had graduated with so solid a foundation of scholarship that at the age of twenty-two she had received the title of "Doctor of Philosophy" from "Boston University," and was the first woman in this country to take such a degree.

The opposition to the granting of the petition was most strongly presented by six distinguished presidents of male colleges and by two Harvard graduates.

President Eliot of Harvard College opposed the admittance of girls to the Latin School, saying, "I resist the proposition for the sake of the boys, the girls, and the schools, and in the general interest of American education."

Hon. Charles F. Adams wrote, "I suppose the experiment of uniting the two sexes in education, at a mature age, is likely to be fully tried. It will go on until some shocking scandals develop the danger."

President Porter of Yale College thought "boys and girls. from the ages of fourteen to eighteen should not recite in the same class-room, nor meet in the same study hall. The natural feelings of rightly trained boys and girls are offended by social intercourse of the sort, so frequent, so free, and so unceremonious. The classical culture of boys and girls, even when it takes both through the same curriculum, should not be imparted by precisely the same methods nor with the same controlling aims. I hold that these should differ in some important respects for each."

President Bartlett of Dartmouth College said: "Girls cannot endure the hard, unintermitting, and long-continued strain to which boys are subjected. . . . Were girls admitted to the Latin School I should have no fear that they would not for the time hold their own with the boys, spurred on as they would be by their own native excitableness, their ambition, and the stimulus of public comparison. I should rather fear their success with its penalty of shortened lives or permanently deranged constitutions. You must, in the long run, overtask and injure the girls, or you must sacrifice the present and legiti mate standard of a school for boys. . . . It should be added that almost every department of study, including classical studies, inevitably touches upon certain regions of discussion and allusion which must be encountered and which cannot be treated as they ought to be in the presence of both boys and girls."

An eminent classicist, Prof. William Everett, said: "To introduce girls into the Latin School would be a legal and moral wrong to the graduates "; and declared that "Greek litera

ture is not fit for girls "; and, substantially, that what was a mental tonic for boys would be dangerous for girls.

The outcome of the effort was the founding of a "Latin School for Girls," which opened February, 1878, with thirtyone pupils, which number steadily increased to about two hundred.

Its graduates are in all the colleges of the State, at present, to the number of about forty, and they are among the best prepared who enter.

Not only the graduates of the school, but the whole community, must ever hold in grateful memory the names of those who, as representatives of the "Society for the University Education of Women," worked wisely and indefatigably for Boston girls: Mrs. I. Tisdale Talbot, Mrs. James T. Fields Miss Florence Cushing.

By following the history of high schools down to the presen day in one section of the North Atlantic States, taken as type of progress, we have not paused to note the few helpfu agencies which were gradually developed.

Returning to the beginning of the nineteenth century it i easier to discover what women lacked than what they enjoye in the way of intellectual stimulus. Books and newspaper were few enough to be highly valued by all.

In Boston there was a public library as early as 1637, b women were not considered as patrons. The bold venture, the part of the sex, of invading the quiet precincts of the rea ing room of the library of the Boston Athenæum, was mad after a decade or two of the nineteenth century had passed, a shy woman, grown courageous only through her eagerne for knowledge. This was Hannah Adams, who had learn Greek and Latin from some theological students boarding her father's house, and who had written books. The inno tion shocked Boston people, who declared her out of 1 sphere. They could not foresee that half a century later th would be more women than men readers in the great pul library of the city.

Nor was it considered proper for ladies to attend pu lectures, nor to appear in public assemblies except those religious character. Either as cause or consequence of the Lyceum audiences were so rude that it would not h been agreeable for ladies to be present.

In 1828 the Boston Lyceum was started, and after consi able discussion women were allowed to attend lectures. so quickened the interest and improved the manners

lectures became so popular that the largest halls were required to hold the audiences.

There is something pathetic, as showing how small were the pecuniary resources of women, in the fact that it was customary, at least in the smaller cities, to admit them to lectures at about two-thirds the price of men. "The Lowell Institute," Boston, secured the utmost service to its great benefaction by making no discrimination against women in its free courses of lectures.

Among the English authors who were the resource of this country in way of literature, there began to be known a few women, in whom strong natural impulse had been fostered by exceptional educational opportunity until they ventured to use the pen and even to publish. This was usually done timidly, often protestingly, and one woman, afterwards distinguished, screened her talent behind her father's name.

Lady Anne Barnard, who wrote "Auld Robin Gray," for some reason or other kept the secret of her authorship for fifty years.

Mr. Edgeworth suppressed a translation which his daughter Maria had made, from the French, of a work on education "because his friend, Mr. Day, the author of Sanford and Merton,' had such a horror of female authors and their writings," and it was published only after Mr. Day's death.

