, andperhaps grumbled a little. "Other girls, " you say, "bring home prizes:our brothers bring home prizes; or at any rate have the chance of doingso--why don't we?" And not only you, but some friends of the school whowould like to give prizes--for it is a great pleasure to giveprizes--have sometimes wondered why Miss Woods says "No. " I will tellyou why. Miss Woods holds--and I believe she is quite right--that tointroduce the element of competition, while it would certainly stimulatethe clever and industrious to more work, would also certainly tend toobscure and weaken the real motives for work in all, which ought tooutlive, but do not always outlive, the age at which prizes are won. Intelligent industry, without the inducement of prizes, is a far moreprecious and far more durable habit than industry stimulated byincessant competition. Teaching and learning are alike the better forthe absence of this element, when possible. I consider this to be one ofthe most striking characteristics of our High School, and one of whichyou ought to be most proud. It is a distinction of this school. And whenyou speak of it, as you well may do, with some pride, you will notforget that it is due entirely to the genius and character of yourHead-mistress. I believe that one result will be, that you will be themore certain to continue to educate yourselves, and not to imagine thateducation is over when you leave school. Is it necessary to say anything to you about the value of education? Ithink it is; because so many of the processes of education seem at thetime to be drudgery, that any glimpses and reminders of the nobleresults attained by all this drudgery are cheering and encouraging. Thereason why it is worth your while to get the best possible educationyou can, to continue it as long as you can, to make the very most of itby using all your intelligence and industry and vivacity, and byresolving to enjoy every detail of it, and indeed of all your schoollife, is that it will make you--_you yourself_--so much more of aperson. More--as being more pleasant to others, more useful to others, in an ever-widening sphere of influence, but also more as attaining ahigher development of your own nature. Let us look at two or three ways in which, as you may easily see, education helps to do some of these things. Education increases your interest in everything; in art, in history, inpolitics, in literature, in novels, in scenery, in character, in travel, in your relation to friends, to servants, to everybody. And it is_interest_ in these things that is the never-failing charm in acompanion. Who could bear to live with a thoroughly uneducated woman?--acountry milkmaid, for instance, or an uneducated milliner's girl. Shewould bore one to death in a week. Now, just so far as girls of yourclass approach to the type of the milkmaid or the milliner, so far theyare sure to be eventually mere gossips and bores to friends, family, andacquaintance, in spite of amiabilities of all sorts. Many-sided andever-growing interests, a life and aims capable of expansion--the fruitsof a trained and active mind--are the durable charms and wholesomeinfluences in all society. These are among the results of a reallyliberal education. Education does something to overcome the prejudicesof mere ignorance. Of all sorts of massive, impenetrable obstacles, themost hopeless and immovable is the prejudice of a thoroughly ignorantand narrow-minded woman of a certain social position. It forms a solidwall which bars all progress. Argument, authority, proof, experienceavail nought. And remember, that the prejudices of ignorance areresponsible for far more evils in this world than ill-nature or evenvice. Ill-nature and vice are not very common, at any rate in the rankof ladies; they are discountenanced by society; but the prejudices ofignorance--I am sure you wish me to tell you the truth--these are notrare. Think, moreover, for a moment how much the cultivated intelligence of afew does to render the society in which we move more enjoyable: how itconverts "the random and officious sociabilities of society" into aquickening and enjoyable intercourse and stimulus: everybody can recallinstances of such a happy result of education. This can only be done byeducated women. How much more might be done if there were more of them! And think, too, how enormously a great increase of trained intelligencein our own class--among such as you will be in a few years--wouldincrease the power of dealing with great social questions. All sorts ofwork is brought to a standstill for want of trained intelligence. It isnot good will, it is not enthusiasm, it is not money that is wanted forall sorts of work; it is good sense, trained intelligence, cultivatedminds. Some rather difficult piece of work has to be done; and one runsover in one's mind who could be found to do it. One after another isgiven up. One lacks the ability--another the steadiness--another thetraining--another the mind awakened to see the need: and so the work isnot done. "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. " Areally liberal education, and the influence at school of cultivated andvigorous minds, is the cure for this. Again, you will do little good in the world unless you have wide andstrong sympathies: wide--so as to embrace many different types ofcharacter; strong--so as to outlast minor rebuffs and failures. Nowunderstanding is the first step to sympathy, and therefore educationwidens and strengthens our sympathies: it delivers us from ignorantprepossessions, and in this way alone it doubles our powers, and fits usfor far greater varieties of life, and for the unknown demands that thefuture may make upon us. I spoke of the narrowness and immovability of ignorance. There isanother narrowness which is not due to ignorance so much as topersistent exclusiveness in the range of ideas admitted. Fight againstthis with all your might. The tendency of all uneducated people is toview each thing as it is by itself, each part without reference to thewhole; and then increased knowledge of that part does little more thanintensify the narrowness. Education--liberal education--and theassociation with many and active types of mind, among people of your ownage, as well as your teachers, is the only cure for this. Try tounderstand other people's point of view. Don't think that you and aselect few have a monopoly of all truth and wisdom. "It takes all sortsto make a world, " and you must understand "all sorts" if you wouldunderstand the world and help it. You are living in a great age, when changes of many kinds are inprogress in our political and social and religious ideas. There neverwas a greater need of trained intelligence, clear heads, and earnesthearts. And the part that women play is not a subordinate one. They actdirectly, and still more indirectly. The best men that have ever livedhave traced their high ideals to the influence of noble women as mothersor sisters or wives. No man who is engaged in the serious work of theworld, in the effort to purify public opinion and direct it aright, butis helped or hindered by the women of his household. Few men can standthe depressing and degrading influence of the uninterested and placidamiability of women incapable of the true public spirit, incapable of agenerous or noble aim--whose whole sphere of ideas is petty andpersonal. It is not only that such women do nothing themselves--theyslowly asphyxiate their friends, their brothers, or their husbands. These are the unawakened women; and education may deliver you from thisdreadful fate, which is commoner than you think. In no respect is the influence