“the way in which she managed difficult and obstinate pupils was marvellous. She would spend hours with them, and never thought the time wasted if at last she made the slightest impression. Often, when this did not appear on the surface, it was shown weeks, months, or even years after, by some little note or message.” In thanking a young friend for some proof of affection there is a pathetic little appeal— “You _young_ people can form no idea—till your time comes—of how much pain a little indifference can inflict, especially when both the old and the young have warm hearts. My life needs close love from some one—I have given a large amount of mine to some one—and when he not only responds, but initiates loving remarks or caresses, he fills the old person’s heart with warmth, brightness, and love.” On some few occasions, when more than usually overdone, I have heard Miss Buss admit with a weary sigh that she found the girls of the last decade of her work so much less easy to influence than those of the first; since, even when they were inwardly touched, they seemed unable to show it after the old fashion. “_Autres temps, autres mœurs._” But yet, making all due allowance, if these “difficult” girls could have seen this friend after one of the encounters so terrible to her, and have realized how spent and heart-sick she was, they must have taken less pride in their defiance or hardness. She cared for them so deeply that it was real anguish of soul to her to think of the future sorrows inevitable for tempers undisciplined and wills unsubdued. With this question of the influence on manners of the public school comes what does seem a real objection to the new development—an objection most strongly felt by those who look farthest back. With her invariable point and terseness, Miss Cobbe thus puts this matter in a nutshell— “William of Wykeham’s motto: ‘Manners makyth Manne,’ was understood to hold good emphatically concerning the making of Woman. The abrupt-speaking, courtesy-neglecting, slouching, slangy young damsel, who may now perhaps carry off the glories of a University degree, would then have seemed still needing to be taught the very rudiments of feminine knowledge. When I recall the type of perfect womanly gentleness and high breeding which then and there was formed, it seems to me as if, in comparison, modern manners are all rough and brusque. We have graceful women in abundance still, but the peculiar, old-fashioned suavity, the tact which made every one in a company happy and at ease—most of all, the humblest individual present—and which at the same time, effectually prevented the most audacious from transgressing _les bienséances_ by a hair; of that suavity and tact we seem to have lost the tradition.”