Following hard upon the introduction of public examinations for girls came the cry of overwork. There was some reason in it; but it was much, very much due to timidity and want of knowledge, as well as to exaggeration. It is not necessary to repeat here the evidence which Miss Beale began to collect even before she was a teacher herself, and to which she was ever adding, to the effect that idleness and _ennui_ have more and sadder victims than even misdirected energy and overwork. A healthy prejudice against an empty, self-centred life is steadily growing. The movement which its followers have named Christian Science—also that which is preferably called Faith Healing—daily bring to light instances of self-destruction caused by the slothful mind and unruled will. None the less, the cry of overwork was not an empty one. When first girls began to work for examinations, it was not known how much or how little they could do. Miss Beale’s own opinions upon this, as put before the Commission, were quite tentative. Clever teachers did not always allow for slower-moving brains than their own. Nor was the difference of temperament sufficiently observed and considered. The eager and artistic mind would feel strain and fatigue where one less delicately balanced might toil unwearied. It was not recognised how willing girls are to be pressed, how eager they are to please, how unreasonable they often are in their own arrangements for work, or how easy it is for them to fall into the insincerity of making protracted hours of reading take the place of concentrated mental effort. Head-mistresses and others who had mastered difficulties alone, and who still carefully prepared every lesson they gave, in spite of the pressure of daily affairs, had to learn to reckon with these drawbacks. Examinations when first introduced must from their very novelty have been a great anxiety to both teachers and pupils. The best way of working for them and of resting before them had to be discovered by experience. The pressure was less obvious with those actually first in the field, as they would naturally be all of good ability. The danger began when girls of smaller brain-power and equal ambition, but ignorant of their limitations, dared to follow.