of women more important than in religion. Much might be said of the obstacles placed in the way of religiousprogress by the crude and dogmatic prepossessions of ignorant women, whowill rush in with confident assertion where angels might fear to tread:but this is neither the time nor the place for such remarks. It isenough to remind you that in no part of your life do you more need thewidth and modesty and courage of thought, and the delicacy of insightgiven by culture, than when you are facing the grave religious questionsof the day, either for yourself or others. But let me turn to a somewhat less serious subject. We earnestly desirethat women should be highly educated. And yet is there not a type ofeducated woman which we do not wholly admire? I am not going tocaricature a bluestocking, but to point out one or two real dangers. Education is good; but perfect sanity is better still. Sanity is themost excellent of all women's excellences. We forgive eccentricity andone-sidedness--the want of perfect sanity--in men, and especially menof genius; and we rather reluctantly forgive it in women of genius; butin ordinary folk, no. These are the strong-minded women; ordinary folk, who make a vigorous protest against one or two of the minor mistakes ofsociety, instead of lifting the whole: I should call these, women ofimperfect sanity. It is a small matter that you should protest againstsome small maladjustment or folly; but it is a great matter that youshould be perfectly sane and well-balanced. Now education helps sanity. It shows the proportion of things. An American essayist bids us "keepour eyes on the fixed stars. " Education helps us to do this. It helps usto live the life we have to lead on a higher mental and spiritual levelit glorifies the actual. And now, seeing these things are so, what ought to be the attitude ofeducated girls and women towards pleasures, the usual pleasures ofsociety? Certainly not the cynical one--"Life would be tolerable if itwere not for its pleasures. " Pleasures do make up, and ought to makeup, a considerable portion of life. Now I have no time for an essay onpleasures. I will only offer two remarks. One is that the pleasure opento all cultivated women, even in the pleasures that please them least, is the pleasure of giving pleasure. Go to give pleasure, not to get it, and that converts anything into a pleasure. The other remark is, Pitchyour ordinary level of life on so quiet a note that simple things shallnot fail to please. If home, and children, and games, and the dailyroutine of life--if the sight of October woods and the Severn sea, andof human happy faces fail to please, then either in fact or inimagination you are drugging yourself with some strong drink ofexcitement, and spoiling the natural healthy appetite for simplepleasures. This is one of the dangers of educated women: but it is theirdanger because they are imperfectly educated: educated on one side, thatof books; and not on the other and greater side, of wide humansympathies. Society seems to burden and narrow and dull the uneducatedwoman, but it also hardens and dulls a certain sort of educated womantoo, one who refuses her sympathies to the pleasures of life. But to thefuller nature, society brings width and fresh clearness. It gives thelarger heart and the readier sympathy, and the wider the sphere the moredoes such a nature expand to fill it. What I am now saying amounts to this, that an educated intelligence isgood, but an educated sympathy is better. I recall certain lines writtenby the late Lord Carlisle on being told that a lady was plain andcommonplace:-- "You say that my love is plain, But that I can never allow, When I look at the thought for others That is written on her brow. "The eyes are not fine, I own, She has not a well-cut nose, But a smile for others' pleasure And a sigh for others' woes. "Quick to perceive a want, Quicker to set it right, Quickest in overlooking Injury, wrong, or slight. "Hark to her words to the sick, Look at her patient ways, Every word she utters Speaks to the speaker's praise. "Purity, truth, and love, Are they such common things? If hers were a common nature Women would all have wings. "Talent she may not have, Beauty, nor wit, nor grace, But until she's among the angels She cannot be commonplace. " There is something to remember: cultivate sympathy, gentleness, forgiveness, purity, truth, love: and then, though you may have no othergifts, "until you're among the angels, you cannot be commonplace. " And here I might conclude. But I should not satisfy myself or you, if Idid so without paying my tribute of genuine commendation to the HighSchool, and of hearty respect for the Head-mistress and her staff ofteachers. Clifton owes Miss Woods a great debt for the tone ofhigh-mindedness and loyalty, for the moral and intellectual stamp thatshe has set on the School. She has won, as we all know, the sincererespect and attachment of her mistresses and her old pupils; and theolder and wiser you grow the more you all will learn to honour and loveher. And you will please her best by thorough loyalty to the highestaims of the School which she puts before you by her words and by herexample. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: An Address given at the High School, Clifton, Oct. 25, 1887. ] II. HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION FOR GIRLS. HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION FOR GIRLS. [2] It is a real pleasure to find myself in Bath on an educational mission. I have ancestral and personal educational connections with Bath of veryold standing. My father was curate of St. Michael's before I was born;my grandfather and uncle were in succession head-masters of the GrammarSchool here, fine scholars both, of the old school. My first visit toBath was when I was nine years old, and on that occasion I had my firstreal stand-up fight with a small Bath Grammar School boy. I think thatif the old house is still standing I could find the place where wefought, and where a master brutally interrupted us with awalking-stick. Since those days, my relations with Bath have been rare, but peaceful; unless, indeed, the honourable competition between CliftonCollege and its brilliant daughter, Bath College, may be regarded as aceaseless but a friendly combat between their two head-masters whom yousee so peaceably side by side. I propose, first, to say a few words about the condition of schoolstwenty years ago, before the present impulse towards the highereducation of women gave us High Schools and Colleges at theUniversities, and other educational movements. There is a mostinteresting chapter in the report of the Endowed Schools Commission of1868 on girls' schools, and some valuable evidence collected by theAssistant Commissioners. It is not ancient history yet, and therein liesits great value to us. It shows us the evils from which we are only nowescaping in our High Schools: evils which still prevail to a formidableextent in a large section of girls' education, and from which I canscarcely imagine Bath is wholly free. The report speaks of the general indifference of parents to theeducation of their girls in our whole upper and middle class, bothabsolutely and relatively to that of their boys. That indifference inpart remains. There was a strong prejudice that girls could not learnthe same subjects as boys, and that even if they could, such aneducation was useless and even injurious. That prejudice still survives, in face of facts. The right education, it was thought, for girls, was one ofaccomplishments and of routine work, with conversational knowledge ofFrench. The