mismanagement. A Jenny Lind cannot be stopped in her singing, nor a Siddons in her dramatic career, nor a Currer Bell in her authorship, by any opposition of fortune: but none of us can tell how many women of less force and lower genius may have been kept useless and rendered unhappy, to our misfortune as much as their own. We have adverted to the opposition made to opening Schools of Design to female students. We must permit no more obstruction of that kind, but rather supply the educational links that are wanted, if we would render the powers and the industry of women available to the welfare of society. For one instance ;-it is a good thing to admit students freely to Schools of Design, and to train them there and it is a good thing that manufacturers of textile and metal productions employ women at rising wages, in proportion to their qualifications. But there is a chasm between the training and the work which requires bridging. The greater part of the higher order of designs are practically unavailable, for want of knowledge on the part of the designer of the conditions of the particular manufacture in question. The economic possibility and aptitude are not studied; and hence, the manufacturers say, an enormous waste of thought, skill, and industry. This want supplied, a field of industry practically boundless would be opened to female artists, as well as artisans; and it would be an enlightened policy to look to this, while the whole world seems to be opening its ports to our productions.

It seems not very long ago that the occupation of the Taylor family, of Ongar, was regarded as very strange. The delightful Jane Taylor of Ongar and her sisters paid their share of the family expenses by engraving. Steel engravings were not then in very great demand; yet those young women were incessantly at work,-so as to be abundantly weary of it, -as Jane's letters plainly show. For a quarter of a century past, many hundreds of young women, we are assured, have supported themselves by wood engraving, for which there is now a demand which no jealousy in the stronger sex can intercept. The effort to exclude the women was made, in this as in other branches of art; but the interests of publishers and the public were more than a match for it. One of the most accomplished hands' in this elegant branch of art has built herself a country house with the proceeds of her chisel; and will no doubt furnish it by those of her admirable paintings on glass.

Strangely enough, the Report before us lumps together the female artists, authors, and teachers, so that we have no means of knowing the numbers of each. They are set down collectively at 64,336. The artists have an unlimited field before them;

and the annual exhibition of the works of female artists proves the disposition to occupy it. The contributors have it now in their power to ascertain whether there is any other than an educational barrier in the way of their attainment of excellence in painting and sculpture. Lord Lyndhurst said the other day, in stating to the House of Lords the claim which the Royal Academy of Arts undoubtedly has to the respect and gratitude of the public, that all Her Majesty's subjects have a right to the gratuitous instruction afforded by the first artists in the country to the students who attend its classes, on the simple condition of good moral character and a competent knowledge of elementary drawing. But women are not at present included in this our principal National School of Arts, though, from the use they make of the National Gallery, no class of students would derive greater advantage from it. This deficiency should be remedied. Photography has annihilated the secondary class of miniature-painting, which a considerable number of female artists practised with success. But photography itself has opened an enlarged field to their industry, both in the operations of that art and in the application of painting to it.

We look to cultivated women also for the improvement of our national character as tasteful manufacturers. It is only the inferiority of our designs which prevents our taking the lead of the world in our silks, ribbons, artificial flowers, paper-hangings, carpets and furniture generally. Our Schools of Design were instituted to meet this deficiency and they have made a beginning but the greater part of the work remains to be done; and it is properly women's work. There is no barrier of jealousy in the case, for our manufacturers are eager to secure good designs from any quarter.

For the rest, the female artists can take very good care of themselves. Music will be listened to, if it is good; and sculpture and painting must assert their own merits. Miss Herschel sat unmolested in her brother's observatory, discovering comets; and Mrs. Somerville became a mathematician in a quiet way, and after her own fashion. Our country women have the free command of the press; and they use it abundantly. Every woman who has force of character enough to conceive any rational enterprise of benevolence is sure to carry it through, after encountering more or less opposition. For a Catherine Mompesson, supported by her husband's companionship in a plague-stricken village two centuries ago, we have had a Mary Pickard doing exactly the same work, but alone, within our own century. Mrs. Fry in Newgate, Florence Nightingale and Mrs. Bracebridge at Scutari; Miss Dix reforming lunatic asylums; Sarah Pellatt

reclaiming the Californian gold-diggers from drink; Mary Carpenter among her young city Arabs: all these, and several more, are proofs that the field of action is open to women as well as men, when they find something for their hand to do, and do it with all their might.

Qut of six millions of women above twenty years of age, in Great Britain, exclusive of Ireland, and of course of the Colonies, no less than half are industrial in their mode of life. More than a third, more than two millions, are independent in their industry, are self-supporting, like men. The proceedings in the new Divorce Court, and in matrimonial cases before the policemagistrates, have caused a wide-spread astonishment at the amount of female industry they have disclosed. Almost every aggrieved wife who has sought protection, has proved that she has supported her household, and has acquired property by her effective exertions. It is probable that few of our readers have ever placed this great fact before their minds for contemplation and study: yet it is one which cannot safely be neglected or made light of. The penalty of such neglect or carelessness is an encroachment of pauperism at one end of the scale, and the most poisonous of vices at the other. How do we meet the conditions which stare us in the face? Mr. Norris's Report supplies us with the answer.

