So much for girls' education in the higher strata. As to the immense mass of the Russian population they were left to rot, intellectually, in utter neglect. The school system in some Western countries--including central and southern Italy before 1859-60, France, and even England until a few years ago--was bad enough. In Russia it was simply nonexistent. The private educational establishments and grammar schools in a few towns, which were destined for the more well-to-do middle class, were sorry copies of the few Government institutions. I have before mentioned how, under the present reign, a movement for a more Liberal education arose, which, however, soon led to students' tumults and to severe police measures. In girls' education, too, a progressive movement was initiated. For a short time it was said that the Empress herself, whose German origin inclined her to that view, would assume its protectorate. But soon it was seen that Government mainly busied itself with bureaucratic regulations, whilst the foundation of the girls' schools for which these extensive and often harassing regulations were framed, proceeded with extreme slowness. In fact, the regulations were there; but in most cases the schools were wanting. Meanwhile, the aspiring girlhood of Russia threw itself with avidity upon the new sources of knowledge, scant as they were, which had at last been opened to it. The Minister of Public Instruction, Golovnin, who was in office between 1861-66, promoted, in his quality of an opponent of the classical method of education, by preference the study of natural science. Hence a realistic tendency--often verging upon the harsh and the crude--became the prevailing tone. Girls, sick of the idleness and the conventional frivolities of social life, eagerly devoted themselves to scientific pursuits, both as students at the new academies, and as subscribers to the courses of lectures which were getting into vogue. The very antagonists of the more extreme "emancipatory" practices acknowledge that the greater number of these lady-students, who soon were driven to seek for an opportunity of acquiring knowledge at a foreign university--that is, at Zurich--distinguished themselves by much diligence and talent, as well as by a spirit of personal sacrifice in regard to worldly comforts.