"But some of my school-work will be wasted if I don't keep it up."

"Quite true; but do not keep it up simply because you have once begun it; some of your lessons will have done their work by ploughing and harrowing your mind, and may be left behind. The use of school is to teach you how to use your mind, and to try your hand at several branches of study, that you may be able to follow whichever suits you."

"But I have not got any particular turn for anything, and it seems a pity to drop things."

"Yes, it is a pity, but you are not going to teach, and you will have to do the best you can. You had better make up your mind, before you begin life, as to what sort of woman you want to be, and then cut your coat according to your cloth, for if you begin by wanting to keep up everything, you will probably end by dropping everything, in despair."

"Well, I want to keep up Latin and Greek and French and German, and Algebra and Geometry and Chemistry and Mechanics, as well as English subjects."

"And seeing that your day will probably be only twenty-four hours long, I fear 'want will be your master'! If you had a strong turn for any one of these subjects, I should say keep it up, by all means; but as you have not, I have very strong doubts whether you will find mathematics or classics much use to you. You know enough to take them up again if ever you wanted to help a beginner."

"Then do you think Latin and Greek and mathematics no good for a woman?"

"Certainly not; you will read your newspaper, and the books of the day, in quite a different way now that your mind has been trained by these subjects, but you do not need to keep the scaffolding up when your house is built!"

"It does seem a pity!"

"Well, I do not want to debar you from these subjects if you really enjoy them; there would be a reason for going on, if they were intense pleasure to you, but I suspect you do them as 'lessons,' and, if so, you had better forsake them for things that directly tend to make you useful."

"Oh, cooking and nursing, and that sort of thing."

"Yes; but I was not thinking of that sort of thing. I meant things that bring you closer to others; Madame Schwetchine says that every fresh sorrow we endure is like learning a fresh language, because it enables us to speak to a fresh set of souls in their own tongue, and to sympathize. Every fresh thing that you learn brings you in sympathy with a fresh set of people. It gives pleasure and ease to a stranger to find that some one in his new circle knows his old home, and we can try to be at home in the mental country of each person we meet, so as to be able to respond to them. If you are a genius you can have your own country, and wait in it, till you meet some fellow-countryman; but as you only want to be an ordinary woman, 'not too bright and good for human nature's daily food,' you will give far more pleasure to others, and widen and strengthen your own mind far more, by being able to join on easily to all you meet, than by pursuing some one abstruse study, whether it be mathematics or philosophy."

"But it seems such a small thing to spend one's mind in learning odds and ends of other people's hobbies."

"But I would have a hobby of my own, and do some steady stiff reading, only, as you are going to be a woman, and not a student, I would choose reading that linked me to as many as possible of other people's interests. How dull and shy poor little Miss Smith was yesterday, till I found that she knew Venice as well as I did. After that she quite enjoyed her visit."

"Yes, but I could not have talked about Italy. I never have a chance of going abroad."

"You do not know when you may go, and if you went to-morrow it would be a case of 'No Eyes.' You do not know an interesting piece of architecture when you see it, you would not know what pictures to look for, you would not know the history of the places you went to, and, in short, you would miss nine-tenths of the best points, for want of knowing they were there."

"Yes; I might read up countries, but it is so unlikely that I should ever see them, that it does not seem much use to read up for nothing."

"Well, supposing that you did not go, but that you had read books on Italian Art, and made out a list of the pictures you wanted to see at each great town—Florence, Venice, Rome, Siena—and knew about each painter, his history, his style, and photographs of his works, and copied out under each picture what good critics had said of it, or at least put a reference to the book where it was mentioned (e.g. Kingsley's description of Bellini's Doge; Browning on Fra Lippo Lippi's Coronation of the Virgin; Ruskin's best descriptions); and if you looked out all the famous men of each town, and knew their history, and what parts of the town were sacred to them; if you studied the buildings of each town, looked up its architecture, and tried to draw it from photographs and illustrations, and then hunted out all the poetry and novels about each place, and drew out a sketch of its history, marking where the local history of the town dovetailed into larger European interests, and specially where it touched England—I think, after this, you would enjoy meeting any one from Italy almost as much as if you had been there, and you would not feel you had read up for nothing. I should take a fresh country every year, and make believe that you were going to it next summer, and that you were getting ready to be 'Eyes,' and not 'No Eyes,' while there. You would have got the spirit of the country by this, far more than ninety-nine out of a hundred of those who go to it in the flesh. You are leaving school at eighteen, and by the time you are five and twenty, i.e. before you are fully grown up, you might have thus visited Italy, France, Germany, Spain, America, India, which would make you a fairly cultivated person."

"But it is so hard to get books; I can read Ruskin while I am with you, and when I am with Uncle Charles I could find some of the others I should want, but I can't get hold of a course of reading at home."

"But if you have such a large peg as Italy on which to hang your reading, you can always find something which bears on it—you can borrow an odd book here and there, or pick up bits in a stray magazine; several of the books you would want are cheap to buy, and, if you keep a list of them, you will be surprised to find from what odd quarters they turn up. People have a way of saying, 'Oh, do recommend me a book,' as if all subjects were equally interesting, or rather uninteresting, and they borrow the first that comes, reading it as a duty, quite regardless of the fact that it does not belong to anything they have read before, or will read after; but if they had made up their mind on a subject, the lending friend would take far more interest, and probably hunt up something that bore on the subject, while the reader would be more likely to get good."

"But if I begin Ruskin here, and then go home, where I may perhaps find an Italian history, and then go for another visit and find something else, it will all be so disjointed."

"Yes, it would be nicer if you could go on with art or architecture; but your reading will not be so desultory as to be useless, if it is all strung on the one thread of Italy, and then you can group it, as you go along, in a commonplace book. I should take a large one, and divide it among the towns I wanted to see, and then subdivide the pages given to, e.g. Florence, under the heads of art, history, famous men, architecture, poetry, novels, and, as I read anything on these subjects, I should jot down the substance of it under the right heading, or if it was a poem, just give the title and one or two of the best lines. And you could keep up your French and German at the same time—suppose you read Corinne and the Improvisator, they would both help to keep you in an Italian atmosphere."

"Yes, I could keep up my reading, but how about the grammar?"

"I should recommend you to take a very conversational novel and turn a page of it into both French and German every week; this would keep up all the rules of grammar, and, though you might make mistakes, you would gain fluency in expressing yourself, which is much more needed than grammatical accuracy if you go abroad, for a course of lessons will set you right about the grammar at any time, but would not make you talk, if you had allowed yourself to get tongue-tied by not practising translation from English into French; and I should advise you to translate very freely, and use the dictionary as little as possible; if you cannot remember the exact rendering, twist the sentence and paraphrase it, till you can manage it, simply to learn to express your thoughts easily. I should say an hour a week of this would keep up both French and German."

"But you have said nothing of English History and Literature."

"I should be inclined to drop English History for the first year, because you know so much more of that than of Foreign and Ancient History, but if you like it I should take some one prominent reign—Elizabeth or Charles I., or Anne or George III., and get to know all the chief people, read their memoirs, and what they themselves wrote, so as to feel among friends whenever you hear a name of that period mentioned—and read all essays, etc. that you can find upon it. To keep your mind generally open, I should make a chart of contemporary history and another of literature, taking one century a month, and leaving plenty of space for adding things afterwards. In Literature, I should take one of the Men of Letters every month, or one of the Foreign Classics, and at the same time read any of the man's own works that I could. Modern poets and novelists and essayists I should read at odd times, specially making it a matter of conscience never to open a novel before luncheon! I should read my poets not only promiscuously, as the fancy took me, but compare their treatment of different subjects; e.g., you might make yourself a private New Year's Eve service, of all the poems on it you can find—Coleridge, Tennyson, and Elia's prose poem on the same subject. Or you could make a Shepherd's Calendar for yourself, and copy out under each month what poets have said about it, and its flowers and features generally: or a Poet's Garden; collect all the bits about flowers, and make a 'Poet's Corner' in your garden, admitting no flower that cannot bring some poetry as its credential. It will make country life far more enjoyable if you know your poets as Thomas Holbrook, in 'Cranford,' knew Tennyson."

"I should like all that, Aunt Rachel; but you have not said anything that sounds like stiff reading yet."

"No; and you ought to have something that will tax all your powers, as well as this general cultivation, which will be all pleasant. I should take some really stiff book, on Logic or Political Economy, or Butler's 'Analogy,' and after each morning's work make a careful analysis of the argument, leaving one side of your MS. book blank, that you may put in afterwards any illustrations or criticisms of your own, or others, that may occur to you in the future. I should always keep a stiff book in hand and treat it so, even if all other regularity and plan in my reading fell through—it would be a backbone."

