These lectures, as Mrs. S. Buss says in her reminiscences— “awakened in many a pupil the thirst for reading and study. His artistic talent, and the pleasant excursions for sketching from Nature, were novel inspirations in the days when the ordinary girlish specimens of copied drawings resembled nothing in Nature. A good elocutionist himself, he taught us to read and recite with expression.” His daughter had the same gift, inherited or acquired, and her school has always been specially distinguished in all examinations for the excellence of the reading. Mrs. S. Buss mentions, in addition to Mrs. Laing, as also specially interested in the school— “the Rev. Canon Dale, Vicar of St. Pancras, and his two sons, Pelham and Lawford Dale; the Rev. Cornelius Hart, Vicar of Old St. Pancras; the Rev. R. P. Clemenger, Vicar of St. Thomas’, Agar Town; the Revs. E. Spooner and Charles Lee, the immediate successors of Mr. Laing; the Countess of Hardwicke, one of the earliest and most faithful friends of the school, whose daughter, Lady Elizabeth Biddulph, still continues the yearly prize for good conduct, and whose warm letter of sympathy, in January, was one of the many we received. We all remember, too, Judge Payne, and his witty impromptu verses at so many prize-givings.” When we listen to these memories of the earlier school-days, we cannot dispute the position that— “The foundation of the North London Collegiate School for Ladies was not merely the commencement of one special school, but was an era in education. If we _very old pupils_ can carry our mind back to the time when the ‘Guide to Knowledge’ and ‘Mangnall’s Questions’ were the chief standard school-books for most of the scientific and historical instruction that girls received; when the mildest _form_ of gymnastics (such as jumping over a stick held a few inches above the ground) was deemed so unladylike that some girls were withdrawn from the earliest classes formed; when the study of the most rudimentary physiology horrified the Mrs. Grundies of the period, who would not permit their daughters to continue the course after the first lesson (like the mother of later times at the primary school, who wrote to the teacher, ‘Mrs. S—— asks that my Mary Jane do not go again to those lessons where they talk about their bodies: first, which it is nasty; and second, which it is rude!’); the time when we learnt pages of dictionary, with meanings, _in the first class_, and rules of dry-as-dust grammar, without any meaning to us for years afterwards; the time when it was asserted and believed, that a girl’s mind was incapable of grasping any mathematical knowledge beyond the first four rules of arithmetic;—we can, remembering those good old times, see what a wonderful stride was taken in girls’ education by the North London Collegiate