s, philanthropic men physicians, and wise
mothers, are, as I have said, more afraid of an undue development of the
emotional nature in these critical years, than of overtaxing the
intellectual powers; and it is doubtless true that while very few of the
girls and women in the upper classes overwork, a very large number
suffer in health from the absence of interesting and absorbing
employment. In Germany and America the circumstances are different--in
the former, girls have more domestic occupations, and in the latter we
have to guard, not so much against the depressing influence of idleness,
as against the temptation to social excesses, from which energetic
school-work seems to be the best shield. But even here, in England, I
have found a few thinking, active women who, judging from their
individual cases, had come upon Dr. Clarke's theory for themselves,
only, instead of limiting it to girlhood they would extend it through
womanhood, calling these periods of repose the natural Sunday in a
woman's life, during which, if rest of body and mind was indulged,
there succeeded a marked renewal or awakening of power--but this is an
exceptional view in England.

Two movements are going on side by side in this country to improve the
education of women. One aims to make the ordinary school-work more
thorough, the other to extend this school-work into later years of life.
In 1858 Cambridge University established a system of "Local
Examinations" in various parts of the country, for boys or schools of
boys who wished to avail themselves of this test for their work. There
were two of these examinations, the "Junior Examination," for boys
between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, and the "Senior Examination,"
for those between sixteen and eighteen. The effect of this spur upon
boys and boys' schools was so apparent that the university, at the
request of a large number of women interested in education, in 1863,
opened these examinations to girls of corresponding ages, and it was the
glaring defects discovered by these examinations that led the Royal
Commission so readily to extend its inquiry to girls' schools. The
number of girls' schools, and girls studying under governesses who avail
themselves of these examinations, has steadily and rapidly increased,
and the results have been such as to leave no doubt in regard to the
mental acumen of girls as compared with boys. These Local Examinations
subjected the girls to precisely the same ex