There is a little volume by Richard Croft, Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, being a sermon preached by him at the opening of the Free School of Feckenham in 1696, throughout the sixty-eight pages of which there is not an iota worthy of citation, nor a hint serviceable to my inquiry. How different it might have been, had a layman been the writer! XIII. Female education--Women of quality taught at home--General illiteracy of the sex--Strong clerical control--Ignorance of the rudiments of knowledge among girls--Shakespear's daughters--Goldsmith's _Poems for Young Ladies_--Rise of the Ladies' School--Political importance of the training of women. I. The neglect of female education in the United Kingdom down to a recent date proceeded from an absence of any adequate or organisable machinery for the purpose, and from the complete monopoly of learning by men in early times. In Scotland this mischief was remedied to a certain extent much sooner than in England, owing to the institution of Academies, where both sexes received instruction under one roof from the same masters; and this circumstance may help to explain the general superiority of the Scots, within certain limits, to the Southern Britons in this respect, the better upbringing of the mother communicating itself to her children. Common academies for boys and girls were not wholly unknown in England, however, but they were of very rare occurrence, and have now become still rarer, as they barely exist at all except as dame-schools. Now-a-days, of course, the most elaborate and costly apparatus is provided for the mental cultivation and training of girls of all ranks; and the daughter of a citizen may acquire accomplishments which were long beyond the reach of daughters of kings. Formerly the lower classes of females remained as illiterate as the corresponding rank of men, and the studies of the gentlewoman were superintended by her parents and her tutor or her governess. But in the Middle Ages, and long after the revival of learning, the only persons capable of conducting the education of a lady who had emerged from the nursery and passed the rudimentary stage were ecclesiastics; and the laymen who gradually qualified themselves for the task, such as Ascham and Buchanan, were scholars of a scarce type, who had gained their proficiency in the gymnasia and universities of Italy, Germany, or France. The Italian influence was doubtless the earliest, but the German was the most powerful, and has proved the most lasting.