The child saw her parents together for a quarter of an hour in the evening, when she was full dressed to go down to dessert, and her mother for about five minutes in the course of the morning, when she came up to the school-room to find fault with the governess for the children's bad grammar, or awkward behaviour, on the previous evening. The round of the year brings the sea-side visit. Here, although health is gained, there is no education beyond lodging-house gossip. The children are put into the train like so many parcels, and in so many hours are somewhere else; frocks suited to the sea-side are put on them by the nurse, but these might have dropped from the clouds, and the children have been none the wiser. Helplessness is the natural outcome of all this. The school-room course begins in about six years to be agreeably diversified by the visits of music and drawing-masters; which, if the governess did not sit in the room all the time, trying to attract their admiration, would be a really pleasant change. But nothing comes of the lessons beyond the showy _morceau de salon_ aforesaid, the buff-paper drawing, and the weak rhyme jingled to an accompaniment in quavers; except an increase of energy in borrowing, or hiring, yellow-covered books revealing stirring impossibilities in the lives of Edwin and Angelina, over which a girl, according to her disposition, may weep or rage. For this is the only outlet for her poor imprisoned life, until, on her introduction to society, she is suddenly flung upon the world, to make her way as best, or worst, she can; and now, and now only, does her real education begin. This manner of bringing up our girls differs from the convent system in this, that it is worldly instead of being religious, and needlework and confectionery are worse taught; other things are about equal. Both we and our continental neighbours imprison our girls in a school-room or convent for twelve years, and yet boast of our superiority over the Turks! After this, can we wonder at the weakness or the folly of girls, or be surprised that society is at a dead-lock, or that our women eat bitter bread? Can we marvel that women ruin their husbands by their dress and extravagance; that they drive them to their clubs for companionship, and freedom from the wretchedness of home; that they tyrannize over their milliners, and are in their turn tyrannized over by their servants; that their sons drink the brandy and smoke the tobacco of idleness, and that their daughters grow up the patterns of themselves? Only where the mother is passively useless, the daughter will be actively mischievous; where the mother was merely frivolous, the daughter will be actually wicked.