Native female education is hardly begun by the government, and the task is very difficult, owing to the peculiar social restraints still imposed on the better class of Asiatic women. The Parsee female schools in Bombay are said to be the best supported and the most efficient in this respect. About twenty-five years ago Mr. Bethune opened in the city of Calcutta a school for native women. It was liberally supported by Lord Dalhousie, and since his death by the state. This was the beginning of a movement which has found great favor not only in Bengal, but in the North-western Provinces and the Punjaub. There are now in Bengal two normal schools for teachers and two hundred and forty-four schools for girls, with 4844 pupils. There are no fewer than six hundred and fifty schools in the Punjaub, with an aggregate of 20,534 pupils. These elementary schools in the Punjaub, Lahore, and Umritsur are superintended solely by native gentlemen. In addition to these the zenana mission-work, carried on so successfully by American and European missionary ladies, is slowly but surely preparing hundreds of women and children for a day that may ripen into better things; like a grain of mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, it will stretch out strong boughs to the four corners of the earth for the birds to lodge under. Another school of religious thought, already mentioned, called the Brahmo-Somaj, "assembled in the name of God," is even more closely allied with the dawning freedom and emancipation of the Hindoos from the priestcraft and spiritual tyranny of the Brahman hierarchy. From this new school of religious thought a large party of about five thousand souls seceded some few years ago. They chose for their leader the able and astute philosopher, the late Keshub Chunder Sen, one of the most talented and spiritual men among the Hindoos of to-day. This association has a church in Calcutta, where the members meet once a week or oftener for the purposes of meditation and worship.