'But I much fear the chief reason that more is not done in this direction, is the very general apathy that prevails in the matter of girls' education. Why is it that, where you find three or four good boys' schools, you will find barely one efficient girls' school? Why is it that in pamphlets, and speeches, and schemes of so-called national education, they are almost uniformly ignored? The reasons are twofold: a very large number of the people who are interested in the progress of education think of it only in connexion with our national wealth; they mean by education the extension of skill and knowledge as essential elements of productiveness, and, therefore, with them, girls' schooling is a matter of little or no moment. Another still larger class of persons, who, from native illiberality of mind, are opposed to all education, though ashamed to confess this generally, do not blush to own it with respect to girls. So that on either hand the girls' school is neglected. And what is the result? For want of good schools for girls three out of four of the girls in my district are sent to miserable private schools, where they have no religious instruction, no discipline, no industrial training; they are humoured in every sort of conceit, are called "Miss Smith" and "Miss Brown," and go into service at fourteen or fifteen, skilled in crochet and worsted work, but unable to darn a hole or cut out a frock, hating household work, and longing to be milliners or ladies' maids. While this is called education, no wonder that people cry out that education is ruining our servants, and doing more harm than good!

as the

'But there are other evil results arising from the neglect of girls' education, far more serious than the want of good servants; girl is, so will the woman be; as the woman is, so will the home be; and as the home is, such, for good or for evil, will be the character of our population. My belief is, that England will never secure the higher benefits expected to result from national education, until more attention is paid to girls' schools. No amount of mere knowledge, religious or secular, given to boys, will secure them from drunkenness or crime in after life. It may be true that knowledge is power, but knowledge is not virtue. It is in vain for us to multiply the means of instruction, and then sit down and watch the criminal returns in daily expectation of seeing in them the results of our schooling. If we wish to arrest the growth of national vice, we must go to its real seminary, the home. Instead of that thriftless untidy woman who presides over it, driving her husband to the gin palace by the discomfort of his own house, and marring for life the temper and health of her own child by her own want of sense, we must train up one who will be a cleanly careful housewife, and a patient skilful mother. Until one or two generations have been improved, we must trust mainly to our schools to effect this change in the daughters of the working classes. We must multiply over the face of the country girls' schools of a sensible and practical sort. The more enlightened women of England must come forward and take the matter into their own hands, and do for our girls what Mrs. Fry did for our prisons, what Miss Carpenter has done for our reformatories, what Miss Nightingale and Miss Stanley are doing for our hospitals.' (Minutes on Education, 1855-6, pp. 482, 483.)

Further illustrations may be found in the group of good books with which we have prefaced these remarks. The volume on the Industrial and Social Position of Women,' and the Reports of the Census and the School Inspectors, are written by men; and the rest are even more worthy of attention as being by women, who best know their own case, though they must appeal to us to aid them in obtaining free scope for their industry. The tale is plain enough, from whatever mouth it comes. So far from

our country women being all maintained, as a matter of course, by us the breadwinners,' three millions out of six of adult Englishwomen work for subsistence; and two out of the three in independence. With this new condition of affairs, new duties and new views must be accepted. Old obstructions must be removed; and the aim must be set before us, as a nation as well as in private life, to provide for the free development and full use of the powers of every member of the community. In other words, we must improve and extend education to the utmost; and then open a fair field to the powers and energies we have educed. This will secure our welfare, nationally and in our homes, to which few elements can contribute more vitally and more richly than the independent industry of our country women.

ART. II.-Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa; being a Journal of an Expedition undertaken under the auspices of Her Majesty's Government in the years 1849– 1855. By Dr. HENRY BARTH. 5 yols. London: 1857-58. AFRICA seems at last doomed to yield up her mysteries. The

dark and impenetrable cloud which has hung since the origin of the world over regions inhabited by no inconsiderable portion of the human race, has been pierced by European and Christian enterprise. Those arid deserts have been crossed, those unknown rivers have been explored, those savage tribes have been visited, those unwritten languages have been examined; and the result is, that all over this enormous continent population is scattered in wandering races or settled in primitive villages; towns, whose very names are strange to our eyes, are found to contain within their mud walls communities as numerous as the towns of Europe; agriculture of a simple character prevails; caravans radiate from Kanó, the emporium of Central Africa; and, in short, tracts which have been for ages the enigma and the despair of geographical science, begin to assume the form of known countries and to present to our observation many of the phenomena of social life, though in its most rude and barbarous shapes. The whole of Central Africa, from Bagírmi to the east as far as Timbúktu to the west, says Dr. Barth, abounds in fertile lands irrigated by large navigable rivers and central lakes, ornamented with timber, and producing, in unlimited abundance, grain, sugar, cotton, indigo, and other commodities of trade. The eastern branch of the Niger opens an uninterrupted navigable sheet of water for more than 600 miles into the heart of the country, while the western branch may be ascended for 350 miles from the coast. In fact, the remote and hitherto unapproachable interior of that compact continent is now closely pressed on all sides. We are in daily expectation of receiving very ample information respecting the populous country on the shores of the great inland sea of Eastern Africa, the very existence of which was hardly known fifteen years ago. Dr. Livingstone has related his expedition to the shores of Lake Ngami, and his extraordinary journey from Loanda to Quilimane; but though Livingstone has had the good fortune to obtain a higher degree of popularity from his personal adventures, from his missionary character, and from the daring character of some of his speculations, we venture to