"But I shall have so much writing to do if I am to make a commonplace book on each subject."

"It will make you slower, but much surer. I know a girl who writes a review of every book she reads, giving extracts, and an abstract of the argument and her own opinion of it. She finds it most useful, both as practice in expressing her thoughts and for reference afterwards."

"But it would take so long."

"You would be well repaid, and you would not read any books in your time for study which were not worth taking trouble with. In reading a book, I should put a mark to everything that struck me, and at the end of a chapter should look over the marked bits, and put a second mark to those parts that seemed specially important, after I had mastered the drift of the chapter. It would then be easy, when you had finished the book, to write a review, for you would only look at the doubly marked bits."

"And am I to do no science?"

"I should vary your science with your opportunities, because you have no strong turn for any one in particular. When you go to town in the winter for that long visit you should get some cooking lessons, and before you go you should get the books recommended by the South Kensington Cookery School, and study the bookwork on the subject. When you go away in the summer, you should take up geology, or botany, or whatever suits the place you go to."

"But I shall only have smatterings of things at this rate!"

"Smatterings are very good things in their way, so long as you are not misled into thinking them more than they are! They are the keys which will enable you, in the future, to follow up the subject for which you may have any special opportunities. They also prevent your being quite a dumb note anywhere,—it is something to be able to listen intelligently! Besides, if your mind is open on all sides, you will never find any one dull, for you are almost certain to be able to gain information on some one of the subjects you are interested in."

"I don't see how I can get all these things in, Aunt Rachel, for I shan't have much time."

"I think you might manage two hours a day, and I should divide the week thus: Monday and Friday I should give to Italy or any subject which you meant to take as the staple of your reading; Tuesday take a science, and Wednesday English literature; Thursday take a stiff book and half an hour of French; Saturday take ancient history or mythology and half an hour of German. I should write an essay every week at odd moments, if I were you, for you ought to think things out for yourself as well as filling your mind with other people's thoughts by reading, but you could work out your essay in your head while walking or waiting for any one. I should also advise you to make a list of every book you read after leaving school; you will find it very interesting in after years, especially if you put a short criticism on each."[2]

"But surely I had better do more than one subject in a day? I should get tired of reading one book for two hours."

"You might vary your treatment of the subject. For instance, take notes of the History of Italy for one hour, and look out descriptions of pictures for another. In literature you could read about your author for one hour, and read his works for the next. In your science, give half the time to book-work, and the rest to practical work."

"But would it not be a more thorough change to go to a new subject?"

"So it would, but you may not be able to fit in two hours' reading with your duty to your neighbour! On any day that you could honestly be only a half-timer, you are far less likely to get careless, and to despair of regularity, if you get a bit of your day's subject, than if you have to leave one of your subjects entirely undone."

Even Aunt Rachel's good advice came to an end at last, as in course of time did Urith's visit, and also the Midsummer term, after which she left school with the best possible intentions, and announced them at home with much dignity. But, far from being allowed to carry on her course of study, it became a study with her two small brothers to prevent such morbid fancies from taking effect. They won golden opinions from the servants those holidays, who said that the young gentlemen had never been so little trouble before. They suddenly became as full of "resources within themselves" as Mrs. Elton herself, to the admiration of the whole family, except of the unfortunate Urith, who might have unravelled the mystery, since the cultivation of her domestic virtues by startling and unexpected interruptions of her reading, occupied such of their spare time as was not devoted to the mental exercise of devising new plans for her discomfiture on the morrow.

But, happily for Urith, holidays are terminable, and when the boys left she hoped to do great things. But visitors came to stay in the house, special friends of her own, with strong theories as to the value of co-operation in the matter of brushing their hair at night.

Midnight conversations did not conduce to work before breakfast or to much energy after it. It was, therefore, with very mingled feelings that Urith welcomed Aunt Rachel, her outside conscience, whose yearly visit was usually an unmixed pleasure to her.

Having written much about her intentions at first starting, she was not surprised when her aunt, on the first evening of her visit, settled herself for a talk, and began—

"How is the reading going on? You were very sensible in saying that you meant to begin at once on leaving school, so as not to get out of the habit of work, and as you have now had three months I suppose you have something to show for it?"

"Well, I thought I should have had, but, you see, the boys wouldn't let me!"

"I don't see why you need have drawn the boys' attention to what you were doing; but since they left—"

"The house has been full!"

"Yes, my dear, but as you generally do have visitors, your reading will never flourish at this rate."

"Well, I couldn't neglect them."

"No; but they don't require entertaining before breakfast, do they?"

"No; but I was so sleepy."

"What time did you go to bed?"

"Well, I suppose I ought not to have stayed in Barbara's room, but Alice had so many stories to tell us of her adventures that I did not leave them till after twelve o'clock."

"As Alice is by no means tongue-tied in the daytime, her adventures might have kept, and if you went to bed in proper time, you might get half an hour before breakfast. But what do you do after breakfast?"

"Oh, then the flowers want doing, and mamma always wants some notes to be answered, and then it is so fine that we go for a walk, and don't get back till after luncheon, and then visitors come, and I must be there to talk to them; and when it gets cool, people come in for tennis, and as to reading after that, why, one barely gets time to dress for dinner, and in the evening they like me to play to them, and papa wants the paper read to him, and you know, Aunt Rachel, you always said home duties ought to come first, so I don't see when a girl at home is to read!"

"I quite agree with you about home duties, my dear; but, though many things have changed since my day, home duties must have changed most of all, if they now include chattering till midnight, and taking a two hours' walk in the morning, on days when you are likely to get three hours' tennis in the afternoon, and being obliged to play in the last set, so that you cannot even go and dress a quarter of an hour too soon! It seems to me that you might get these home duties done by eleven o'clock, and then get an hour, or an hour and a half, for steady reading, or, if not so much as that, still visitors do not come directly after luncheon: in fact, I noticed that you got through two volumes of that new novel before any one came. Now, that time would have done equally well for history, and even when the boys are at home, their suspicions would not be much aroused if you went to wash your hands for luncheon a quarter of an hour too soon, and the same in the evening before dinner."

"Yes, Aunt Rachel, it all seems very easy when I talk to you, and I feel now as if I should carry out all you say, but I know a hundred little things will come to make it very hard. I wish it were easier to carry out one's good intentions."

"I do not wish it for you, my dear; you will be worth ten times more if you have to exert strength of character, than if everything is done for you; we ought to feel a little insulted if Fortune lets us live on too easy terms, though I cannot say, after all, that you have very hard ones. There now! I have given you quite enough advice to start several girls in life. I will only add this: do not get flurried over your work, or insist on doing it when time and strength will not permit; and, on the other hand, do not be self-indulgent!"

"Like as a star That maketh not haste, That taketh not rest, Be each one pursuing His God-given hest."

[Footnote 2: See "Record of a Year's Reading." 6d. Mowbray.]



"Get up, M. le Comte!"

You have all been considering what qualities are most necessary in family life and what qualities are most to be deprecated—you have, in short, been considering Dr. Johnson's question as to what makes "a clubbable person." I find, on comparing your suggestions, that there are thirty-eight things to avoid in home life (which suggests complexity); however, each of you was to confine her attention to three virtues and three failings, so in giving you my own likes and dislikes, I will not dwell on more than three.

I will not take manifest faults like irritability or selfishness—we all strive against those, but I would suggest turns of mind that are often not realized as faults:—

I.—The Benevolent Despot who takes infinite trouble for your help or pleasure, but insists on your enjoying yourself in her way. (The young very often do this to the old or to the invalid, quite forgetting that one's own way loses none of its charm, even in age or illness!)

II.—Then there is the Peter Grievous who cannot stand a word of reproof; she is aggrieved or huffy or sulky in a minute—she thinks that she has a delicate sense of justice, and that she does well to be angry; she feels as if her mother took a curious and selfish enjoyment in finding fault with her,—whereas the poor mother has to take her courage in both hands before saying anything calculated to bring on those black looks.

III.—And then there is The Snail, always slow, generally late, and frequently a martyr—she has to be spoken to so often that her case usually develops into the Peter Grievous disease as well. For if a mother speaks, let us say, six times—in the daughter's mind it ceases to be reproof, and becomes Nagging. It never occurs to the daughter that she sinned six times (or even shall we say eight or ten?); she feels that she is being nagged at, and may therefore cease to attend, and may enjoy a grievance into the bargain!

