As a result of the entire examination are we to say that the Elementary Education Act has failed to accomplish what was expected of it? The answer to that question must be emphatically in the negative; it has caused life and movement in some directions, and, if those directions are not precisely what might be desired, efforts must be made to divert the newly-awakened energies to worthier pursuits. The intellectual faculties of the bulk of the nation were too long in bondage; it should not cause any wonder that when the shackles of ignorance were struck off there was a rush to the Elysian fields of fancy and pleasure; it will require time to learn the lesson that the truest liberty and the purest delight are to be found only in the voluntary acceptance of the nobler servitude to knowledge and reason. The imagination which craves for fiction must be trained to find in the marvels of science and the deductions of philosophy the only fascinations which will yield abiding satisfaction. With this object some national effort to advance secondary and technical education, and to make the connection between elementary schools and the Universities a reality, ought to be vigorously undertaken.

JOSEPH ACKLAND.

THE REVOLT OF THE DAUGHTERS

I

A LAST WORD ON THE REVOLT'

NOT so long ago, in the course of a Special Enquiry of national interest, one of our most distinguished judges found great difficulty in giving expression to his own views owing to the too frequent interruptions of the learned counsel in front of him. With a dignity all his own. he put down his pen and remarked in the mildest of tones, 'I am well aware, Sir that someone must have the last word. It is perhaps most fitting that it should remain with me.' This friendly passage of arms is only referred to by way of preface to the confession that the title at the head of this article is a paradox. For on the all-important question with which it deals neither the present writer nor anyone else can claim the right to have the last word. That must be left for the ages.

If the Revolt of the Daughters,' which has raised hurricanes and called down thunderbolts, to say nothing of the minor diversions of 'wigs all over the green,' had to undergo another christening, its author would stoutly insist on re-naming it. For revolts are generally ugly, and always wild and unmannered exhibitions of human passion. Revolution is here the fitter term. Revolutions are inevitable. More often than not they are effected silently, noiselessly, and it is only after the work is completed and their underlying wisdom acknowledged of all men that they are recognised as faits accomplis. And if the portents, or rather the tendencies, previously insisted on are interpreted aright, it is a revolution and nothing else that we all have to face, and in the end to accept, on whichever side we may choose to range ourselves at starting.

For long centuries, down to the time of Disraeli's Reform Bill, social government in England has been maintained by traditiontradition rooted in a caste feeling to the full as strong and determining, though seldom openly announced, as any that obtains amongst Eastern races. All that is now changed, and for ever. It no longer avails a man to belong to any 'House,' either for forgiveness of his own sins or for the chance of governing his country. Caste, so far

as men are concerned, is dead and buried. The representation of the individual reigns in its stead. Ancestral coat-tails no longer furnish sound climbing ropes. It is discovered to be safer to hold on to the man planted on the rung just above. Grandfathers, like godfathers, are vieux jeu. It would be hard even for a duke at the present day to explain away by his dukedom certain amiable peccadilloes which his forbears would have lightly whistled down the wind to join the snows of yester year.

One stronghold, however, of caste tradition still remains in our midst, and it is to be found in the accepted handling and treatment of upper and upper middle-class girls. Deny it who may, the governing ideal still is, as it always has been, that marriage in her own class, or, better still, in the class above it, is the 'being's end and aim' of every well-brought-up young woman, as directed and approved of by her parents, constrained in their turn by the influence of unwritten law. Before this ideal every other has had to give way, and the mother with many daughters who performs this duty most successfully is swiftly crowned of her own sex. In proof of this assertion, consider the ordinary curriculum of the ordinary girl. She passes through the hands of masters and mistresses. She has, perhaps, a pretty talent for this or for that. It is cultivated up to a point-not beyond it. At a prearranged signal she comes out,' and with the arrival of this mysterious moment is inaugurated a sudden change of everything about her. The hours she keeps, the clothes she wears, the very way her hair is dressed-all are altered. Then follows, in many cases, her presentation or her 'first ball,' and the' going into society' begins in deadly earnest. Why, we ask, this volte-face—and we ask it again and again—unless. it be to proclaim to all the world that the bell is rung and the race is about to begin?

Let us not be misunderstood. We have no wish to decry these methods which often spring from the earnest and conscientious desire of the guardian to secure for her charge an advantageous settlement in life. All we wish to do is to state them. They have served their turn, and, on the whole, not badly. But autres temps autres mœurs.

We are now face to face in England with the gravest economic and social changes. No class will escape from the inevitable cataclysm, the well-to-do least of all. Who can affirm that fifty years hence the producers will be permitted to consume even their own productions, and as for the consumers who produce nothing what is their portion likely to be? When that day arrives who will venture to marry the luxurious daughters of the folded hands? who to grow hothouse grapes for his own dinner table, or orchids for his own button-hole? Why not be prepared for the evil time? Why not be forearmed as well as forewarned, ready not only to accept, but to enjoy, the new order of things?