ideal of a girl's character was that she was to be merelyamiable, ready to please and be pleased; it was, as was somewhatseverely said by one of the Assistant Commissioners, not to be good anduseful when married, but to _get_ married. There was no ideal for singlewomen. They did not realize how much of the work of the world must goundone unless there is a large class of highly educated single women. This view of girls' education is not yet extinct. Corresponding to the ideal on the part of the ordinary British parentwas, of course, the school itself. There was no high ideal of physicalhealth, and but little belief that it depended on physical conditions;therefore the schools were neither large and airy, nor well providedwith recreation ground; not games and play, but an operation known as"crocodiling" formed the daily and wearisome exercise of girls. Thatdefect also is common still. There was no ideal of art, or belief in theeffect of artistic surroundings, and therefore the schools wereunpretending even to ugliness and meanness. The walls were notbeautified with pictures, nor were the rooms furnished with taste. Therewas no high ideal of cultivating the intelligence, and therefore most ofthe lessons that were not devoted to accomplishments, such as music, flower-painting, fancy work, hand-screen making, etc. , were given tomemory work, and note-books, in which extracts were made from standardauthors and specimen sums worked with flourishes wondrous to behold. Theserious study of literature and history was almost unknown. The memorywork consisted in many schools in learning Mangnall's Questions andBrewer's Guide to Science--fearful books. The first was miscellaneous:What is lightning? How is sago made? What were the Sicilian Vespers, theproperties of the atmosphere, the length of the Mississippi, and thePelagian heresy? These are, I believe, actual specimens of thequestions; and the answers were committed to memory. About twenty-fiveyears ago I examined some girls in Brewer's Guide to Science. The verbalknowledge of some of them was quite wonderful; their understanding ofthe subject absolutely _nil_. They could rattle off all about positiveand negative electricity, and Leyden jars and batteries; but the wordsobviously conveyed no ideas whatever, and they cheerfully talked utternonsense in answer to questions not in the book. Examinations for schools were not yet instituted; the education wasunguided, and therefore largely misguided. Do not let us imagine for aninstant that these evils have been generally cured. The secondaryeducation of the country is still in a deplorable condition; and itbehoves us to repeat on all occasions that it is so. The schools I amdescribing from the report of twenty years ago exist and abound andflourish still, owing to the widespread indifference of parents to theeducation of their girls, to the qualifications and training of theirmistresses, and the efficiency of the schools. Untested, unguided, theyexist and even thrive, and will do so until a sounder public opinion andthe proved superiority of well-trained mistresses and well-educatedgirls gradually exterminates the inefficient schools. But we are, Ifear, a long way still from this desirable consummation. What were the mistresses? For the most part worthy, even excellentladies, who had no other means of livelihood, and who had no specialeducation themselves, and no training whatever. Naturally they taughtwhat they could, and laid stress on what was called the _formation ofcharacter_, which they usually regarded as somehow alternative withintellectual attainments and stimulus, and progress in which could notbe submitted to obvious tests. I suppose most of us think that there is no more valuable assistance inthe formation of character than any pursuit that leads the mind awayfrom frivolous pursuits, egotistic or morbid fancies, and fills it withmemories of noble words and lives, teaches it to love our great poetsand writers, and gives it sympathies with great causes. But this was notthe prevailing opinion twenty years ago. The influence of good people, good homes, good example--in a word truly religious influence, as weshall all admit--is the strongest element in the formation of character;but the next strongest is assuredly that education which teaches us toadmire "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, andwhatsoever things are of good report;" and this ought to be, and is, oneof the results of the literary teaching given by well-educatedmistresses. I have been describing the common type of what used to be called the"seminaries" and "establishments for young ladies" of twenty years ago. And it may give you the impression that there was no good education tobe got in those days, and that the ladies of my generation weretherefore very ill-educated. Permit me to correct that impression. Therewere homes in which the girls learned something from father or frommother, or, perhaps, something from a not very talented governess; butin which they educated themselves with a hunger and thirst afterknowledge, and an enjoyment of literature that is rare in any school. Donot imagine that any school education under mistresses however skilled, or resulting in certificates however brilliant, is really as effectivein the formation of strong intellectual tastes and clear judgment andability as the self-education which was won by the mothers of some ofyou, by the women of my generation and those before. Such education wasrare, but it was possible, and it is possible still. Under such a systema few are educated and the many fail altogether. The advantage of ourday is that education is offered to a much larger number. But I cannotcall it better than that which was won by a few in the generation ofyour mothers. If we would combine the exceptional merits of the oldsystem with the high average merits of the new we must jealouslypreserve the element of freedom and self-education. To return to the report. The indifference of parents and the public, theinadequacy of school buildings and appliances, the low intellectualideals of mistresses, were the evils of twenty years ago, prevailingvery widely and lowering school education, and we must not expect tohave got rid of them altogether. An educational atmosphere is notchanged in twenty years. But our High Schools are a very real step in advance. The numbers ofyour school show that there is a considerable and increasing fraction ofresidents in Bath who do care for the intellectual quality of theeducation of their girls; and the report of the examiners is a mostsatisfactory guarantee that the instruction given here is thoroughlyefficient along the whole line. Bath must be congratulated on its HighSchool for Girls, as it must be congratulated on its College for Boys. But are we therefore to rest and be thankful in the complacent beliefthat we have now at length attained perfection, at least in our HighSchools? I am called in to bless High School education, and I do blessit from my heart. I know something of it. My own daughter was at such aschool; I have been vice-president of a High School for ten years. Iwish there were High Schools in every town in England. They have doneand are doing much to lift the standard of girls' education in England. But I will again remind you that High Schools are educating but afraction of the population, and that the faults of twenty years agostill characterise our girls' education as a whole. And now, having said this, I shall not be misunderstood if I go on tospeak of some of the deficiencies in our ideals of girls' educationwhich seem to me to affect High Schools as well