HIGH-SCHOOL FOR GIRLS IN ENGLAND. 229 
Cambridge have already passed examinations which ‘“ excuse” them from 
the preliminary examinations imposed on all members of the universities 
who are proceeding to the ordinary degree or the degree in honors. 
Ten years ago it was the exception for the women students at Cam- 
bridge to complete the three parts of the ¢ previous” or ¢ Little Go” 
examination before the end of their second or third term of residence. 
Now the majority beginning residence are either ‘excused ” the three 
parts, or take them easily at the beginning or end of their first term. 
While our girls thus distinguish themselves by thorough and systematic 
work in those branches of education which until twenty-three years ago 
were considered almost exclusively the province of their brothers, the 
same system of thoroughness has had equally happy results in the subjects 
which were even then allotted to be suitable to women. 
Drawing and music have made an astonishing advance. The study of 
Irawing in the schools of the company is now full of life, under Mr. T. 
R. Ablett, whose system—remarkable among other points for his insist- 
ance on memory drawing, cultivating thereby intelligent observation as 
well as mere mechanical accuracy—has been widely adopted in England 
with the happiest results. In his report on the company’s schools for 
1892, he says: “I am glad to be able to report a distinct improvement 
1 the higher divisions. The memory drawing improves every year. The 
drawing of plants and casts reached a higher level of artistic merit than 
in previous years. The great improvement in the drawings from the 
head is a most encouraging sign.” 
Some of the drawings sent out to Chicago by our schools will serve to 
Alustrate these remarks. 
In music the revolution in the last twenty years is even more remarka- 
ble. Dances and other light and worthless music have given place to 
works of the greatest masters past and present, executed sometimes by 
highly trained string bands; while almost every school has its choral or 
musical society. Mr. John Farmer, of the well-known Harrow Music 
School, is examiner and general musical director to the company’s schools. 
And those who had the privilege of hearing a concert given under his 
leadership, by a selected choir from the company’s London and suburban 
aigh-schools, at Grosvenor House last year, will not soon forget the real 
musical treat they then enjoyed. 
Even games have not been neglected. When the first schools of the 
company were opened, school play was almost unknown. Now there is 
probably no high-school without its tennis club or fives court ; and tennis 
and fives matches between schools are frequent in summer, some involving 
a railway journey. This systematized play, with its friendly rivalry, has 
an undoubted effect on the girls’ character. For the powers of organiza- 
tion, the self-control, the ‘ give and take,” which are such happy charac- 
teristics of the English public-school boy, and are fostered by his life in