The upper working classes would here seem to furnish the best

and wisest guide. Their daughters do not sit at home eating the bread of idleness, with occasional visits to the watch-tower, too often only to descend its steps to the weary refrain of 'He cometh not.' Early in life they take their share both of work and of play. Full knowledge, too, of pitfalls by the roadside is given them beforehand. The present writer was lately discussing with a friend of hers, a working-class mother, the eternal question as to whether knowledge or ignorance is the better part for young women. 'Do my daughters know the dangers of life? Why, of course they do. How else could they go harmlessly about their business? How else could I be easy about What liberty do they have? Why, whatever they please to take. I brought them up as well as I knew how, and when the time came for them to go out and earn their own living, I told them exactly what I know myself, and then I trusted them. And well I've been repaid. You see,' she added after a pause, 'our girls when they earn good money, as mine do, set a pretty high value on themselves. I think that is where working-class girls are better off than upperclass ones. No; I would trust my girls anywhere, for they would not want to go to places I would not go to myself, and neither of them is yet thirty.'

Again, we would ask, are the mothers who think themselves injured by the mere ventilation of the subject quite fair? They paint enchanting pictures of the beauty of the modest maiden waiting like the violet in the sweet seclusion of home until the casual passer-by, man, shall cull her and transplant her to his own sunny bank. But do these ladies ever pause to reflect that they themselves are the prime authors of the pother, if pother there be? Why do they write books?—why do they write plays? Why do they sit on committees here and committees there, slumming in the East, drinking tea and promoting 'causes' in the West? Their mothers did none of these things. They were content with flannel-petticoat-making for the chilly Hottentot, or at most with the sight of his counterpart, the converted Jew, on tour with a travelling mission. What about School Boards, Boards of Guardians, political work of all sorts, to say nothing of 'Rescue Homes,' 'Happy Evenings,' and 'Girls' Clubs?' What about exhibitions of Women's work, Women's trades-union organisations, and a host of other public and semi-public occupations too long to enumerate here? Do they for one moment imagine, these happy, well-employed, and resourceful women, that their adoring, little daughters (for daughters do adore until 'Thou shalt not' checks the ardour of their devotion) are not taking notes by the way, and saying silently in their loving little hearts, 'My mammy does so and so; when I am grown up I mean to do just the same; I shall write plays and go "behind;" I shall make speeches; I shall run about too, just like her?'

Naturalists have lately informed us that the ostrich is not, after

all, a bird, but only a grown-up lizard; and more, that he never did hide his head in the sand. This, if correct, is a great pity, for whilst in that ungraceful attitude he furnished us with an admirable illustration that we can ill afford to lose. At any rate, until a substitute for him is provided he must be kept to his old duty. If the mothers think that the strength of their daughters lies in sitting still, let them lead the way. Let them take their stools and proceed to plant themselves firmly (and cheerfully) at the chimney corner with knitting of socks pour tout potage. To claim absolute freedom for oneself and to deny it to full-grown, able-bodied, and able-minded young women surely savours somewhat of the tyrannical. If their lives have been lived alongside their mother's, within its inner circle, the daughters are in no sort of danger of thinking, saying, or doing what they ought not. These same daughters are not barrels of gunpowder only to be safely stored between layers of the sand of convention. It is when mothers have not lived in full confidence with their girls that they become so terribly afraid of them.

At a meeting of mothers lately held to discuss the situation, two points struck the casual observer. The first was the manifestation of unreasoning fear. If these ladies had assembled for the purpose of considering how best to meet the danger of an Anarchist plot in their midst, the note of alarm could hardly have been more plainly sounded. In amusing contrast were the means suggested for quelling the insurrection. One lady assured the company that half an hour's daily reading with her daughters had placed her in safety out of the reach of the flowing tide. Another propounded the original theory that the root of the mischief lay in the modern practice of giving to little girls dressed, instead of undressed, dolls in the nursery; the making of doll's clothes being, she said, essential to the growth of the domestic virtues. Surely at last Mrs. Partington should look to her honours. She is in danger of being out-mopped.

Trust the people,' cried one of our statesmen, and the cry is now as popular as God save the Queen.' It is high time that our daughters were trusted too; were allowed light and air for their full development on whatever lines Nature, that wisest of teachers, has planned for them. No, as the St. James's Budget somewhat severely expressed it, 'to disregard her children in youth and to command them in adolescence, the course often adopted by the average mother does not tend to promote that friendship which alone is of the essence.' Let the frantic pursuit of so-called pleasure that ugly cloak for the still uglier matrimonial hunt-be abandoned as the unclean thing. In what other class do society-seeking and 'going about' form the staple employment of its young women of eighteen years of age and upwards? What sort of aspect is this scheme of existence likely to wear in the eyes of that other girl, to the full as young and as attractive, who spends her days in earning her bread either as governess, clerk, or