as all other schools. One point, in which the older education with its manifold defects had areal merit, is that there was no over-teaching, no hurry to produceresults, and therefore no disgust aroused with learning and literature. At any rate, the girls, or the best of them, left school or governess"with an appetite. " Now I consider this is a real test of teaching atschool or college, in science or literature: does it leave boys andgirls hungry for more, with such a love for learning that they will goon studying of themselves? If the teaching of some science is such thatyou never want to go to another science lecture as long as you live:your lessons on literature such that your Shakespeare, your Spenser, your Burke, your Browning will never again descend from your shelves:then, whatever else schools may have done, they have sacrificed thefuture to the present. It is on this account that the pressure ofexternal examinations and its effect on the teaching of mistresses mustbe most carefully watched. To get immediate results is easy, but it issometimes at the cost of later results. Our aim should be not so much toteach, as to make our pupils love to learn, and have methods oflearning; and every teacher should remember that our pupils can learnfar more than we can teach them; and, as Thring used to say, "hammeringis not teaching. " With a system of competitive examinations for the Armyand Civil Service, boys must sometimes sacrifice the future to thepresent. Girls need never do so, and therefore girls' schools need notcopy the faults as well as the excellences of boys' schools. I have ventured to say so much for an intellectual danger in HighSchools. I do not doubt that your head-mistress is aware of it, and onher guard: I speak much more to the public, to the parents, and to theCouncil (if I may say so), as an expert, because I know that the publicsometimes want to be satisfied that the education is good at everystage, and they ought to be content if it is good at the final stage. Another point on which I would venture to say a word to parents is this. Do not take your girls away from school too early. Every schoolmasterknows that the most valuable years, those which leave the deepest marksin character and intellect, are those from sixteen to eighteen. It isequally true with girls, as schoolmistresses know equally well. It is inthe later years that they get the full benefit of the higher teaching, and that much of what may have seemed the drudgery of earlier work reapsits natural and deserved reward. Let your children come early, so as tobe taught well from the beginning, and let them stay late. I do not myself know what your buildings may be; but a friend to whom Iwrote speaks of them as inadequate and somewhat unworthy of the city. May I venture to say to a Bath public that it is worth while to havefirst-rate buildings for educational purposes? No money is better spent. If the Bath public will take this up in earnest it cannot be doubtedthat the Girls' School Company would second their efforts in such animportant centre. Come over and see our Clifton High School, with itsspacious lawns and playgrounds and pleasant rooms, and you will bediscontented with a righteous discontent. And now I will point out another defect in High School education whichparents and mistresses may do much to remedy. There is usually--and I amassuming without direct knowledge that it is the case here--no system bywhich any one girl is known through her whole school career to any onemistress; nothing corresponding to the tutor system of our publicschools. It follows that a girl passes from form to form, and therelation between her and her mistress is so constantly broken that it ismorally less powerful than it might be. The friendly and permanentrelation of old days is converted into an official and temporaryrelation. It will be obvious to any one who reflects that the loss isgreat. The cure for it is twofold. The parents may do much byestablishing a friendly relation with the form mistresses of theirgirls. I have known parents who had never taken the trouble to inquireeven the names of their girls' mistress. If parents wish to get reallythe best out of a school, I would say to them (and I am speakingspecially to mothers), you are delegating to the form mistress a verylarge share of the responsibility for the formation of your daughter'scharacter; the least you can do is to be in the most friendly andconfidential communication with her that circumstances permit. And Iwould say to the mistresses that, as far as is possible, you should beto the girls what form masters are in a good school to theirboys--friends in school and out of school, acquainted with theirtastes, companions sometimes in their games or their walks, and in allways breaking down the merely formal relation of teacher and pupil. Theideally bad master, as I have often said to my young masters on a firstappointment, is one who as soon as his boys clear out of the class-room, puts his hands in his pockets and whistles, and thanks Heaven that hewill see no more of the boys for so many hours. I do not know what thecorresponding action on the part of a mistress may be, as I believe theyhave no pockets and can't whistle, but there is probably a correspondingstate of mind. I venture, therefore, to suggest that in our High Schoolsthere should be a greater _rapprochement_ than is usual between parentsand mistresses and girls in order to make the system more trulyeducational in the best sense. I am now going to turn to a wholly different subject; and I am going totalk to the girls. In the crusade against the lower type of educationthat prevailed twenty years ago, and still exists, who are the mostimportant agents? It is the girls who are still in the High Schools, orwho are passing out of them, or who are otherwise getting the highereducation in a few private schools. "Ye are our epistle, known and readof all men, " and read of all women too, with their still keener eyes. There is a very real danger in our High Schools that the intellectualside of education may be overestimated and overpressed, not bymistresses, but by yourselves; and that the natural, human, domestic, and family elements in it may be undervalued. What are you yourselves athome, in society, with parents, brothers, sisters, children, friends, schoolfellows, servants? Is the better education, that you areundoubtedly getting, widening your sympathies, opening your heart andmind to all the educational influences which do not consist in books orin work? Is it giving you greater delicacy of touch? Is it opening newchannels for influences, streaming in on you or streaming out from you?Your daily life may become a higher education, and is so to the trulynoble-minded and well-educated girl or woman. Do not regard asinterruptions, and as teasing, the calls of household, the duties toparents, visitors, children, and the rest; it is part of the educationof life to fulfil all these duties well, delightfully, brilliantly, joyously, enthusiastically; these things are not interruptions to life, they are life itself. There was a pitiful magazine article written theother day by some lady complaining that social duties, the having to seeher friends, her cook, her gardener, her dress-maker, etc. , preventedher from reading Herbert Spencer, and developing her small fragment ofsoul. Social duties, rightly done, are one of the developments of soul. Let it be seen that you girls who can enjoy your literature, and yourhistory, and your music, and your drawing with keen appreciation are notmade thereby selfish or unsociable; but that you are more