Now, I have slow friends who really suffer from a sense of their failing, and who realize acutely what they make others suffer; they were not trained at first to pull themselves together and to collect beforehand any materials they were likely to want (as you can train yourselves by settling in properly to do your preparation)—and they did not teach themselves to start five minutes sooner instead of leaving things to the last moment. (They think that the consequent family thundercloud is their sad fate from their being of a slow constitution.) But if you have only one horse and your neighbour two, and you are to dine at the same house, it only means that you must order yours earlier. Do not start together and then bewail your sad fate; nothing condemns you to be late except your own bad management.

Especially be careful to be up early when you are going to early service with your mother; it fidgets her to wait—she recalls all your many previous sins of the same kind—and just when you both want to feel at one, you start off together (rather, I should say, you overtake her), both feeling very much at two. And yet you made an effort to go! and you feel she ought to be pleased with you—do not spoil it by that fly in the ointment of being late.

* * * * *

It seems to me that the Benevolent Despot, the Peter Grievous, and the Martyred Snail, are people to avoid in choosing your family!

Now, the people to choose for your family party are, first, the Reliable Person. I know one person who is a perfect tower of strength, she is full of common sense: if you give her a commission she is sure to get the right thing and to do it reasonably; she knows exactly what she paid, and she tells you! If she undertakes to do a thing it is certain to be done in good time; she does not wait till the very day the thing is wanted and then find that it cannot be got.

Now, you often let yourselves do a stupid thing, or a forgetful thing, and then say, "Oh, I'm so sorry!" and feel as if you had wiped it out. Not at all! You have lost one chance of growing into a reliable woman. In all your life you will only have a certain limited number of chances, and should use every one you have—to be reliable is worth all the genius in the world for comfort to others, and you can each win this crown if you care to do so.

One other person I would choose if I were fated to have sisters, would be the one who purrs when she is pleased. It takes all the colour and air out of life when people gaze impassively at beautiful things, or hear lovely things and never seem to have taken them in; or meet kindness and look as if it was not there. You do not need to gush, but do purr!

And thirdly I want a magnanimous nature;—one that takes slights and neglects in a large-minded way, and does not believe people meant them and, if they did, does not fret: one who is serene when little things go wrong, and does not fuss or worry: one who accepts generously as well as gives generously, and who is keenly alive to people's good points and good intentions. Little petty motives and small spites and jealousy die away in the light of a nature like that. It keeps the family atmosphere sweet and wholesome.

* * * * *

Now, my lessons are generally about the things that can be carried out at home, or else about the beliefs that underlie them. You know that my ambition for you is that you should go out into the world and lead the ordinary small social life, but that you should live it in a great way and bring great beliefs to bear on it.

This is a special lesson—the last of all to some of you—the last in this year to all of you.

How long have you been at school, each of you? How many times have we come together here, and thought over together, point after point, the things that really matter to us?

Week after week we are reminded by these talks to pull ourselves together, first in one way, then in another, and I do believe we have all tried.

Have the suggestions I made and the Resolutions we made, soaked into our lives and altered the stuff of which we are made? That is the Responsibility for me who speak and for you who hear: "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin."

A Bible lesson written for you and dwelling on your special life and dangers is a more pointed reminder to you than a general sermon, and when you leave you will not get these reminders: one is hardly ever spoken to religiously after being grown up. It is no one's business afterwards (as it is mine now) to speak to you.

Therefore I want you always to keep some religious book on hand that is likely to speak to you. For instance, Bishop Wilkinson's books speak, so do Dean Paget's and Law's "Serious Call," and "Christian Perfection." Read a little of such a book every day, and a longer bit on Sunday. If you only say your prayers and go to church, it is apt to become an outside thing; you want stirring up!

When you go out into the world you may drift into the ways of each household you are with for the time being; whereas I want you to have your own definite religious life, an inner life of rules and duties: dress like other people, but keep a hair shirt underneath, as the Saints did.

And when I talk about this and that piece of advice (advice which is often worldly wisdom; for goodness and worldly wisdom are closely allied),—always remember that I pre-suppose the life of prayer and rule about which I so often speak—only there can you gain strength to follow such advice.

But now (pre-supposing the inner religious life—the effort after the Practice of the Presence of God)—what shall I pick out as practical advice for a closing lesson to those who are going into the world?

I.—Always vote on the right side in conversation.

Very often the lower side, or the unreligious side in talk (or in doings, such as not going to Church) is the easier side to take. It seems obtrusive to show what you feel to be right; and very often the one who takes the religious side is narrow-minded and tiresome compared to the others. Goodness is very often tiresome, and non-religion broad-minded and amusing. (Gallio is often a most attractive person!) It takes courage then to side with the tiresome one, instead of saying something rather clever. In youth one has a great horror of belonging to the tiresome side. Cleverness counts for so much, and it is hard in early life to put goodness first! One does not realize the beauty of the strength and principle shown by the tiresome people, and it takes real principle to show one's colours in ordinary talk.

I once heard of an earnest religious girl who was asked to a pleasant country house, and who thought she might lawfully take a holiday, as it were, and be like other people while away from home; so she laughed and talked with the rest and kept her real life to herself. On the last night, a girl she had taken a fancy to came into her room, and, after a little time, said, "It has been so nice meeting you, but I rather wish your sister had come too." "But I have no sister." "Why, I have heard so much of her, and of how good she is, and though you wouldn't think it, I have been bothered about things lately, and when I heard your name, I thought it was she who was coming here, and I planned to have a talk with her:—you're awfully nice, but of course one wouldn't talk about those things to you any more than to any of the rest of us."

I leave you to fancy the resolutions that girl made, to show her colours for the future!

And then it does not seem to matter—no harm is being said or done, Gallio is generally an excellent person, and really "So-and-so" was unnecessarily tiresome in raising the point; and then, again, one's indolence bids one be quiet and vote neither way.

But every vote on the right side counts; it alters the balance of the general feeling, and probably helps some one looking on,—some one who never let out that they needed or cared for any help. "Right!" has a big battle to fight, and you and I are soldiers, and must stand to our guns.

Have the courage to show that you like goodness. It makes a difference, for no one ever tells an unkind story to a large-hearted woman, or a nasty story to a nice-minded woman.

If they tell either to you, it means an intuitive perception that you enjoy it,—you bring out that side of them; if there is no response in you, that side of them goes to sleep while they are with you. You create your world in your own image, and are responsible for what is said to you, as well as for what you say.

II.—My second advice is: Show your mother that you love her. "In one's whole life one can never have more than a single mother. You may think this obvious.... You are a green gosling! I was at the same age as wise as you, and yet never discovered this till it was too late."[3]

Your mother will plan for you to go out and enjoy yourselves, and she probably will not say that she is left alone by this or that arrangement; but you must think for her and protest against it, and see that she gets amusement, and is talked to.

I know girls who will leave their mother alone night after night, or sit at home and never utter a word. They do not think of it, and she feels left out. Even if she makes you go out, she will like your noticing and thinking for her. I believe each daughter fails to realize in her own case how much her mother values signs of the love which both know to be there.

You may say, "My mother does not like a fuss!"—Very likely. But there are ways and ways.—I do not believe any older person is ever anything but pleased when their little pleasures are seen to be a matter of real consideration to a younger one. I have watched so many mothers now that I see it, but I myself used to let my affection be taken for granted. I see now how much more pleasure I might have given, and I would give anything if you would do what they say is impossible—i.e. profit by some one else's experience, and try to show your affection for your mother. She is the only person to whom it is safe to fully express your affection. If you feel strongly for any one else, expressing it is apt to lead you to be silly, or sentimental, or wanting in self-control, but little loving ways with your mother are quite different—they are always comforting to her and good for you. Every one of an older generation is apt to feel that the younger one does not want them; therefore express your affection doubly to an elder compared to what is necessary or right, or wise to an equal, because by nature the elder does not quite believe in it!

I dare say you are nevertheless thinking as I used to do. "One's mother is quite different—she knows I love her best." In a way that is true, but all I have said is true too!

III.—My third advice is: Put some salt into every day—the salt of effort and self-denial. Go on with a book though it bores you. Go out for a walk though you feel lazy. Finish some drawing or needlework, which you would rather leave to begin something else. Make yourself do something which you do not like, and which is useful.

And I say to all of you, not only to the leaving ones: Do not lounge through the day just because it is holidays. You are not a little child who has to be made to do things: you are a sensible, reasonable being, who wants to grow. You do not leave off eating for a month, you do not leave off growing for a month; then do not leave off growing in other ways. Do not be worthless at any time.

Some of you seem to think you will not have to give account of holidays to God—I think you will be more called to account for them, for then you have a chance of showing your real stuff.

And when you are grown up, and quite free, feel that you are still more responsible.

