Part 12 (1/2)

Girls still depended, as a rule, on the old , and arithmetic formed the ordinary routine and limit, unless an acquaintance with French, or even with Italian, happened to be added as a special accomplishment Very occasionally a maiden of studious character was permitted to avail herself of the tutor maintained at home for her brothers, as was the case of the Honourable Mrs North, a younger daughter of Lord North of Kirtling, who learned Latin and Greek in this aret Roper to Mrs

Somerville, or indeed in the cases adduced by Ballard in his _Memoirs of Learned Ladies_, there were from time to ti low level of female culture But under any circumstances, until the period arrived when ladies were competent to undertake the tuition of ladies, all these matters necessarily devolved, in the first place, on the mother, and finally on a preceptor, as necessarily a man, and most probably in holy orders

His contribution to the developly preponderant, and was beyond doubt athe power of the Church, and indey for the direct political influence of which the Refore may be considered a product of the acute political distempers which accooverness to one of the daughters of Charles I--the Princess Elizabeth--set up, after the fall of the King, an establishment at Putney, to which Evelyn mentions that he paid a visit in company with some ladies on the 17th May 1649; but I find no reference to this institution in Lysons A siate; and the admirers of Charles and Mary Lamb, at least, do not require to be told that in the little volume called ”Mrs Leicester's School,” 1809, there are soraphical, in relation to the old-fashi+oned seents in our later civilisation and social refinement, important as they were, have left behind theement They bred those ere content to becoland, and to study the arts of dolory of the country; but their careers, like ”the short and simple annals of the poor,” have escaped literary coe,” as he styles hilish adaptation of the Abbe d'Ancourt's _Lady's Preceptor_, 1743, defines the qualifications then thought necessary and adequate for a young gentlewolish, an acquaintance with French and Italian, a faood handwriting; and yet ho probably reached this o--nay, ho reach it now!

In the tilish country towns, if it is to be augured from that of the Shakespears at Stratford, even where the parents were in good circumstances and the father a man of literary tastes and occupations, was still extrehter, Susanna, seems to have just contrived to write, or rather print, her name; but Judith used a mark, and Mrs Quiney, whose son became Judith's husband, did the same

Both the Quineys and the Shakespears were persons of substance and of local consideration; and in this case, at any rate, the explanation seenorance was usual, and did not prejudicially affect the position and prospects of a gentlewoland of elehbourhood of the Restoration; but the nu remained, doubtless, very limited, and the scheme of instruction equally narrow The frontispiece to Anthony Huish's _Key to the Gra interior in the shape of a girls' school, where the mistress is seated at a desk surrounded by fe Ladies_, ”Devotional, Moral, and Entertaining,” 1767, partly arose out of Dr Fordyce's _Ser Women_ The editor assures his fair readers that the Muse in this case is not a syren, but a friend; and there is plenty of the religious element in the volume But there are, on the other hand, extracts froil, Addison's _Letter froues_ The source froreeably and sensibly leavened with e intellectual nutrio Dr Goldsmith was a decided improve so, whether he offered them his own poetical compositions, or, as in the present case,from the works of others No one can object to Pope's _Messiah_ or his _Universal Prayer_, which constitute the prominent features in the devotional section, when they are in such excellent co in this volu a copy to either of the vicar's daughters

The universal and unchanging aim of the ecclesiastical authority is manifestly temporal, and Henry VIII and his coadjutors, and their immediate successors in the foundation of Protestantis it part of their scheme to furnish the real in the earliest endowed grammar schools, which set the example to private individuals and corporate bodies

These schools, which, as we know, had been preceded--and doubtless suggested too--by that at Magdalen College, Oxford, and others framed on a humbler scale or (like the City of London and St Paul's) under different auspices, opened the way to a partial secularisation of teaching throughout England The preceptors eraduates with a certain clerical bent; but the Statutes laid down rules for the ement of the Charity and for the liht; and the scheme was assuredly at the outset, and continued down to the last thirty or forty years--in fact, within the recollection of the present writer--so narrow and iarded as the enteel education

