century has seen great changes, some of them revolutionary, in the education of the British people. It has also seen the beginning of still greater changes. Fifty years ago there was much stagnation. To-day there is much life, some bewilderment, and what appears to many to be an ever-increasing chaos. A large number of educational problems are being formulated, and many of them must, from the necessity of the case, be solved quickly, either badly, indifferently, or well. Time will possibly provide a solution for some of them without our actual interference; but the majority require careful thought and conscious effort, if they are to be solved satisfactorily. A wide knowledge of the educational state of the country, together with some knowledge of that which preceded the present state of affairs, will be of great use in such a momentous period as the present. Miss Bremner has given us a valuable contribution towards such knowledge, for which she deserves the gratitude of all those whose responsible duty it will be to mould the future of our educational development. Only those who have for some special purpose attempted to collect information on the state of education in Great Britain can appreciate the time, care, and patience which the writing of such a book as this entails.

Change has been visible in every sphere of education; it has been most strongly marked in the Secondary Education of girls and women. In Elementary Education, both in the immediate past and in the present, there has been no considerable difference between the education of girls and that of boys, nor between the education of men and women teachers. In Secondary Education, the difference in both spheres has been very

marked in the past, and is still considerable; as a result, there is probably less contact between the men and women teachers engaged in Secondary Education than between those engaged in Elementary Education. Partly as a result of this isolation, the development of Secondary Education for girls in England has been of a somewhat special kind, and has special interest for those who are studying the subject. Lately an increasing number of foreigners have visited England for the purpose of seeing our educational establishments. The foreigner who comes to study English education deserves our pity. Many are the difficulties which lie before him. In Elementary Education he has to comprehend two different schemes working concurrently all over the kingdom, Voluntary and Board schools. When he has surmounted this difficulty, and enters the field of Secondary Education, despair may well seize both his instructor and himself. Many secondary teachers in England know little of the educational life outside their own special sphere. What does a High School mistress usually know of the education given at this present moment at Winchester? How far can an assistant master from one of our great public schools describe accurately how life goes on in one of our private commercial schools? It is very difficult for the intelligent foreigner to get information, and even difficult to see the real connection between the facts which he collects. Thanks to this book, a foreigner can for the future obtain easily some insight into the education of girls and women in Britain.

It has been said, with much truth, that the members of a civilized community are so closely linked to one

another that no section can progress safely far beyond the rest of the community. In other words, it seems to be true that safe and permanent progress is only possible when the rear guard and the advance guard are connected by intermediate sections, all in touch one with the other. If this be true, the education of the less educated half of the nation, girls and women, must have a special interest. If the pace of the rear guard affects the pace of the advance guard, it is everybody's interest to see that the pace of the rear guard be quickened. To attain this end, it might be well worth while to divide the ancient educational endowments, at one time enjoyed by boys only, between boys and girls. If we are believers in that greatest of educators, the life of the home, it is better to spend a little less money on boys' education, and help the girls, rather than doom the boys to live in homes governed by badly educated mothers and wives. The education of girls is not merely a woman's question-thoughtful men have never so regarded it. It is a human question, one that concerns every one. This book, although it deals only with the education of girls and women, should therefore be studied by all those who are interested in education.

Just at the present moment Secondary Education in England requires more consideration than Elementary Education: the latter is organized, the former is not. It is a truism that organization gives enormous power. A constant, wide, ever-deepening stream of state-aid and rate-aid is passing to the latter; only a tiny streamlet to the former. Already it is not an uncommon sight to come across an elementary school in better buildings, and better equipped, than a secondary school in the

same town. We are so accustomed to the fact that our Education Department only concerns itself with Elementary Education, that we may fail to realize how Secondary Education is affected by it. To many of us it is a fact of the profoundest significance that political enfranchisement has come to the working-man in England before educational enfranchisement, and the educational results for the time being may be serious. Can we expect the average man who has never enjoyed the benefits of Secondary Education, to realize its enormous value to the nation? It is difficult at present to show its value, because our Secondary Education has been largely a class education, and as such, its national value cannot easily be demonstrated to a democracy. When Secondary Education is given in England to those clever boys and girls from our elementary schools, who can really utilise it, it will then be comparatively easy to show its national importance; but until that time it is placed at a serious disadvantage. Yet it is obviously of the greatest importance to protect most carefully our secondary schools and universities. They are the depositories of the traditions, the culture, and the learning of the past, and are therefore of unique importance. But in order to protect wisely we must understand, and know something about, Secondary Education. This work on the education of girls and women is of considerable value, in that it gives us a fairly complete picture of a part of the Secondary Education of the British Isles.

Every country has, no doubt, its special contribution to make to the education of the world. The British Empire, with its enormous colonies and dependencies

in every continent and in every climate, with their widely-different forms of government, has probably for its special educational mission to keep awake a healthy dread of over-centralization in matters educational; a strong belief in home rule in education; a firm faith in liberty-liberty of conscience, freedom of method, room for individuality, development, and self-government. If this is the British educational gospel, it is one worth preaching. During the last half-century a large number of secondary schools for girls have sprung up in England. It is interesting to note that on the whole they have been true to English traditions. Our girls' High Schools are not mere copies of the boys' Grammar Schools; there is differentiation among them, and considerable individuality. Women secondary teachers, considering their disadvantages, have taken. their full share in developing education in England.

That educational progress, which has been so marked in England, has also been taking place in other civilized countries; but in the higher education of girls and women England at the present moment probably stands first. Our progress in this department has been exceptionally rapid, and is probably due largely to the unusual wisdom of the pioneers of the movement. Time has already robbed us of many of that little band of earnest men and women who initiated the movement in England; but some are, fortunately, still with us. When the time comes to write a history of English education in the nineteenth century, it will be a very bright page that will record the first steps taken in obtaining a higher education for girls and women. Our pioneers toiled unceasingly; they did more, they