delightfulcreatures than those who have no such independent resources and joys. Agirl who gets her certificate or prize and is cross or dull at home, and does not think it worth while to be kind and agreeable to a youngbrother or an old nurse, to every creature in her household down to thecat and the canary, is a traitor to the cause of higher education. Again, it has been observed that the practical and artistic elements inschool education have been, in general, more thoroughly developed oflate years since they were put into a secondary place. This is as itshould be. Such subjects as music, drawing, cooking, housekeeping, wood-carving, nursing, needlework, when they are studied at all, arestudied more professionally and thoroughly and intelligently, and lessin the spirit of the amateur and dabbler. So I would say to you, bothnow and when you leave, show that your education in intelligence hasgiven you wide interests and powers to master all such subjects. Takethem up all the more thoroughly. Closely akin to this merit of thoroughness is the large spirit ofunselfishness that ought to come, and certainly in many instances doescome, with wider interests, a more intelligent education, and a moreactive imagination. Women in our class have more leisure than men; theycan actually do what is impossible by the conditions of life for us mento do, link class to class by knowledge and sympathy and help andkindness. They can be of immense service in this way. There is a storyin the life of an American lady, Mrs. Lynam, that occurs to me. Therewas much conversation about a certain Mr. Robbins, who had lately died;he had been such a benefactor, such a good man, and so on. A visitorasked, "Did Mr. Robbins found a benevolent institution?" "No, " was thereply, "he _was_ a benevolent institution. " Women of our class may be, they ought to be, "benevolent institutions. " And such women exist amongus; pity is there are so few of them. They can unobtrusively be centresof happiness, and knowledge, and generous attitudes of mind. Now thereought to be more of such women, and I look to our High Schools withhope. They ought to make girls public-spirited and large-minded. There is another element in girls' education which is only imperfectlyas yet brought out, and which you yourselves can do something todevelop. I mean the better appreciation of an education which is not inbooks, and not in accomplishments, and not in duties, and not in socialintercourse. How shall I describe it? Think of the old Greek educationof men. There was a large element of literature and poetry and naturalreligion and imagination in it; and a large element of gymnastic also;but besides all this it was an education of eye and ear; it was atraining that sprang from reverence for nature, as a whole, for an idealof complete life, in body and mind and soul; and not only for completeindividual life, but also for the city, the nation. It was a consummateperfection of life that was ever leading the Athenian upward, by alife-long education, to strive for a certain grace and finish in everyone of his faculties. And we see to what splendid results in literatureand art and civic and personal beauty it led them. This element is still wanting in our higher education; it is the idealof nobility of life and perfection. We lack it in our physicaleducation. That is still far from perfect. If we all, parents, children, boys and girls, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, had some of theGreek feeling of high admiration of physical perfection of form andgrace and activity, we should not see so many boys and girls of veryimperfect gracefulness, nor should we see fashions of dress so ruinousto all ideals of perfection and grace. We cannot make up for the want ofthis national artistic ideal of beauty of figure by artificialgymnastics, scientific posturings, and ladders and bars. They are betterthan nothing, they are a protest, they certainly remedy some defects andprevent others. But do not you be content with them. By self-respect andself-discipline, by healthy life, early hours, open air, naturalexercise, the joyous and free use of all your powers, by dancing, playing games, by refusal to give way to unhealthy and disfiguringfashions, and, above all, by an aspiration after grace and perfection, do what you can to remedy this national defect in our ideals for girls. Did you ever read Kingsley's "Nausicaa in London"? Do you all know whoNausicaa was? If not, let me advise you to borrow Worsley's "Odyssey"and read Book VI. , and read Kingsley's Essay too. Nausicaa was a Greekmaiden who played at ball; and I think you are doing more to approachthe old Greek ideal when you play at lawn tennis and cricket and hockey, and I would add rounders and many another game, than when you are goingthrough ordered exercises, valuable as they are, or even than when youare learning Greek or copying Greek statues. This leads me to say that games contribute much to remedy anotherdeficiency in our ideal. There is a defective power of real enjoyment oflife, of healthy spirits among us moderns. There is more enjoyment nowthan there was. I think my generation was better than the one thatpreceded us in this respect; we had more games, more fun, more _abandon_in enjoyment than our fathers and mothers, your grandfathers andgrandmothers, had, if we may judge from letters published andunpublished. And they too often thought we were a frivolous generation, not so staid and decorous as we might be, and repressed and checked us;while we on the contrary urge on you to enjoy more fully the splendourof your youth and vitality. We desire to see you dance and sing andlaugh and bubble over with the delicious inexhaustible flow of vitalenergy; we know that it need not interfere with the refinement ofperfect manners and decorum, and we know too that there is the forcewhich will sober down and do good work, and there is the health-givingexercise, the geniality, and the joy that will make you stronger andpleasanter, more patient and more persuasive to good in years to come. So it is with boys: men are made in our playgrounds as much as in theclass-room; so, too, is it with you. I must give you a quotation from"Fo'c's'le Yarns, " that delightfullest of volumes-- "It's likely God has got a plan To put a spirit in a man That's more than you can stow away In the heart of a child. But he'll see the day When he'll not have a bit too much for the work He's got to do. And the little Turk Is good for nothing but shouting and fighting And carrying on; and God delighting To make him strong and bold and free And thinking the man he's going to be-- More beef than butter, more lean than lard, Hard if you like, but the world is hard. You'll see a river how it dances From rock to rock wherever it chances: In and out, and here and there A regular young divil-may-care. But, caught in the sluice, it's another case, And it steadies down, and it flushes the race Very deep and strong, but still It's not too much to work the mill. The same with hosses: kick and bite And winch away--all right, all right, Wait a bit and give him his ground, And he'll win his rider a thousand pound. " There is a word in German which has no English equivalent; it expressesjust the missing ideal I am speaking of. It is a terrible mouthful, asGerman words often are--Lebensglückseligkeit--it is the rapture andblessedness and happiness of living. Carry the idea away with you, andmake it one of your personal ideals, and home ideals, and school ideals, and life ideals, this Lebensglückseligkeit. "'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want. " You can carry this