HIGH-SCHOOL FOR GIRLS IN ENGLAND. 225 
Later in life I began to manage a school for myself, and I do not follow that rule. 
When the boy is learning elementary arithmetic, and has taken up the higher forms of 
sercentage, he begins to get into matters that he does not comprehend ; then if we give 
2im arithmetical algebra—that is, dealing with numbers in a different form—and lead 
1m on to understand equations in the second degree, it may be well to let him discon- 
‘inue the study of algebra and take up plane geometry. And when he has completed 
shat, let him recur to algebra, and take it up with the higher form of geometry. My 
axperience has not been in favor of alternating these studies. 
HIGH-SCHOOL FOR GIRLS IN ENGLAND. 
BY MARY GURNEY AND ROSE KINGSLEY, OF ENGLAND. 
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[READ BY Miss ZIMMERN, oF THE HicH-ScHOOL AT TUNBRIDGE WELLS, ENGLAND.] 
“KNOWLEDGE is no more a fountain sealed.” These words are the motto 
of the Girls’ Public Day School Company; and to understand their full 
mport we must glance at the history of a revolution which has taken place 
n England in the last twenty years. 
The low condition of education for girls of the upper and middle 
classes twenty-three years ago had long been known to persons who had 
studied the subject. So serious did it seem that at last the English gov- 
ernment, took up the question, and by the report of the Schools Inquiry 
Commission, in 1870, revealed the full extent of the existing evils to the 
public. Among these evils, to quote from the report, we find “ Want of 
thoroughness and foundation ; want of system ; slovenliness and showy 
superficiality ; inattention to rudiments; undue time given to accom- 
slishments, and these not taught intelligently, or in any scientific man- 
aer ; want of organization.” 
A serious indictment, truly. A remedy for this state of things was 
aeeded, and needed at once. 
But here government help ceased. Unlike the United States and Ger- 
many, the English government does not assume any responsibility over the 
sducation of children, except those attending the elementary schools. All 
sublic schools, whether for boys or girls, have been the result of private 
offort or of endowment. The work of reform in the education of our 
girls had therefore to be done. like so much other English work, by 
mndividual energy. 
After the report of the commissioners was published, Mrs. William Gray 
determined to inaugurate this reform. And, as a first step, she formed, 
with a little band of men and women equally in earnest with herself, 
the ¢¢ National Union for Improving the Education of Women of All 
Classes,” shortly known as the ‘ Women’s Educational Union.” 
Among the objects which this union had in view, we find two specially 
mentioned. In Clause 2: “To promote the establishment of good and 
cheap dav-schools for all classes above those attending the elementary