Enjoy yourself to the top of your bent, but see that each day you gain new power to do what you ought, and what you make up your mind to do; and remember that this power is only gained in the using—and dies out if we do not use it. I shall be horribly disappointed if you do not gain this power, and if you do not use it well, "to the Glory of God and the Relief of Man's Estate."

Be ambitious—be all you were meant to be; make the world different; be generous—freely you have received, freely give.

Some one said to me the other day, "Girls are younger nowadays, and they go on being young till they are well through middle life. At sixteen we had to look after other people, but they shirk responsibility, till women of thirty are content to be like birds of the air, just amusing themselves, and feeling no call to be of any serious use."

I said, "Well, I do not like to see even a girl of eighteen with no raison d'etre, 'living like a prize animal!'"

Why were you born? God thought about you, and took trouble about you, and has something you can do for Him. To exist beautifully is not enough! Have you definite duties, which you stick to even though they bore you, e.g., house duties, or reading aloud, or lessons with the younger ones? If not, find some!

Marcus Aurelius counted each day lost in which he could not at night look back on something he had done for others.

Jeremy Taylor, in the "Golden Grove," says:—"Suppose every day to be a day of business: for your whole life is a race and a battle; a merchandise, a journey. Every day propounds to yourself a rosary or chaplet of works, to present to God at night."

I have given you three pieces of advice—

I.—Vote on the right side in conversation. II.—Show that you love your mother. III.—Put salt into every day.

I would end with one more. I take it from Saint Simon, that clever on-looker at the Court of Louis XIV. whose memoirs are famous. His morning greeting to himself was—

"Get up, M. le Comte! you have great things to do to-day."

You will all of you go out to lives that you can make empty and self-indulgent and narrow if you like; you can shirk duties and eat capriciously or intemperately, and lie in bed too long; you can idle about all day amusing yourself, and fill your mind with dress and gossip and spite;—perhaps you would feel there was "no harm" in such a life!

No harm! I would rather hear you were dead than that you lived a life like that!

On the other hand, every day of your life you can make the wings of your soul grow by an honest bit of self-denial, by an honest bit of work for others, by an honest bit of mental work.

Every day you can be more worth having; there is not one of you here who has not the power to make herself—and to pray herself—into a noble, dutiful woman.

"Get up, M. le Comte! you have great things to do to-day."

[Footnote 3: Gray's Letters to W. Mann.]



A Friday Lesson.

Our course of lessons for this term brings us to-day to Jephthah's story; to decide on the amount of blame due to the father is not a matter which so nearly concerns us as to learn the lesson of true womanhood taught us by the daughter. Hers was no blind obedience; her reason for sacrificing herself gives us the true position of a woman as a helpmeet, and as a helpmeet in the performance of public duty. "If thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord"—her father must do his duty at all costs, and she will help him to do it, even at the cost of her own life. The place of every woman is to make duty possible and imperative for those about her—for brother, sister, husband, friend. How many women keep their menkind back from public duty by their fretfulness about the inconveniences entailed on themselves? A clergyman or doctor has to face fatigue or infection,—a citizen wishes to vote according to his conscience and against his interest: how often a woman—wife, sister, or mother—puts expediency before him, persuades him that "'second best' will do," instead of aiming at "one equal temper of heroic hearts."

Besides the love of her country and the sense of public duty, which shine out in Jephthah's daughter, notice the plain lesson of simple obedience, "That she subdued her to her Father's will."

The ideal of obedience is less thought of now than in the "Ages of Faith,"—perhaps, in one way, this is only a right development; but, though obedience is a "young" stage of moral growth, it is a necessary one,—mankind went through it, and each man or woman worth the name must go through it even as our Lord Himself did. I recognize the strength, the North-country virtue of "grit" in such independence and sturdiness as that of the Yorkes in "Shirley," but the willing and reasonable obedience of a strong nature seems to me still higher—it is a nobler attitude of mind to feel, "I don't care whether I get my own way in this or that, or am my own master; I want to be in touch with the larger, higher life around me," that larger life of moral growth into which only a humble, teachable nature can enter. The larger, stronger nature—the big dog—yields gladly to its master; the small terrier nature loves to find an opportunity to yap and snarl. There is nothing fine about the unreasoning instinct to resent an order—it is rather the sign of a small nature. To take the commonest instances, when you are told to go to bed, or to mend your dress, or to put on a wrap, or to tidy your room, are you in any way a finer nature if you dawdle and argue and resent the order? Nothing is so small as self-sufficiency and self-centredness, whereas humility and obedience are of the Nature of our Lord Himself, and every humble and obedient soul is in communion with His Greatness. Dante's hierarchy of heaven, "in order serviceable," in ordered ranks, culminating in God Himself, gives us a feeling of harmonious greatness which is lacking in the scattered units of his "Inferno." It was only ignoble greatness which preferred to reign in Hell rather than serve in Heaven.

It may be that, in the maturer stages of life, obedience ceases to be a primary virtue. I am not at all clear when that mature stage begins,—but all would admit, in theory, that a noble character must have obedience as a foundation. I think it would help you if you could step outside your own momentary irritation at being ordered to do this or that, and see how unlovely it is to argue and stand on your rights and contest points. The essence of good breeding is to give way to others; quite apart from the consideration of the "Fifth Commandment," a thorough-bred person would shudder at the rude tone of voice, the snappishness, the contentiousness, the contradiction which many girls—otherwise "nice" girls—allow themselves to show in speaking to their mothers. How many of you feel quite guiltless on this score? I am afraid you would often have to blush if a stranger, to whom you looked up, could hear the way you answer back at home.

You half feel as though it were "fine" not to be ordered about;—but the "best" people in the Christian sense of the word, and the "best" people in the worldly sense, inherit the feelings of the ages of chivalry, that, the nobler a man was, the more deference and service he showed to others: "Ich dien" is the motto of chivalry and worldly greatness.—"I am among you as he that serveth" was the saying of Him Who, "though He were a Son," "learnt obedience." For this next week, when you are tempted to answer back—to be independent—to resent being ordered—remember how much more beautiful, how much more noble, is a humble submissive temper, than the miserably small ambition of being your own master. Do not be so small-minded as to contest and resent authority. You sometimes hear a servant say, "That's not my place," or "I won't be put upon." You never hear a true lady speak in that temper,—and yet, is there any difference in spirit between this tone which you would condemn, and your own way of answering back? You cannot get out of bad habits all at once, but get your ideal right, and you will grow to it. If you are not living in your own family, and feel inclined to resent orders, remember the days of chivalry, when all pages (often princes by birth) spent their youth serving in other people's houses, and learning the motto of every true knight, "I serve."

And whether with strangers or at home, remember Him Who was subject unto His parents, Him of Whom Jephthah's daughter was but a faint type.



A Home Art; or, Mothers and Daughters.

Know your own work, and do it.

This is a simple sounding rule, but we all find practical difficulties in following it. You have most of you lately left school, and I think the difficulty of the first part of this saying must have struck some of you. At school you knew your own work,—you had a certain time-table, you walked with the crutches of routine; and when you left school and found your day mostly at your own disposal, you learnt that a free life is far more difficult, and therefore far nobler, than a life under direction.

It was pleasant at first to be able to carry out your own fancies, but you awoke after a while to the fact that you were not spending holidays but living your real life; and then the thought must have come, if you had any stuff in you, "I must anyhow live my life; am I living it nobly?"

How can you live a noble life? Bacon gives us, perhaps, the best answer when he says that "the end of all learning should be the Glory of God and the Relief of Man's Estate." Shall this be the result of your school learning? Others can speak to you from experience, as I cannot, of the glory and happiness of a life spent in the Relief of Man's Estate: I would speak to you of a preliminary stage of work for that relief, of some of the difficulties which beset girls on first leaving school, and owing to which so much noble aspiration and unselfish enthusiasm run to waste.

I believe one of the main difficulties is friction at home; a difficulty on which I the rather dwell because it is harder, for those who know you personally, to speak of it without irritating you, or else criticizing your home. How is this home difficulty met? Some meet it by leaving home,—which reminds me of the minister who said in his sermon, "This is a serious difficulty in our belief, my brethren; let us look it boldly in the face,—and pass it by." Some lay themselves open to Punch's attack, when he depicts a girl saying, "Mamma has become quite blind now, and papa is paralytic, and it makes the house so dull that I'm going to be a hospital nurse."

Many who are too clear-sighted to neglect home duties, yet leave this difficulty unfaced, in that they look for all the pleasure of their life outside home, and within that home allow themselves to live in an atmosphere of friction and peevishness. The girl who does that has left the riddle of home life unsolved: she was meant to wrestle with that difficulty till she wrung from it the blessing, the peace which comes only from self-conquest and acceptance of all the circumstances of her life.

