HIGH-SCHOOL FOR GIRLS IN ENGLAND. 231 
as all the exercises are done in time and to music. There are few more 
charming sights than a couple of hundred girls, in the great hall—gay 
with plants and flowers and casts of fine statues—of one of our large 
schools, going through their ball and wand and light wooden dumb-bell 
or club exercises, with absolute precision. 
The moral effect of the high-school system is no less marked than its 
.ntellectual success. 
Its central principle is to combine the advantages of home life with the 
nealthy stimulus of class teaching. During the most important years of a 
girl’s life, when her body and her character alike are growing, and need 
ceaseless care and guidance, it is essential that she should receive much of 
that care and guidance from the natural guardian, her mother ; while at 
the same time she is anxiously guarded and watched by her school- 
teachers, and her intelligence receives a thorough and. healthful training 
‘n common with a number of children of her own age. 
We have personally known many a girl who at home with her gover- 
ness is bored into naughtiness and idleness by the dullness of solitary 
lessons, the monotony of the same voice and same face hour after hour. 
She goes to a high-school, and seems transformed. Her mind is stimu- 
lated and occupied by the bright, interesting teaching ; by the constant 
change of teachers from hour to hour; by the kind yet very firm disci- 
pline, which makes punishments almost unknown in our schools ; while 
she high standard of honor, the strong esprit de corps of a good high- 
school make a child feel that she is not only bringing disgrace on herself 
»ut on the whole class if she gets into trouble. 
That this is not mere fancy is shown by the verdict of some of our most 
axperienced head mistresses, who tell us that each year they are more and 
more impressed by the goodness, diligence, and tractability of their girls. 
Certainly the characteristic that strikes us most, after a considerable 
acquaintance with high-school girls, both in and out of school, is their 
exceeding happiness. On this point such an authority as Professor Max 
Miiller insisted with particular emphasis, when he opened the Leamington 
High School in 1884. Speaking of his experience with children of his 
own at the Oxford High School, he said : ‘“ Going to school became a 
real happiness; a work, which before had often seemed tedious, became 
a real pleasure.” 
Further, the effect of high-schools is, we venture to maintain, in spite of 
all that has been said to the contrary, beneficial to the bodily as well as 
to the mental and moral health of the girls. The danger of overwork—a 
danger it is impossible to exaggerate—occurs almost exclusively among 
girls who are sent late to a high-school. A girl of fifteen or sixteen often 
finds that she has to begin by unlearning much that she has learned 
badly ; that she has to give valuable time to getting rid of want of system, 
slovenly habits of work. She takes a place far below her contemporary