These words were pioneers of the Commissioners’ reports, in which they find a literal echo. The reports, with her own evidence and that of other ladies interested in education, were by Miss Beale preserved for posterity. She perceived instinctively that if they were not brought into general circulation all would soon be forgotten, much never known at all. With that stern sense of economy which caused her never to waste an opportunity or a scrap of material, she took the task upon herself. She obtained permission to republish the matter relating to girls’ schools in a single volume, for which she wrote a preface. In this she dealt with the evidence of the Commissioners, discussing at some length the questions of examinations and overwork. But she sought chiefly, as she had already done a few years before in an article in _Fraser’s Magazine_,[41] to show the need of real study for women, the advantage to be gained for character and mind from such subjects as history and literature. The general report of the Commissioners on Girls’ Education forms the first chapter of Miss Beale’s blue-book. It opened with a quotation to the effect that an educated mother is of even more importance than an educated father. Miss Beale may have thought this an exaggerated statement; but she must have welcomed and republished it with some satisfaction. She was for ever having it dinned into her ears, by those who opposed all serious study for their daughters, that girls should be educated to be wives and mothers. Mrs. Grey showed the real fallacy of the statement, in a paper which was the direct result of the republished reports, when she pointed out that girls were not being educated to _be_ wives, but to _get_ husbands. A happy marriage Mrs. Grey held to be ‘the _summum bonum_ of a woman’s life ... not an object to be striven for, but to be received as the supreme grace of fate when the right time and the right person come.’[42] With Miss Beale and Miss Emily Davies she deprecated the education which is designed from the first to fit and prepare for a special position in life. She would have women and men alike, working men, tradesmen, men of fortune educated as human beings, not technically instructed for some special walk in life. In eloquent words she pictured the ideal for which she and others like-minded were striving, and were seeking to attain by the practical method of enlightening public opinion, founding schools, asking for public examinations. She wrote:— ‘The true meaning of the word education is not instruction.... It is intellectual, moral, and physical development, the development of a sound mind in a sound body, the training of reason to form just judgments, the disciplining of the will and affections to obey the supreme law of duty, the kindling and strengthening of the love of knowledge, of beauty, of goodness, till they become governing motives of action.’