idea with you into society, and use it to brightenits conventional sociabilities, and stimulate them into positiveenjoyability by more of intelligence and animation. We had a visit the other day from an American gentleman, Mr. Muybridge, who came to give a lecture at Clifton College. I believe he alsolectured in Bath. He remarked to Mrs. Wilson in the lecture-room that hewas glad to see some ladies present. "I like ladies at my lectures; theyare so intelligent. " "Yes, " she replied, "but I fear you areattributing to us the qualities of American ladies; we are notparticularly intelligent. " "You are joking!" was his reply. "No, " shewent on, "we are always told how much more intelligent American ladiesare than English. " He paused for some time, and then slowly said, "Well, I'll not deny they are smarter. " Well, this quality that Mr. Muybridge describes as "smartness" is anAmerican equivalent of Lebensglückseligkeit; it is a sort of intensityof life, of vivacity, of willingness to take trouble, to interest and beinterested, that is a little lacking in our English ideal of youngladies: and we must be on our guard lest any school ideals of study andbookishness should actually increase this deficiency. Any one, mistressor girl, who makes good education to be associated with dulness andboredom and insipidity is again a traitor to the cause of highereducation. I have run to greater length than I intended, and I will conclude. It should be the aim of us all, Council, parents, mistresses, and girls, to show that our ideal of education includes both the training of theintelligence and reason, and the storing the mind with treasures ofbeauty and instruments of power for opening new avenues into thestorehouse of knowledge and delight that the world contains; and alsothe development of the practical ability, the benevolence and sympathy, the vivacity, the enjoyment of life, the fulness of activity, bodily andmental, that makes the Lebensglückseligkeit I spoke of, and thesuperadding, or rather diffusing through it all, an unobtrusive but deepChristian faith and reverence and charity. The Archbishop of Canterbury lately said in his charge that "publicschools were infinitely more conducive to a strong morality than anyother institution. " He was thinking of boys' schools, of which he speakswith intimate knowledge; but I believe that, where girls' schools haveat their head one who in the spirit of Dr. Arnold recognizes theresponsibility for giving an unostentatious, unpartisan-like, butall-pervading and intelligent religious tone to the life, the aims, andthe ideal of the school, and where the Council and parents value thisinfluence, there the influence of girls' High Schools may be moreconducive to strong morality and true religion in England than even thatof our great public schools. For the High Schools are training more andmore of the most influential class among the women of England, as thepublic schools are training the men, and the influence of women must ofnecessity be of the first importance; for it is they who determine thereligious training and the atmosphere of the home, and thus profoundlyaffect the national character. Let us all alike try to keep beforeourselves from day to day and from year to year these high ideals ofeducation which can nowhere be so well attained, both by mistresses andgirls, as in a High School. And in particular let me appeal to you, the inhabitants of Bath, to beproud of this school, to foster it, to assist it in every way, and beassured that in so doing you are conferring a lasting benefit on yourfamous city. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: An Address delivered at the High School, Bath, and the HighSchool, Clifton, Dec. 1889. ] III. RELIGION. RELIGION. [3] I am not going to preach you a sermon of quite the usual type, butintend rather to offer a few detached remarks without attempting toweave them into any unity of plan, or to connect them with anyparticular text from the Bible. Such unity as these remarks may possesswill result not from design but from the nature of the subject. For I amgoing to speak about religion. Now as I write this word I almost fancy I hear the rustle of an audiencecomposing itself to endure what it foresees must be a dull anduninteresting address. "Religion! he can't make that interesting. " Now, why is this? What is religion, that in the eyes of so many clever andintelligent and well-educated young people it should be thought dull? Of this one point I am quite sure, that it is the fault of ourmisunderstanding and misrepresentation, in the past and the present, that religion seems dull. Religion is, in its essence, the opening to the young mind of all thehigher regions of thought and aspiration and imagination andspirituality. When you are quite young you are occupied of course withthe visible things and people round you; each hour brings itsamusements, its occupations and its delights, and reflection scarcelybegins. But soon questions of right and wrong spring up; a world ofideas and imaginations opens before you; you are led by your teachersand your books into the presence of great thoughts, the inspirationsthat come from beauty in all forms, from nature, from art, fromliterature, and especially from poets; you come under the influence offriends--fathers, mothers, or other elders--who evidently have springsof conduct and aspirations you as yet only dimly recognize; and mixedwith all these influences there is that influence on us from childhoodupward of our prayers that we have been taught, our religious services, our Bibles, and most of all the Sacred Figure, dimly seen, but neverlong absent from our thoughts, enveloped in a sort of sacred andmysterious halo--the figure of our Lord Jesus Christ enshrined in ourhearts, and that Father in Heaven of Whom He spoke. All these are amongthe religious influences; and what is their aim and object? What is itthat we should try and extract from them for ourselves? How should weuse them in our turn to better those who come after us? Well, I reply, they should all be regarded as the avenues by which ourhuman nature as a whole ought to rise, and the only avenues by which itcan rise, to its rightful and splendid heritage and its truedevelopment. We cannot be all that we might be without straining ourefforts in this direction of aspiration towards God, towards all thatis ideal, spiritual and divine. We are often inert, effortless, and then the religion I have spoken ofrepels us because it demands an effort; we are often selfish, and itrepels us because it calls us out of self; we are often absorbed in thesmall and immediate aims for present enjoyment, interested in our ownsmall circles, and religion insists that these are not enough. It is forever calling us, as all true education calls us, as literature andhistory call us, to rise higher, to see more, to widen our sympathies, to enlarge our hearts, to open the doors of feeling and emotion. Religion therefore may make great demands on us; it may disturb ourrepose; it may shake us, and say, look, look; look up, look round; itmay be importunate, insistent, omnipresent, but it is not dull. There is a sham semblance of religion which you are right in regardingas dull, for it is dull. When it is unreal and insincere it is deadlydull; when phrases are repeated, parrotwise, by people who have eithernever felt or have long lost their power and inspiration, then too it isdeadly dull. When a sharp line, moreover, is made between all thevarious influences that elevate us, and place us in presence of theideal and spiritual world; when the common relations of life, when