Have any of you the lurking thought, "I was born by no choice of my own: those who brought me into the world owe duty to me, not I to them?" I have known some say this, and I have known many act as if they thought it, and I have known some who felt as if God had better work for them to do outside home, and have either gone off to do it, or have chafed against life because they could not go. It does seem to me that the present very general eclipse of the old Roman virtue of filial piety lies at the root of much of the unsound work, and of the undone work, of the present day.

Know your own work, and do it. What is your work on leaving school? Is it not to learn to fit into your home? At school, when you got your remove, your duty was to get into the work of the new form, and to do it. You have now been moved to higher and far more difficult work than any sixth form, you are in the school of home. Are you learning its lessons, or are you fretting for a remove? It may be you find life so easy and pleasant at home that you feel any talk of its difficulties does not apply to you; it is all play so far. But I know so many who feel this friction on leaving school, that I am sure it must be the case with some of you.

If any here fail to feel the debt they owe at home—the debt which God enforced as next to the debt owed to Himself—let me remind them that the whole instinct of mankind has responded to the appeal of parents; filial piety has always been reverenced and held beautiful, and the hereditary sense of mankind must be taken into account in deciding what is, or is not, a virtue. But supposing I granted, for the sake of argument, that the original debt was on your parents' side and not on yours, what then? You remain as bound as ever to show them submission and devotion; all, in short, that the old-fashioned believers in the Fifth Commandment thought to be due from a daughter. If you are striving after a noble life you must give all this,—if you owe allegiance to either the Christian ideal of love or to the Pagan one of strength. "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen?" and, equally, if he love not his brother close at hand, how can he love brethren afar off? It is a poor sort of love which lavishes itself on self-chosen and, therefore, less irritating objects of charity, and is powerless to influence the home atmosphere. It is a poor sort of strength which shrinks from the hardest fight, from the conquest of self at home.

Is not every right and wise piece of good work for others an attempt to help them to train themselves to live a higher life? And can we dare to put our hand to this plough while neglecting our own training?

I was asked to speak to you about WORK, and you may think I am forgetting this in dwelling on home life. Not at all; I am looking on home life not as an end in itself, but as God's great training-school for His best workers; as the special place for the development of those qualities which are essential to all true and lasting work for "the Relief of Man's Estate."

I do not think I underrate the difficulties girls find; quite apart from her own faults and weaknesses, a girl who leaves school and goes home has probably three difficulties to contend with.

First, the change from restraint to liberty, which is a difficult phase in every life. Will you make it a change from "the rich bounties of constraint" to self-restraint, which is better still; or will you let it be a change to the weak lawlessness of a drifting life? If you would respect yourselves, and be worthy to take part in the great battle between good and evil, make and keep some rules for yourselves. Have a rule about getting up in the morning and (almost equally important) about going to bed at night; a rule against novels in the morning; a rule to read something sensible every day. Make what rule you please, only keep it, or you will never be more than a cumberer of the ground. Reading is the best thing to save your life from being eaten away by trifles. The best advisers say to a man taking a country living, "Read, read, read;" I say to you, read doggedly; the snare of a free life is desultory reading. Make any plan of stiff reading you like, and stick to it for one year, writing out notes of what you read, and you will be fitter for real work if it comes, as come it will.

I dare say you find reading is cold work,—very few women really enjoy knowledge for its own sake,—you are tempted to throw it up, and to drift in an easy good-tempered way, which pleases the others much more than your shutting yourself up to read. And the others are quite right in expecting you, now school is over, to be a woman, "with a heart at leisure from itself" and from self-improvement. One of the hardest home lessons for some girls to learn is the power of sitting idle and chatting. They feel it waste of time; they long to be doing something tangible; and yet a home atmosphere is mainly the result of the mother having acquired the art of leisure. You will be very unrestful house-mothers when your turn comes, and very unsatisfactory daughters and sisters in the mean time, if you are always at high pressure, and giving your family to understand that you must not be spoken to!

Too often the girl, who by dint of conscientious struggles keeps up real study, gets out of touch with her surroundings, and sees the stream of family confidences, and affections, and appeals for help and sympathy flowing towards the easy-going sister, who makes no struggles of any kind. Your great wish is to be a true woman, "with continual comfort in her face." Are your books, and your self-discipline, and your time-table, only a hindrance to this? Must you starve either head or heart? Why cannot you seem outwardly at leisure, and yet live an inner life of thought and work? It needs self-denial, forethought, economy of time, and that most Christian grace of tact; but these are all attainable, all part of that Wisdom which "orders all things sweetly and strongly," and which is the rightful heritage of every true woman. Let no delusion about amiability induce you to leave off reading and study, only be very discreet as to how and when you do it.

Let your time-table be a secret hair shirt, and not a red rag flaunted in your family's face. But never give up reading and thinking, the keeping in touch with abstract ideas. As long as you are young you can get on without this, but, when the charm of youth deserts you, you will find life (and others will find you) a blessing or a curse, according as you have developed or starved your powers of mind. It may be that you find little pleasure in your steady reading, and see no immediate results from it; never mind, read on, lest you become in middle life one of those amiable, empty-headed women who can give neither help, nor comfort, nor advice, worth the taking. How many old maids, and young maids too, tied by home duties, allowed their minds to get thin and empty: when, at last, they were set free they were silly and inconsequent; no work requiring thought and insight could be entrusted to them.

The second difficulty which is felt by many comes from the new lights of the day. At school, girls come in contact with varied ideals and inspirations,—they drink new wine, and they go home to find that old bottles are still used there. Very often this difficulty is greater in proportion as a girl has rightly profited by school—in proportion as she has been teachable and ready to assimilate good; she goes home with new aspirations to be met by old prejudices—prejudices intensified by half-loving jealousy of the alien influences of school. Are you to shut your eyes to the new lights, and be as though you had never known them? No, but do not keep one Commandment by breaking another. The First Commandment is supreme, Thou shall have none other gods but Him Who is the Truth; Truth must be obeyed at all costs, but if your truth-seeking breaks the Fifth Commandment, it probably breaks the Second also, and the principle you are obeying will turn out to be a graven image of God, and not the voice of God Himself. Very grave doubt rests on any form of goodness which is in opposition to your mother; it may be good for others, but can scarcely be so for you. I know of a girl who got under High Church influence at school, and who, in pursuit of spiritual good, gets surreptitious High Church books and newspapers, under cover to a friend. Another got under Low Church influence, and refuses to please her mother by dressing prettily or going out. It seems to me that both girls read their lesson backwards and neglect the weightier matters of the law, truth, and obedience,—while they seek what is good in itself but not good for them. Others persist in going to a church their mother disapproves of,—they say they can get good at a musical church, and only irritation and harm by going with her. I feel heartily for the trial of going to a church they dislike, but surely conquering self or pleasing a mother is good in itself, quite apart from the help given by the service; while, as to the good derived from the musical church under those circumstances, I doubt much if it comes down from the Father Who gave us the Fifth Commandment.

I should say, mistrust new lights which are a hindrance to old duties, "For meek obedience too is Light." It is more likely that we should be mistaken, than that a duty should cease to be binding. Let us take to heart Cromwell's appeal to his Parliament, "I beseech you, my beloved brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of Christ, to believe that you may be mistaken."

The third difficulty is that girls often fail to see that home life is one of the "Home Arts," which requires training and practice as much as music does. How much of our home life is set to music? How much of it sets all harmony and rhythm at defiance? A true woman is

"Like the keystone to an arch That consummates all beauty: She's like the music to a march That sheds a joy on duty."

Do you make your father forget his bothers when he comes in from his business? Do you give your mother a share in your interests? Does your brother look forward to his time at home, instead of thinking it a bore? No one has such power over your brothers as you have: you can do more than any one to give them high ideals: how many a brother, who has fallen to the stable-yard level of company, might have been held up if his sister had used her wits and tact to make herself as agreeable to him as she does to other people!

Sometimes it is not selfishness which makes home life a failure, but the not having

"among least things, An undersense of greatest."

A girl tries to live nobly at home and fails: she is not enough wanted, her mother is not blind, and does not want to be deposed from housekeeping; her father is not paralytic, and only wants her to play to him in the evening; life seems choked by tiny interruptions, such as doing the flowers, or writing notes, and she sinks into a placid or unplacid drudge—the aspirations with which she left school have died out.