It is curious to note how large a ratio of the female writers of this time involve, in their essays or novels, some reference to the need of education for their sex. On the contrary, however, Mrs. Barbauld, herself a classical scholar and thinker, and both happy and useful through her acquirements, opposed the establishment of an academy for young ladies. She "approved a college and every motive of emulation for young men," but thought that "young ladies ought only to have. such a general tincture of knowledge as to make them agreeable companions to a man of sense, and ought to gain these accomplishments in a more quiet and unobserved manner, from intercourse and conversation at home, with a father, brother, or friend. She regarded herself as peculiar, and not a rule for

others."

Late in the eighteenth century, Mary Wollstonecraft issued a strong and direct appeal for a recognition of the intellectual needs and capacities of women. She shocked the world into antagonism by her opinions, and by her use of the word "nights," as applied to her sex.

Much interest was felt in the graceful letters of Lady Mary.

Wortley Montagu, and society found entertainment in the small talk of the heroines of Frances Burney, "Evelina," "Cecilia," and "Rosa Matilda."

Twenty years after the eloquent appeal had been made for "The Rights of Women," Hannah More, in "Cœlebs in Search of a Wife," introduced to the novel-reading world the subject of female education, with a tact and moderation which the stronger cravings of Mary Wollstonecraft did not permit. Without offensive presumption, and with deference to the superior claim of the other sex to the whole loaves, she meekly, but plainly, suggested the relish of the female mind for intellectual crumbs. The more favorable reception of her milder views, which was said "to have caused more than one dignified clergyman to take down his Eton grammar from the shelf, to initiate his daughters into the hitherto forbidden mysteries of hic-hæc-hoc,' goes to prove, by analogy, the theory of the high potency school of homœopathists, for the smaller the dose administered the greater appear to have been the results.

The tender sentiment and graceful verse of Mrs. Hemans, and the sad domestic experience of Hon. Mrs. Norton, from whose unmasked sorrows her husband could gather pecuniary return, and the sturdy, intellectual vigor of Harriet Martineau, who grappled with the problems of political economy and social ethics, and was the friend and counselor of the first statesmen of her time, could not fail to appeal, on their several lines, to women of corresponding type, if not of equal gifts of expression, on both sides of the Atlantic. So education was. going on for women in other ways than in schools, which still furnished them limited supplies, both in quantity and quality. Among the voices which directly or indirectly were calling women to higher levels of intelligence and of thought, was that of the celebrated wit and divine, Sidney Smith, who proved by his claims for them, what he said of himself, "I have a passionate love for common justice and for common sense." the Edinburgh Review, of which he was one of the founders, he had a way of asking such pointed inquiries as whether the world had hitherto found any advantage in keeping half the people in ignorance, and whether, if women were better educated, men might not become better educated too; and he adds, "Just as though the care and solicitude which a mother feels for her children, depended on her ignorance of Greek and mathematics, and that she would desert her infant for a quadratic equation!"

In

But so strong are the bonds of prejudice, that, although

this was as early as 1810, abundant cause has been found down to the present day to iterate and reiterate the same arguments, and still to pierce the bubble of conceit of superior right with the arrows of wit and sarcasm.

To show what the best schools open to girls were offering meantime, we quote what “one who had as good advantages in 1808 as New England then afforded," gives as her course of study: “Music, geography, Murray's Grammar, with Pope's Essay on Man for a parsing book, Blair's Rhetoric, Composi tion, and embroidery on satin. These were my studies and my accomplishments."

"Twenty-five years later than that," says the aged lady once before quoted, "a considerable part of the gain I brought from a private school in Charlestown, Mass., was a knowledge of sixty lace stitches."*

Looking back to this period from the vantage ground of 'ess than a century, most women of nowadays would echo the sentiment of the small boy, one of four brothers, who beard a visitor say to his mother: "What a pity one of your boys had not been a girl!" Dropping his game to take in the full significance of her words, he called out: "I'd like to know who'd 'a benn 'er! I wouldn't 'a benn 'er; Ed wouldn't 'a benn 'er; Joe wouldn't 'a benn 'er, and I'd like to know who would 'a benn 'er!"

The third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century marked an epoch in education through the service done by a few teachers, who seemed to have fresh inspirations as to the capabilities of women, and practical ability to embody them. They helped to verify the forecast of Rev. Joseph Emerson, principal of the Academy at Byfield, Mass.

Mr. Emerson was deeply interested in the theme of the millennium, and regarded woman, in the capacity of educator, as the hope of the world's salvation. Unlike his cotemporaries, he believed in educating young women as thoroughly as young men, and in 1822 predicted "a time when higher institutions. for the education of young women would be as needful as colleges for young men." Among his pupils was Mary Lyon.

The pioneer in the new departure was Mrs. Emma Hart Willard, born in 1787, in Connecticut, into a home of liberal thought and tender affection. The clearness of intellect and keen sense of justice which characterized her life, were all in

See also accounts of early education of American women authors in chapter on Woman in Literature.—ED.