III But a farther and still more important step toward the emancipation of scholastic economy and discipline from Church control was taken when, first in Scotland, and subsequently, and also in a doirls only, or for boys and girls, where the religious instruction, instead of being, as under the archaic conventual and Romish system, the priraphy or History This was the commencement of an entrance upon modern lines, and struck a fatal blow at thethe bias and range of studies, and liberating the intellect froious trammels

The success and ed the old endowe; and the pressure was augymnasia of a novel stamp, as well as by the develop institutions confores in political and social life

The proprietary syste, as a rule, the mixed method, or rather by the reception of pupils of both sexes under the same roof, was eventually, and, except so far as dame-schools were concerned, finally es for young gentle ladies were the result

In these latter the drift is certainly e and culture spread, and the influence and fruits of ht land will gradually loosen its grasp of the national intellect, and will probably owe to the higher education of woland have propped up the tottering edifice long enough, and no one whose opinion is worth entertaining will lament the inevitable issue But whether the consequences of this vital movement will be otherwise beneficial, it has scarcely yet, perhaps, been in active operation a sufficient tie If it involves the sacrifice in any important measure of feminine refinement and dependence, we shall be forced to confess that the help to be rendered by our daughters and grand-daughters to the cause of intellectual enfranchiseht at a cruel price

As the old foundations discovered it to be i philosophical temper in order to enable them to exist side by side with the improved types of school and teacher, so the successful conduct of ladies' colleges will become impossible in the future unless that liberality of doctrine and sentiy which breathes around thenised

A spirit of disaffection to clerical guidance and clerical i those who are beco, in the natural course of events, husbands, fathers, and ratepayers; the revolt of the other sex has also commenced; and the wise initiative of the Board School in excluding the Bible and Catechisramdoms

The Bible is for scholars, not for school-folk; and, as Jereo, the Catechism is trash

XIV

The Abacus or A B C--Its construction and use--The printed A B

C--The first Protestant one (1553)--Spelling-books--Anecdotes of the A B C--_Propria quae Maribus_ and _Johnny quae Genus_--The Catechism and Primer

I The manner in which the earliest _Abaci_ were constructed and applied is precisely one of those points which, in the absence of specimens of remote date and documentary information as to their form and use, we have to elucidate, as far as possible, from casual allusions or internal testi a school interior display the ether; but here the latter appear, as I have stated elsewhere, to reiterate what their teacher reads froe in the educational course

In the _Jests of Scogin_, a popular work of the time of Henry VIII, and probably reliable as a faithful portraiture of the habits and notions of the latter half of the fifteenth and opening decades of the following century, one of the sections relates ”How a Husbandin” From the text it is plain that the lad was very backward in his studies, or had co that it was the farmer's ambition to procure his admission into holy orders ”The slovenly boy,” we are told, ”would begin to learn his A B

C Scogin did give him a lesson of nine of the first letters of A B C, and he was nine days in learning of them; and when he had learned the nine Christ-cross-row letters, the good scholar said, 'am ich past the worst now?'”

The ie is the reference to the Christ-cross-rohich contained the nine letters of the alphabet from A to I in the form of the Cross The time consumed in this particular instance in the acquisition of a portion of the rudiments is, of course, ascribable to a pleasant hyperbole, or to the scholar's phenomenal density; but the _Abacus_ or Christ-cross-roas, no doubt, the first step in the ladder, and although it was superseded by the Horn-book and the Primer, it did not substantially disappear from use in petty schools till the present century Its shape and functions, however, underwent ae children in the Accidence, it became a vehicle for arithmetical purposes, and rese of a s wooden fra on transverse wires To those who, like the present writer, saw this apparatus in co, its pedigree was naturally unknown It was an evolution froin put into the hands of the country bued to prepare for the priesthood, and who, as we learn froes in these Anecdotes, was actually ordained a deacon within a limited period

II To the Abacus, prior to the Reformation, was added the printed A B