The general condition of girls’ education remained unimproved some years longer. Yet amid the thousands of private schools where worthless or poor teaching prevailed, there were a few which had come into the hands of capable women who had been inspired by the noble ideals of those who led the religious and intellectual thought of the day. The name of Elizabeth Sewell is representative of these; but for the most part they lived and died unknown, because their work was of less public moment than that of the great leaders. Yet, in an account of women’s education it seems ungracious to name only the well known, however great, and to pass unnoticed the wise virgins, less prominent but not less faithful, whose lamps shone and were replenished through the night. In her death, as in her work on earth, Dorothea Beale was not alone. Miss Sewell, aged ninety, passed but a few weeks before her, and very shortly after two other unknown fellow-workers, who had not laboured in vain. The _Times_ of January 1907 told of Miss Piper, the founder and head of Laleham. Of Miss Piper it could be said, that at a time when the instruction given to girls was of a formal character, ‘she set herself to make her pupils think, to stimulate interest, to enforce thoroughness.’ These were the very points on which the Schools’ Commission found girls’ education defective. A fortnight later died Emily Milner, who was for fifty years head of St. Mary’s School at Brighton, to which she devoted all her small income. She taught with marvellous energy and freshness, inspiring her pupils themselves to be zealous and persevering, and keeping them in touch with all that was best in the rapid advance and change of modern education. But such head-mistresses were rare. The Commissioners seldom found either thoroughness or freshness in the schools they inspected.