prenticed at the school-taught for nothing-teaching others what she learned for nothing-boarded for nothinglodged for nothing—and set down and rated as something immeasurably less than nothing, by all the dwellers in the house. The servant maids felt her inferiority, for they were better treated; free to come and go, and regarded in their stations with much more respect. The teachers were infinitely superior, for they had paid to go to school in their time, and were paid now. The pupils cared little for a companion who had no grand stories to tell about home; no friends to come with post horses, and be received in all humility, with cake and wine, by the governess; no deferential servant to attend and bear her home for the holidays; nothing genteel to talk about, and nothing to display. But why was Miss Monflathers always vexed and irritated with the poor apprentice how did that come to pass?

Why, the gayest feather in Miss Monflathers's cap, and the brightest glory of Miss Monflathers's school, was a baronet's daughter-the real live daughter of a real live baronet-who, by some extraordinary reversal of the laws of Nature, was not only plain in features but dull in intellect, while the poor apprentice had both a ready wit and a handsome face and figure. It seems incredible. Here was Miss Edwards, who only paid a small premium which had been spent long ago, every day outshining and excelling the baronet's daughter, who learned all the extras (or was taught them all), and whose half yearly bill came to double that of any other young lady's in the school, making no account of the honour and reputation of her pupilage. Therefore, and because she was a dependent, Miss Monflathers had a great dislike to Miss Edwards, and was spiteful to her, and aggravated by her, and, when she had compassion on Little Nell, verbally fell upon and maltreated her, as we have already seen.

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You will not take the air to-day, Miss Edwards," said Miss Monflathers. "Have the goodness to retire to your own room, and not to leave it without permission."

The poor girl was moving hastily away, when she was suddenly, in a nautical phrase, "brought to " by a sub

dued shriek from Miss Monflathers.

"She has passed me without any salute!" cried the governess, raising her eyes to the sky. "She has actually passed me without the slightest acknowledgment of my presence!

The young lady turned and courtesied. Nell could see that she raised her dark eyes to the face of her superior, and that their expression, and that of her whole attitude for the instant, was one of mute but most touching appeal against this ungenerous usage. Miss Monflathers only tossed her head in reply, and the great gate closed upon a bursting heart.

In addition to the gross evils of such institutions already suggested, Dickens exposed the cruelty of Miss Monflathers, as a type of Christian rectitude, toward Nell, whom she assumed to be very wicked, and the tendency of society to treat teachers with contempt, if they are not rich. The standard based on mere wealth is happily changing.

The tone of Miss Monflathers's lofty criticism in language and thought, quite incomprehensible to the person admonished, is very true to the life in cases of conventional people, who take no pains to understand child nature or human nature in any phase, except its depravity.

The heartlessness of the distinction between the " genteel" children and poor children is clearly pointed out. There could scarcely be a more unchristlike thought than the one that would prohibit the children of the poor from the enjoyment of their natural tendency to play. No civilization in which either by deliberate purpose or by criminal negligence the children of the poorest are left without the privilege and the means for full free play should dare to call itself Christian. Yet Miss Monflathers's parody aptly represented the practical outworking of civilization at the time of Dickens, and long since, too, in regard to poor children.

Miss Monflathers told Miss Edwards majestically that she "must not take the air to-day," and contemptuously ordered her to remain in her room all day. This was written to condemn the common punishment of keeping children in at recess or confining them as a means of punishment. Dickens always thought it a crime against childhood to punish a child by robbing it of any of its natural rights to food, or fresh air, or free exercise.

The ecstasy of passion reached by Miss Monflathers because Miss Edwards passed her without saluting her showed Dickens's attitude toward those who insisted and still insist on obeisance from those whom they are pleased to regard as "inferiors." Public school education has been criticised because "it does not train poor children to courtesy to their superiors." Any system deserves the support of all right-thinking people if it trains the children of the poorest to hold their heads up respectfully, and look the world squarely in the face without a debasing consciousness of inferiority. The greatest aim of education, so far as the individual is concerned, is freedom-spiritual freedom. Respect for properly constituted authority should become a part of every child's consciousness, but this properly involves contempt for the arrogant assumption of certain people that certain other people should bow down in servile humility to them. Education must always be the enemy of tyranny, slavery, and all kinds of abasement.

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The grinders' school was introduced to ridicule the practice of forcing all children in charitable institutions to wear a uniform dress, and to attack corporal punishment, neglect of moral training, and the practice of placing ignorant men in the high position of a teacher. The teacher in the grinders' school was a superannuated old grinder of savage disposition, who had been appointed schoolmaster because he didn't know anything, and wasn't fit for anything, and for whose cruel cane all chubby little boys had a perfect fascination." The practice of dressing all children alike, and of dressing them all without taste, is continued in most homes for orphan children still. Surely the poor orphans have suffered enough without subjecting them to the indignity of tasteless dressing. There might at least be a difference of taste in colour, for instance, for the blondes and the brunettes.

The school taught by Agnes in David Copperfield is mentioned to show that if a teacher works with a true spirit (Agnes was a splendid character for women to study with great care), teaching is a pleasant instead of an unhappy profession.

David said: "It is laborious, is it not?" "The labour is so pleasant," she returned, "that it is scarcely grateful in me to call it by that name."

The school attended by Uriah Heep and his father before him was described as an attack on the practice of instilling into the minds of poor children the consciousness of subserviency. David says: "I fully comprehended now for the first time (after hearing Uriah describe his training at school) what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression."

The first school attended by Esther in Bleak House is apparently introduced to point out four evils in the social training of little children. The other children were all older than Esther; her godmother refused to allow her to accept invitations to go to the homes of the other girls; she was never allowed out to play; and while holidays were given on the birthdays of other girls, none were ever given on hers. The cruelty of two of these evils was made still more bitter by the revelation of the fact that she was not treated like other girls because of some wrong her mother was supposed to have done.

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Miss Donny's school at Greenleaf was a charming place. conducted in a precise, exact, and orderly way." Esther was taught well, and trained well. She was to be a governess, and so she taught as she learned. Her barren childhood made her sympathize with the girls whom she taught, especially the new girls, and she naturally won their love, and was therefore happy. Esther possessed every essential characteristic of a good teacher and a true woman. Miss Donny's school is one of the schools in which Dickens was approving, not condemning.

Mr. Cripple's academy is merely mentioned in Little Dorrit to complain about the habit of scribbling over buildings and on desks and walls in which boys used to indulge, and of which many evidences may yet be found on the fences and walls of the present day.

"The pupils of Mr. Cripple's appeared to have been making a copy book of the street door, it was so extensively scribbled over in pencil."

Pip's early education, in Great Expectations, was received in Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's school.

Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth, who paid twopence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room upstairs, where we students used to overhear him reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle "examined" the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration over the body of Cæsar.

Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter. After that I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher on the very smallest scale.

Biddy was Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's granddaughter; I confessed myself quite unequal to the working out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle.

The educational scheme or course established by Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis: The pupils ate apples and put straws down one another's backs, until Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with a birch rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling-that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt fell into a state of coma, arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the subject of boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted