fully brought to an issue
unless it can be shown that there is some general demand for the
measures proposed, and until very recently in Spain there was general
apathy with regard to the education of women. For many years girls have
been carefully instructed in two things, religion and domestic science,
and for neither of these things was any extended course of study
necessary. The parochial schools, with all their narrowness, prepared
the maiden for her first communion, and her mother gave her such
training in the arts of the housewife as she might need when she married
and had a home of her own to care for. These two things accomplished,
the average middle-class Spaniard, until a very recent day, was utterly
unable to see that there was anything more necessary, or that the system
was defective in any way. But the modern spirit has entered the country,
and an organized effort is now being made to show the advantages of a
higher education and to furnish the opportunity for obtaining it. In
this work of educational reform among Spanish women, an American, Mrs.
Gulick, the wife of an American missionary at San Sebastian, has played
a leading part. Organizing a school which was maintained under her
supervision, she has been quite successful in what she has accomplished,
and believes that she has "proved the intellectual ability of Spanish
girls." Her pupils have been received in the National Institute, where
they have given a good account of themselves; and a few of them have
even been admitted to the examinations of the University of Madrid,
where they have maintained a high rank. Mrs. Gulick is not the only
leading exponent of higher education for Spanish women, however, as the
whole movement is now practically under the moral leadership of a most
competent and earnest woman, Emilia Pardo Bazan, who understands the
wants of her fellow countrywomen and is striving in every legitimate way
to give them the sort of instruction they need. Free schools exist in
all the cities and towns for both boys and girls, and recent attempts
have been made to enact a compulsory education law. Numerous normal
schools have been established in the various cities, which are open to
both men and women, and the number of women teachers is rapidly
increasing. Secular education is far more advanced and far more in
keeping with the spirit of the times than is the instruction which is to
be found in the schools conducted by the teaching orders. The g