art, poetry, criticism, science; when educated and refining intercourse andconversation, and all that occupies us on our intellectual sides isclassed as secular, and the only helps to religion that are recognizedare services and creeds and traditions of our particular church, thensuch religion cuts itself off from many of its springs, and from most ofits fairest fields, and _is_ barren, and unprofitable, and dull. You are not likely to make this error. You are perhaps more likely tomake the opposite error, by a natural reaction from this. Because, whenall the world of interest and beauty and human life is opening beforeyou, you cannot believe that religion is confined to the narrow sphereof ideas in which it was once thought to consist, and is still sometimesdeclared to consist, you may think that you can dispense with thatnarrow but central sphere of ideas; and there you are wrong. I am quitesure that there is no inspiring and sustaining force, which shall makeyour lives worthy, comparable to the faith which Christ taught theworld, that we are verily the children of God, and sharers of His Divinelife, heirs of an eternal life in Christ towards which we may press, andthe appointed path to which lies in the highest duties that our dailylife presents and consecrates. On this inspiring power of faith inChrist I shall not speak to-day. I mean to speak on one only of theduties which form the path to the higher life, which you may overlook, and yet which is inherent in religion. The duty which I shall speak of is the necessity of entering into thelife and needs and sympathies of others; of living not with an eyeexclusively on yourself, but with the constant thought for others. Itis the law of our being that admits of no exception. You may hope thatthe law of gravitation will be suspended in your case, and leap out ofthe window; but you will suffer for your mistake; and you will beequally mistaken and equally maim your life, if you think that somehowthe law of the spiritual world would admit of exception, and that youcan win happiness, goodness, and the full tide of life; become the bestthat you are capable of being, while remaining isolated, self-absorbed--by being centripetal, not centrifugal. It cannot be. Nowthis is worth saying to you, because you know here at school what aunited social life is. All girls do not know this. You do. There isdistinctly here a school life, a school feeling, a house feeling. Nocasual visitor to your playing fields and hall can mistake this. And youknow that this enlarges and draws something out of your nature thatwould never have been suspected had it not been for school life. Butwhen school life ends, what will become of this discovery that you havemade? Boys, when they leave school and have developed the passionatefeeling of love for their old school, --the strong _esprit de corps_, theconviction that in brotherhood and union is their strength andhappiness, --contrive to find fresh united activities, and transfer tonew bodies their public spirit and power of co-operation. Their college, their regiment, their football club, their work with young employés, their parish, their town--something is found into which they can throwthemselves. And again and again I have watched how this has become areligion, a binding and elevating and educating power in the mind ofyoung men; and again and again, too, I have noticed how without it menlose interest, lose growth and greatness; individualism creeps on them, half their nature is stunted. For the individual life is only half thelife; and even that cannot be the rich and full and glorious thing itmight be, unless it is enlarged on all sides, and rests on a wide socialsympathy and love. But how is it for girls when they leave school? It is distinctly harderfor you to find lines of united action. Society tends to individualizeyoung ladies; its ideal for them is elegant inaction and gracefulwaiting, to an extent infinitely beyond what it is for young men. You donot find at your homes ready-made associations to join, or even anobvious possibility of doing anything for anybody. And so I havewitnessed generous and fine school-girl natures dwarfed, cabined, confined; cheated of the activities which they had learned to desire toexercise, becoming individualistic, and therefore commonplace; notwithout inward fury and resistance, secret remonstrance, but concealingit all under the impassive manner which society demands. Something is wrong: and your generation is finding this out, and findingout also its cure. Year by year greater liberty of action is open toeducated women; and educated women are themselves seeing, and others areseeing for them, that they have a part to play in the world which noneothers can play; if they do not play it, then work, indispensable to thegood of society, and therefore to their own good, is undone. I say to_their own good_, for we all want happiness: but happiness is not won byseeking for it. Make up your minds on this point, that there are certainthings only to be got by not aiming directly at them. Aim, for example, at being influential, and you become a prig; aim at walking and posinggracefully, and you become an affected and ludicrous object; aim even atbreathing quite regularly, and you fail. So if you aim at happiness or self-culture or individualisticcompleteness, the world seems to combine to frustrate you. People, circumstances, opportunities, temper, everything goes wrong; and you laythe blame on everything except the one thing that is the cause of itall, the fact that you yourself are aiming at the wrong thing. But aimat making everything go well where you are; aim at using this treasureof life that God has given you for helping lame dogs over stiles, formaking schools, households, games, parishes, societies, sick-rooms, girls' clubs, what not?--run more smoothly; wake every morning with thethought what can I do to-day to oil the wheels of my little world; andbehold people, circumstances, opportunities, temper, even health, allget into a new adjustment, and all combine to fill your life withinterests, warmth, affection, culture, and growth: you will find ittrue: good measure, shaken down, heaped together, and running over, shall men give into your bosoms. Ah! but _what_ can one do? It is so hard to find out the right thing. Yes; and no possible general rule can be given. You must fix the idealin your mind, and be sure that in some way or other openings will arise. I will not touch life at school; you know more about that than I do, andperhaps need not that I should speak of public spirit, and generoustemper, and the united life. I will only say that a girl who does notthrow herself into school life with the generous wish to give pleasureand to lift the tone around her, does not get more than a fraction ofthe good that a school life like this can give, and does not do herduty. I speak of later years alone. And in the first instance, andalways in the first place, stand the claims of home. I dare say youremember the young lady who wanted to go and learn nursing in ahospital, and was asked by the doctor why she desired this. "Father isparalysed, " she said, "and mother is nearly blind, and my sisters areall married, and it is so dull at home; so I thought I should likenursing. " I don't want you to emulate that young person. Grudge no loveand care at home: no one can give such happiness to parents, brothers, sisters, as you can, and to make people happy is in itself a worthymission; it is the next best thing to making them good. And rememberalso, that there are many years before you: and that though it may seemthat years are spent with nothing