Need this be? If she went into a sisterhood or a hospital, the tiny details would all be glorified by the halo which surrounds a vocation; it would all be part of a saintly life. Why is home not felt to be a vocation? Why cannot a girl welcome some tiresome commission or fidgeting rule of her mother's, as much as if it were imposed by some Mother Superior? Ought not the trifling duties to be fuel to her burning desire for her nobleness of life, instead of dust to choke it? You can make them which you will.

Girls often say, "I have nothing to do, worth doing, at home; I want to go and do some real work;" and they sometimes have the face to say this, while they are still as full of faults as when they left school, and when every hour of the day, at home, brings with it an opportunity of conquering some fault.

Are you ready for real work? Can you take criticism or contradiction with a perfectly unruffled face and voice? Do you overcome your hindrances to usefulness at home, e.g. do you improve your handwriting so that your mother need not be ashamed to let you write for her? Do you help her tactfully and consentingly—the only help which rests people—or do you argue each point, so that it is far less trouble to do the thing twice over than to ask you? Are you prompt and alert in your movements, or do you indulge in that exasperating slowness, which some girls seem to consider quite a charm? Do you wait till the last minute, and then leisurely put on your things, with serene unconsciousness of the fret it is to every one's temper? If you want to see how unthoroughbred such a habit looks, read "Shirley," and study the character of Mr. Donne, the curate, who flatters himself that he enhances his importance by keeping the others waiting while he complacently finishes his tea.

Do you lay down the law. Do you allow yourself the tone of positive, almost dictatorial, assertion, which, coming from a girl, so sets an old-fashioned person's teeth on edge; or do you try to speak in the tentative, suggestive, inquiring tone, which is not only required by good manners, but is also a real help to humility of mind?

Do not say that these things are too simple and obvious to bear on your future work for the Relief of Man's Estate,—on Work with a big W. They are of the very essence of the formation of character, and your Work for others stands or falls by that.

The sanctifying influence of home-life lies mainly in its necessity, its obviousness,—in the fact of our remaining unprofitable servants after we have done our best. It is the school in which we are placed by God; we are bound to learn its lessons, and do its duties: there is no halo of self-sacrifice around it—the position rightly viewed gives us no choice. "I must,"—there is the sting, the irksomeness to us. We can submit cheerfully to our self-chosen Pope, and seem most sweet-tempered in bearing criticism and in doing tiresome duties,—the "I must" is not there. This wilful obedience is worth just nothing as discipline of character, compared with obedience to our lawful authorities; "Ay, there's the rub!"

Is not this very necessity in home life—this "I must"—just the thing which makes it akin to our Lord's life? Is there not in that Holiest Life a continual undercurrent of "I must"? His earthly life was a course of obedience, not a succession of self-willed efforts; its keynote was, "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?"



Esprit de Corps.

While I was away, I was present at a discussion on Esprit de Corps, and whether it was a good thing in girls' schools. What is esprit de corps?—The feeling that we are one of a large body of which we are proud. A soldier has it when he is proud of his regiment and is proud of belonging to it.

Now, is it good or bad for girls to have a strong feeling of this kind for their school? Many opinions were expressed at the meeting. My opinion is that it is a good thing—a necessary thing. But every virtue has its defect—if you overdo it, you fall into some fault; if you are too amiable, you may fall into being untruthful; and so with esprit de corps. I want you to have it, but I want you to be on your guard against some faults connected with it. I want our School to be full of it, but I want it to be of the best kind.

One fault very common in members of any large body is conceit. The feeling of belonging to a fine institution swallows up personal humility. You may be more occupied with the importance and dignity of your position, than ready to take home the idea that you yourself are a very faulty member! Margaret Fuller, a clever American friend of Emerson's, said, "There are so many things in the universe more interesting than my individual faults, that I really cannot stay to dwell on them." There is one form of conceit—or rather of self-satisfaction—to which schoolgirls are liable: they know they are living up to the average standard imposed by public opinion and esprit de corps, and they are satisfied with this, instead of trying to live up to their own best self. It is quite possible for any straightforward, honourable girl to live up to the average standard, and it is very comfortable to feel satisfied. But if you are trying to live up to the highest standard you know, you will not be comfortable—you will be always profoundly discontented with yourself, but it will be the Divine discontent Plato speaks of. You will be always failing, but it will be failing nobly—the failure of one who loves the highest, and is content to follow the highest, even though it be afar off. In King Arthur's court, the noblest knights went in search of the Sangreal—scarcely one could succeed in his quest, but it was nobler to aim high and fail than to be content with "low successes." We, too, ought each to follow the quest of the Sangreal, that is, to seek to be perfect, and then there is no room for self-satisfaction, far less conceit.

Sometimes esprit de corps not only makes us think a great deal of our own merits, but it also makes us blind to the merits of others. We need only put this into words, to see its smallness, but it often happens. Some people's patriotism seems to consist in despising the French and Germans. No one values true patriotism more than I do, but I detest "insularity"—that insufferable feeling of superiority of which English people are so often guilty. We ought to love our own school, or hall, or college; but it is a poor, low kind of love if it means despising other schools, or halls, or colleges, picking holes in them, refusing to learn from them, and being mere partisans. A soldier would be proud of his own regiment, and think it the finest there was, but he would admire the splendid history that other regiments could boast, and he would be glad and proud of the fact that there were so many fine ones. All good schools belong to a splendid brotherhood—a grand army—and they should be proud of each other. We can be just as true and loyal to our own, and yet have wide feelings. Esprit de corps—loyalty to our body—is a very splendid thing, and we degrade it when we turn it into mere clannishness; it ought to bring out our love for all that is good, just as love for home ought to make us love outsiders better.

I have spoken of the faults of esprit de corps—do not think that means I do not value it. No; a thousand times, no! If we had no esprit de corps we should not be a living body, but a dead, stagnant mass, only fit to be swept away. What is true esprit de corps? My idea of it is, being content to sink all personal interests—being content to be as he that doth serve—being glad and proud to fill the smallest post, if so be that, by filling that post in the most perfect way, you can help on the perfection of the school to which you belong. I was talking to some one the other day about the community to which she belongs, and where she holds a leading place. "Of course, I would black the shoes," said she, "if it would help the work in the very least, and so would any one who was worth their salt." I quite agree with her, and I would not give much for any work in which that was not the feeling of the workers, from the highest to the lowest: that is the only true esprit de corps.

Some say women are incapable of such a masculine virtue—that women cannot put their private feelings in their pocket and act in subordination to the good of the whole—that they cannot sink their self-importance and their petty jealousies—that they cannot suppress themselves for a cause. Schools like ours have done a great deal for the mental education of women. I think they will do something more valuable still if they show that through their public education women can learn true public spirit, that school teaches true esprit de corps—that it teaches them to seek the beauty of being second, instead of the glory of being first.

In acting or recitations, could you be glad to take a minor part to help on the whole, or would you be huffy and cross-grained because your powers were not brought to the front? In the Wagner music at Baireuth, the singers take the good parts in turn, and the best prima donna, as Kundry in "Parzival," in one whole act has only one word. Think of the self-suppression needed for one who has such talent, to be content to act in such a piece and to put her full power into the dumb by-play, which is all that she has to do.

Esprit de corps is the virtue above all others which we, as members of this school, should seek to attain, and, in the very nature of things, nothing so entirely kills it as any self-seeking; while if you wish to be worth anything as an individual, remember that nothing is so smallening, so alien to any true greatness—to the most far-off touch of greatness—as the wish to be Number One.

Esprit de corps, to my mind, means that we all stand shoulder to shoulder, loving our school, helping each other; doing our duty in home and school, and in after-life, more perfectly, because we are proud of our school and mean to be worthy members, so far as in us lies; helping others because "our advantages are trusts for the good of others." Remember our school motto, "Ad Lucem," and, because you have been brought nearer to the light, help to be sunshine in all shady places. And while you are at school, have the esprit de corps which will make you do everything you can, for the good and credit of the school.

For one thing, be careful to get it a good name outside. "Manners are not idle"—people are quite right when they judge a school, as they largely do, by its manners. If girls are really growing as they should in gentleness, courtesy, reverence for age, and all that makes true womanhood, it must tell on their manners, and if they are not doing so, their school is not doing for them what it should. If you have real esprit de corps, you will not give people who are prejudiced against us, any reason to think ill of our School in this respect.

Another point of true esprit de corps concerns those who have power—whether as prefect, or VI. form, or head of a form, or through being popular. Power was given you that you might do more work for others—you are made a chief in order that you may be as he that serveth; privilege means responsibility—not enjoyment. There is nothing so mean as to take the loaves and fishes of any post, and not to do its duties; to order others about, and to be lax with yourselves. A ruler is contemptible who does not rule himself. Whether we are teacher, or prefect, or head of a form, or a leader in any way, it ought to make us hot, and sore, and ashamed, in exercising our rightful rule over others, whenever we are conscious (as we must all be at times) that we have failed in ruling ourselves—failed in temper,—failed in carrying out minutely, every law, great or small, that we help to enforce on others. Esprit de corps will make us use our power for the good of the school and not for our own pleasure.

