‘Your Council cannot refrain from stating their belief that as long as the singular and extraordinary notion continues to prevail in the minds of those forming the upper classes of English Society, that dexterity of fingering on a single instrument is _the_ most important part of female education, against, it might have been thought, not only the suggestions of common sense, but the practical lessons of later life, so long will the time required to be given for attaining even a low amount of proficiency in this sleight of hand, most seriously interfere with progress in all education and mental cultivation worthy of the name. ‘How far the acknowledged deficiency of many of the fairer sex in logical qualities and reasoning powers is due to this strange delusion, it is not for your Council to discuss; but they are not without hopes that the time may not be far distant when they will be supported in an arrangement which will place instrumental music altogether among the extra subjects, and leave them and the teachers free to elevate and improve, morally and intellectually, the condition of the female mind, unembarrassed by so unessential an accomplishment.’ These remarks were followed in 1857 by others:— ‘Your Council have nothing to add to or retract from what was said upon this subject in that Report: but, while they believe that the instruction in this so-called accomplishment is as efficient within these walls as it is capable, under all circumstances, of being made, they must repeat their regret that so vast a portion of valuable time should be sacrificed, in the earlier years of almost every Englishwoman who hopes to become a wife and mother, to that which is confessedly of no value in an intellectual point of view; and can, by no possibility, be of service to her in either of these two most important, and generally much coveted capacities.’