In mixed schools you will find, as a general rule, more girls than boys, and they are found in examination to carry off the greatest proportion of prizes. Wherever co-education has been honestly and competently tried, girls have shown themselves the intellectual peers of their brothers. They have more than held their own. There have been women every whit as well educated as the most learned men of their day, and much better educated than the majority of men in any age. When Elizabeth was Queen of England the languages were an essential element of a lady's education. The daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, to whom was committed the instruction of the young Edward VI., were thoroughly trained in both ancient and modern languages, and in the literatures of many lands and ages. One of those gifted women wrote Latin verses of great beauty; another was, according to Roger Ascham, one of the best Greek scholars of the age, with the single exception of Lady Jane Grey; still another was an accomplished theologian who corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell. The distinguished Reiske affixed his wife's portrait to his excellent and famous edition of "The Greek Orators." And in the preface to that work he acknowledged his great indebtedness to her learning and industry. So well acquainted was she with the language and literature of ancient Greece, that she shared with her husband his most profound investigations, and read for him, correcting as she read, the proof-sheets of his book as they came from the press. There is nothing in the constitution of a woman's mind nor in the anatomy of her body to prevent her from following the same studies that occupy the time and attention of young men in an ordinary college course. On the contrary, the duties of the class-room are often far less fatiguing than those of household labor.[A] I believe in co-education. Boys and girls should be brought up together so far as possible. The influence they exert over each other is in itself a great civilizer. The separation of the sexes in church, state, family and school has always been productive of evil, and of evil only. "The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or God-like, bond or free." Miss Sophia Jex Blake, whose opinion in all questions connected with the education of women is of great weight, has thus expressed herself touching the subject of co-education: "That society is most happy which conforms most strictly to the order of nature as indicated in the family relation, where brother and sister mutually elevate and sustain each other.... A school for young men becomes a community in itself, with its own standard of morality and its laws of honor; but in a college for both sexes the student will find a public sentiment not so lenient as that of a community of associates needing the same indulgence."