Esprit de corps means being ready to give time and trouble to all school interests—without any thought of whether you will have a leading part given you, or of whether it is very amusing to do it. You would be unworthy members of the school if you simply came to do your lessons, and took no part in the little things which make corporate life go with a swing. You might as well think you were worthy members of your home because you ate and slept there. Membership in a home means being ready to take part in all its little tiresome duties; to throw yourself into amusements which sometimes do not amuse you personally; in all ways to help on family life. The girl who distinguishes herself in the tennis is thought a good public-spirited member, and so she is,—she helps the school and shows esprit de corps,—but, to my mind, the girl who fags well at the match, and gets small thanks and no credit, shows even more esprit de corps than the one who has the excitement of distinguishing both herself and the school.

The clever girl who wins prizes and scholarships, helps our school to shine, and no one applauds her more than I do, but in my heart, I feel that the school owes even more to the dull plodding girl, who knows she cannot do much, but who determines to give her very best to the school, and to be worthy of it by giving no scamped work. Perhaps she gets low marks, perhaps she is told she ought to do better,—and quite rightly, because we want her to rise to give really good work, and are not satisfied till she does; but whether it is good or not, if it is her best, she has fought a good battle for the school, and has "helped to maintain the high standard of duty which was founded in the school by its first and beloved head-mistress—Ada Benson."



Rough Notes of a Lesson.

I hope to start a new lesson for some of you, and I have gathered you all here to-day, whether you will be able to come to it or not, because, in thinking over what I wished to say about this one lesson, I found I was led into describing what I should like all lessons to do for you. My new lesson will be a talk on various things in which you are, or ought to be, interested. I have tried this plan before, and have sometimes been laughed at for having such miscellaneous lessons, but I found their effect very good. I had a spare half-hour in the week, which I gave to this Talking Lesson.

Once I took Dante, and after a sketch of his life and of Florence, we went through the "Inferno;" I read the famous parts in full and told the story of the rest, and now many of those children who listened feel, when they come on anything about Dante, as if they had met an old friend.

Then I happened to go to Yorkshire and saw several of its lovely abbeys: I came back with a craze for architecture, so I and the girls did that together. Neither they, nor I, imagine that we understand architecture, or are authorities on it; but though we only took the barest outline, it made us all use our eyes and enjoy old buildings. I often get letters from those girls, saying that they have since enjoyed their travels so much more, because they now notice the architecture. You know the story of "Eyes and No Eyes"—how two boys went out for a walk—one saw nothing to notice, and the other found his way lined with interesting things. I am sure, architecturally, your way is lined with beauty in Oxford, which deserves both outward and "inward eyes."

Another time we took the French writers of Louis XIV. and we all feel that Moliere and La Fontaine and Mme. de Sevigne are our personal friends, so that the value of their books is doubled to us!

We took mythology at one time, and many girls found that they understood, much better, allusions in books and various pictures in the Academy, which are often about mythological subjects. Ignorance on this point may sometimes be very awkward. I have heard of an American lady who invited her artistic friends to come and see a picture she had lately bought of "Jupiter and Ten." The friends puzzled over her notes of invitation, and, on arriving at her house, were still more puzzled to know how to pass off the mistake gracefully, when they found that the picture was one of "Jupiter and Io." I trust you will not cause your friends embarrassment of this kind!

Another time we took the history of Queen Victoria, as our way of celebrating the Jubilee patriotically. We began by all collecting as much patriotic poetry as we could, which was surprisingly little—I wonder if you would find more—and, all through, we made a special point of finding poems written about any of the events. We found Punch a valuable assistance, and we much enjoyed the cartoons and jokes which had been so mysterious to us before. Just that part of history which is not in "Bright," and which, yet, is before our time, is so very hard to find out about, and many allusions in the newspapers and parliamentary speeches are consequently wasted on us.

Now, all this was miscellaneous, yet I had one object running through it all, and the girls helped me to carry it out by listening in the right spirit, knowing that I was only pointing out the various doors through which they might go by-and-by. Not one of them thought she had "done" a subject because we had thus talked about it,—we all learnt to feel our own ignorance, and at the same time, how much there was in the world to learn.

I want to show you this morning where such a lesson should fit in, in the general plan of your education. To do that, you must first have the plan. Have you ever thought what education was to do for you, or, are you learning your lessons, day by day, just because they are set? I know what I want to do with you, but I cannot do it unless you work hand-in-hand with me, and you cannot do that unless you think about the matter and realize that, for instance, Euclid is not only Euclid, it ought to teach certain mental and moral qualities which you must have if you are ever to be worth your salt. There is a story of Dr. Johnson, which seems to me to apply to so many things. When his friend, Mr. Thrale, the great brewer, died, there was a sale of the brewery, which Dr. Johnson attended. An acquaintance expressed surprise at the great man's honouring with his presence such an ordinary affair as the sale of a brewery. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, turning with crushing deliberation on the unhappy speaker, "this is not the sale of a mere brewery, but of the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." This story seems to me well worth remembering, both because it is so characteristic of the Doctor, and because it is applicable to so many things. It is so easy to go through the world not seeing the importance of things, like the common people in "Phantasies," who never saw what a fairyland they lived in. Lessons, for instance, are not mere lessons, they are "the potentiality of growing rich in wisdom and in goodness beyond our highest dreams."

I should be sorry if, in after life, you should wake up and say to yourself, "How much more good my lessons would have done me if some one had shown me the real use of them and made me think, so that I might have learnt all I could, instead of just slipping through them day by day." No one can do the thinking for you. Unless you work with me by trying to think, I cannot really do much for you. I can bring you to the water, but I cannot make you drink. Yes, after all, I can make you drink, i.e. do your lessons day by day as a matter of obedience. So a better illustration would be that I can make you eat, but I cannot make you digest your food. You can prevent its doing you any good. If you simply learn your lessons by rote and do not use your thinking powers, education is very little good,—the obedience will have done you good, but, as far as mental growth is concerned, you will not gain much, for that sort of education drops off, like water off a duck's back, when you leave school. They say "a fool and his money are soon parted," but that is nothing to the speed with which a fool and his education are parted!

Now, I am going to take the chief subjects you learn, and show the higher things which I want you to gain when you are doing those lessons, and you must want it too, or my wanting it will not do much good. You do not learn Mathematics simply that you may know so many books of Euclid, and so many pages of Algebra; it is to give you power over your minds, to enable you to follow a chain of reasoning, to teach you to keep up continuous attention, and not to jump at conclusions. I do not say you cannot learn these things except by Mathematics; you might do it by Logic, and I know many people who have done it by mother-wit and the teaching of life; but when a person is inclined to trust to his mother-wit, and to neglect educational advantages because he can do without them, I for one feel inclined to doubt whether his share of mother-wit can be very large, after all. The people I have known who are clever, without having had the careful school-training you enjoy, used all the advantages that came in their way (though, when they were young, advantages were fewer), and unless you do the same, you cannot expect to be like them. Also, clever untrained people often feel very much hampered by their want of training; you see the cleverness, but they feel how much more they could have done if they had been trained. Therefore, do not allow yourselves to think "Euclid is no good, because 'Aunt So-and-so' is quite clever enough, and she never did it;" depend upon it, that is not going the right road to be like her. I feel quite sure that if this "not impossible aunt" had had opportunities of learning Euclid when she was young, she would have done it, and very well too! Of course, if you mean to read Mathematics from choice by-and-by, you will work hard at the subject now, but I can quite understand that those who are not going to do this, perhaps sometimes feel, "What is the good? I shall never look at a Euclid again after I leave school—I want to learn how to hold my own in after-life,—I want to be able to talk when I come out,—I want to be a sensible woman, whose opinion will be asked by other people,—I want to be clever at house-work or cooking, or to be able to manage a shop,—I want to be strong enough and wise enough to be a support and comfort to others,—I want to be a useful woman and not a mathematician!" Well! that is just what I want you to be, but I am quite sure that Mathematics will help you to this, by making you accurate and reasonable and attentive, without which qualities you will be no use and very little comfort. If you work hard at Mathematics while you are here, and gain these qualities, you have my free leave to shut your Euclid for good on the day you leave school,—you will have learnt his best lessons.

Is there any great mental good which you can gain by the study of Languages, quite apart from the advantage of being able to read and speak when you go abroad? Yes; it enlarges your mind to know the various ways in which things are expressed by different nations. A person who knows no language but his own is like a man who can only see with one eye. It opens a whole new world of thought to realize that other nations have other words.

Again, it makes you know your own language. Translation gives you choice of words and trains you to appreciate delicate shades of meaning; this helps you to appreciate Poetry, for one of the main beauties of great poets, such as Milton and Tennyson, is their marvellous perception of shades of difference, and the felicity with which they choose exactly the right adjective!

It is said that barbarous tribes use a very small vocabulary; I sometimes fear we may be going back to a savage state, when I think of the vocabulary of a modern schoolgirl, and see how much ground is covered over with these two narrow words, "awfully" and "jolly." Hannah More complained, in her day, of the indiscriminate use of the word "nice." "Formerly," she says, "a person was 'charming,' or 'accomplished,' or 'distinguished,' or 'well-bred,' or 'talented,' etc., and each word had its own shade of meaning; now, every one is 'nice,' which saves much thought." "Nice" held its position, for we find Miss Austen making Henry Tilney laugh at the same misuse of the word. "Awfully" and "jolly" seem to perform the same kind office for us which "nice" did for our grandmothers,—they "save us much thought," and are used with a large disregard of their inappropriateness; I have even been told by a girl that the Christian Year was "such an awfully jolly book"! Now, I am sure of this: you will find excessive use of those two words always betokens an empty, or rather an uncultivated, mind. I do not believe in any exception; their votaries may have learning, but they have not digested it, they are not thoughtful, they are "young (or old) barbarians," for it is the unfailing mark of a cultivated mind, to use the right word in the right place, and never "to use a sixpenny word when a threepenny one will do."

History should not be bare facts; it illustrates and explains politics of our own day; it teaches sympathy and large-mindedness, and the power of admiring virtues which are not of our own type. The Royalist learns to see the strength of Cromwell, and the Roundhead to see the beauty of "the White King." It ought to make the world bigger to us by helping us to realize other places and other times. If we are to live quiet stay-at-home lives afterwards, it is very important that we should try not to be narrow and "provincial," and history and geography should help us in this matter.

Poetry in the same way helps to make us imaginative, which is necessary, if we are to have the Christian graces of tact and sympathy. It is very important to learn the best poetry by heart; it is dull perhaps at first, but new meanings unfold themselves every time we say it. Mr. Ruskin says we ought to read a few verses every day, as we should do with the Bible, to keep our lives from getting choked with commonplace dust, to remind us that the Ideal exists. It certainly puts new beauty into life if we know what poets have said about it, and how they expressed themselves, and this might save us from unworthy expression. I have heard an intelligent schoolgirl, looking at a glorious sunset, say concisely, "How awfully jolly!" I have heard a schoolboy say, "How rum!" I believe they were both touched, but I think they would have expressed themselves differently and have got more pleasure out of it if they had been taught to see, by having it reflected from poets and painters, and had known more of "the best that has been thought and said."

There was so much I wanted to say that it is difficult to stop. I have given only general ideas, but bear in mind—as the main point of what I have said—that I want you to educate yourselves, to get ready for life, and to use your lessons here to bring out those qualities which you will want afterwards in everyday life.

Now, how will such general lessons help you in after-life?

First, I want them to help you to be interested in the things you will meet with in books and newspapers and conversation; you will not hear much about some lessons, but you will about these things—they are things that it "becomes a young woman to know."

Then, too, I want you to leave school with introductions to all sorts of nice people in books; you will find it do you as much good as social introductions. Schoolgirls are often "out of it" for a time, when they go home, because they had only "lesson-book" interests; I should like to begin outside interests with you.

Also, this kind of general interest makes the world seem bigger and more interesting; we get an idea of how many delightful things there are in it, and so our pleasures are increased, which is always a great advantage. Happiness is a duty, and sensible interests are a wonderful help to it.

Touching on many interests shows us our ignorance. I have known schoolgirls, who were kept to their lessons, Algebra and Latin and periods of History, and who thought they knew a good deal, because they measured by a schoolroom standard. When they came in contact with the number of things that cultivated people of society care for and appreciate, they learnt a good deal of humility. Certainly the more I read on general subjects the more I feel my own ignorance, and I think it would be very odd if it did not have the same effect on you.

The next reason for this sort of lesson, and one of the best, is that it ought to raise our taste. It is not enough to like or dislike a book: we ought to train ourselves to like the best books. We do not think ourselves born judges in music or art; we submit to being trained before we think our opinion worth giving. It would be just so with a book, but you often hear girls quite sorry for the author if they find a book dull; they feel he is to blame! When I find an author dull, whom good critics admire, I feel pretty sure that I am deficient on that point, and I try to learn to see in him what they do. I speak from experience; when I found Wordsworth dull, I knew it was my own fault, and I read and re-read him, and listened to those who could appreciate him, and now I am rewarded by his being a real part of the pleasures of my life. We need not leave off liking the merely pretty writers, such as Miss Procter and Longfellow. I love Longfellow and admire Miss Procter, but I cared for them both quite as much when I was seven, and an author who can be in some measure appreciated at seven ought to give way to deeper authors by-and-by. Like Guinevere, it is our duty "to love the highest." The great good of cultivated homes is that we learn to "put away childish things" and to admire the better things which we hear talked of. Some of you may not have this advantage; your people may be too busy for talking about books and such things, and some of you may be cut off from interesting talks by having school lessons to prepare when you would like to listen. Therefore, I should like you to get some talk in school on such subjects—to spend some "Half-hours with the best Authors."



Holidays.

"Where shall we spend the holidays?" has doubtless been discussed in many households, by both parents and children,—I wonder if the children followed it up by a still more important question, "How shall I spend the holidays?" Just at the close of a term you will not want me to suggest anything that is like lessons, but at the same time I do not see why you should spend seven weeks in idleness and novel-reading, any more than you would live for seven weeks on puddings and sweets. You like plenty of sweets, and I hope you will get them, but I hope you will have meat as well!

There are many books which are not novels, and which you would yet enjoy,—books which would send you back more thoughtful; and though you might not know any one lesson better next term because of having read them, yet you would be a step nearer to being the sort of women you would like to be. I dare say when you go for your holiday you will get something to read at the station bookstall. Now, several of the books I mean can be got there, as easily as yellow novels, and can be got for the price of Punch; they are so small you could have them in your pocket and get them read in odds and ends of time, out-of-doors, so that you need not miss any expedition, or any fresh air, through staying in the house to study. In the same way you could get some really good poem for a penny, and learn it by heart. Nothing would please me so much as if you all brought me next term the name of some book you had read, of this kind, and repeated to me a poem of the sort that you think I should like—which very likely is not the sort you like, as yet. It would do you good, whether you enjoyed it or not, for you would be teaching yourselves to like the better kind of books if you persevered with it, and your holidays would be pleasanter, as well as better, if there was some effort of this kind to give backbone to each day. Cooks say there should be a pinch of salt in everything you eat, and I am sure we ought to have a pinch of the moral salt of self-conquest in each day, just to keep it sweet and good.

Perhaps you will think I am always wanting you to read, and you would like to remind me that there are many other commendable pursuits. I certainly am rather of the opinion Lowell expresses in "Democracy." He says, "Southey, in his walk one stormy day, met an old woman, to whom, by way of greeting, he made the rather obvious remark that it was dreadful weather. She answered, philosophically, that, in her opinion, 'any sort of weather was better than none!'" I should be half inclined to say that any reading was better than none.

Yet you are quite right about those other pursuits, and I hope you will follow them; but at the same time, if you have not already got a taste for reading, it is the most important of all tastes for you to strive to acquire, as it is very doubtful if you will manage otherwise to do so in later life. I should pity you terribly if you failed to acquire it, for you will all find life hard in one way or another, and you will find that a love of reading is even more valuable than a sense of humour in helping you over rough places. And—over and above the minor, more "worldly" support of its power of amusing and interesting you, even in the most "set grey life"—it is linked to those higher helps, without which, neither reading nor anything else will do us much good. St. Hugh of Lincoln made much of good books because he said they "made illness and sorrow endurable," and, besides this, they save you from many temptations. It has been well said, "It is very hard for a person who does not like reading to talk without sinning.... Reading hinders castle-building, which is an inward disease, wholly incompatible with devotion.... Towards afternoon a person who has nothing to do drifts rapidly away from God. To sit down in a chair without an object is to jump into a thicket of temptation. A vacant hour is always the devil's hour. Then a book is a strong tower, nay, a very church, with angels lurking among the leaves."