THE ENGLISH GIRLS' SCHOOL.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 227, 18 June 1908, Page 5

THE ENGLISH GIRLS' SCHOOL.

the boarding-school is the most 1 peculiarly English of all educational institutions (writes tho " Guardian"), for in most i other' countries " school" means distinctively "day school." ' A very striking development of recent years is the modernised boarding- , school, .housed in a fine building with ample playground, where girls are trained to independence and self-government as a_ preparation for tho responsibilities of life. It is difficult to realise that they are tho successors of'the "prunes and prisms" academy for young ladies, such as is described in that' amusing autobiography, "Leaves from a Life," with its '-'narrow-minded mistress and musical girls who, had never read either Dickens or Thackeray, hated poetry, and talked about lovers and all kinds of dreadful things I could not understand. . . . All the doors and windows wero always- shjjt,:;' the lessons were 'absurd, and consisted! as far as 1 could make* out, of ; strings of- questions and answers •to be learnt by' rote, ; and the girls slept in long dormitories, which meant one could never bo alone." Readers'of Miss F. "P. Cobbe's autobiography will remember tho school to ■which she went in '1836. "where tho girls learnt pages of prose by heart amid the din of constant practising." As to tho schools' of fiction, there is no real female equivalent for Dotheboys Hall, but wc wonder whether there was an original of Miss Pinkerton's Academy, where Miss Tuffin and Miss Hawky were ' "perfectly qualified to instruct in Greok, Latin; and tho of Hebrew; in, mathematics and history: in Spanish, French, Italian, and geography: in music, vocaland instrumental; in dancing without the 1 aid of a master, and in the elements of natural sciences."' -