effected except that somehow thingshave gone more smoothly, you yourself will have been matured, deepened, and consolidated by a life of duty, in a way in which no self-chosenpath of life could have trained you. And if, as is quite possible, someof you are impatient already for the exercise of your powers in somegreat work, I will preach patience to you from another motive. It isthis: that you are not yet capable of doing much that is useful, fromwant of training and general ability. I remember Miss Octavia Hill oncesaying that she could get any quantity of money, and any quantity ofenthusiasm, but that her difficulty was to get trained intelligence, either in men or women. So, a few days ago, Miss Clementina Black, whois Hon. Secretary of the Women's Trade Association, said to a friend ofmy own that she had had many voluntary lady helpers of various degreesof education and culture, and that she had found without exception thatthe highly educated students were the most fitted to do the work well;that they alone were capable of the patience, accuracy, and attentionto detail which were one essential quality to the doing of such work, and that they alone could provide the other essentials, which can onlyspring from a cultivated mind--viz. , wideness of view, sense ofproportion, and capacity for general interest in other importantquestions--social, literary, and intellectual. "It is this cultivationof mind which prevents you from being crushed under the difficulty andtedium and disappointment which must attend every effort to teachprinciples and promote ideal aims among the mass of ignorant, apathetic, uninterested, and helpless working women, who must themselves in thelast resort be the agents in bringing about a better condition ofindustry. " You may rest assured that if you set your mind on a career of splendidusefulness for your fellows (and I hope every one of you here aims atthis), then you will need all the training that the highest and mostprolonged education can give you. Become the most perfect creature youhave it in your power to become. If Oxford or Cambridge are open toyou, welcome the opportunity, and use the extra power they will giveyou. If not, then utilise the years that lie before you, in perfectingyour accomplishments, in self-education; in interesting and informingyourself on social questions, in enlarging your horizon, while youcheerfully, happily, brilliantly perform _all_ your home duties. And during this period of preparation which you all must go through, remember that there are some things which you can do better in yourinexperience and ignorance than any other people. How is this? Tell mewhy it would be more comfort, and do more good sometimes to a poor sickwoman to bring her a few primroses or daffodils than to give her anysubstantial relief. The reason is the same. The very freshness andinnocence of young faces, that sympathise without having the faintestsuspicion of the sin and misery of the world, is more refreshing andhelpful than the stronger sympathy of one who really knows all the evil. You can be primroses and daffodils, and give glimpses into a purerworld of love and gentleness and peace. And if a prolonged training is impossible to you, it is often possiblefor you to assist in some humble capacity some lady who is so engaged inwork on a scale which you could not yourself touch. Be her handmaid andfag and slave, and so gradually train yourself to become capable ofindependent action. But to sum up all I am saying it amounts to this--Where there's a willthere's a way, and I want you to have the will. Did you ever think for what reason you should have had such a splendidtime of it in your lives? Not two girls in a thousand are getting suchan education as you are, such varied studies, such vigorous publicschool life, such historic associations. And why? Because you are betterthan others? I think not. It is that you play your part in the greatsocial organism our national life; hundreds are toiling for us, digging, spinning, weaving, mining, building, navigating, that we may haveleisure for the thought, the love, the wisdom that shall lighten anddirect their lives. You cannot dissociate yourselves from the labouringmasses, and in particular from the women and girls of England. They areyour sisters; and a blight and a curse rests on you if you ignore them, and grasp at all the pleasures and sweetness and cultivation of yourlife with no thought or toil for them. Their lives are the foundationson which ours rest. It is horrible in one class to live without thisconsciousness of a mutual obligation, and mutual responsibility. Allthat we get, we get on trust, as trustee for them. I remember thatThring says somewhere, that "no beggar who creeps through the streetliving on alms and wasting them is baser than those who idly squander atschool and afterwards the gifts received on trust. " I know that our class education isolates us and separates us from theuneducated and common people as we call them, makes us perhaps regardthem as uninteresting, even repellent. Part of what we hope from thegirls who come from great schools like this is, that they shall have alarger sympathy, a truer heart. Remember all your life long a saying ofAbraham Lincoln's, when he was President of the United States. Some oneremarked in his hearing that he was quite a common-looking man. "Friend, " he replied, gently, "the Lord loves common-looking peoplebest; that is why He has made so many of them. " You can all make a _few_ friends out of the lower class; you cannot domuch; but learn to know and love a few, and then you will do wider goodthan you suspect. But you are beginning to ask--Is all this religion? You expectedsomething else. Let me remind you of the man who came to Jesus Christ, and asked Him what he should do to obtain eternal life. And thisquestion, I may explain, means--What shall I do that I may enter on thatdivine and higher life now while I live; how can I most fully develop myspiritual nature? And the answer was--Love God; and love your neighbouras yourself. Go outside yourself in love to all that is divine and idealin thought and duty; go outside yourself in love to your neighbour--andyour neighbour is every one with whom you have any relation; and then, and then alone, does your own nature grow to its highest and best. Thisis the open secret of true religion. Eastertide is the teacher of ideals. Its great lesson is--"If ye wereraised together with Christ, seek the things that are above. " If bycalling yourself a Christian you mean that you aim at the higher, thespiritual, the divine life, then think of things that are above. [Greek:Ta anô phroneite], think heaven itself. And heaven lies around us in ourdaily life--not in the cloister, in incense-breathing aisle, indevotions that isolate us, and force a sentiment unreal, morbid, andeven false, but in the generous and breathing activities of our life. Religion glorifies, because it idealizes, that very life we are eachcalled on to lead. Look, therefore, round in your various lives andhomes, and ask yourselves what is the ideal life for me here, in thisposition, as school-girl, daughter, sister, friend, mistress, or in anyother capacity. Education ought to enable you to frame an ideal; itought to give you imagination, and sympathy, and intelligence, andresource; and religion ought to give you the strong motive, theendurance, the width of view, the nobleness of purpose, to make yourlife a light and a blessing wherever you are. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: An Address given to St. Leonard's School, St. Andrews, onSunday, April 13, 1890. ]