of its complete disappearance in the future. We are coming to look on education for girls as well as for boys as a training for a definite end rather than as an affair of landscape gardening. Nevertheless, the old tradition still lingers in our drawingrooms and schoolrooms. While it is generally agreed that no boy is in any need of accomplishments to fulfil his destiny in the world, these doubtful benefits are still pressed indiscriminately upon boys’ sisters in the belief that there is some value for a woman in having acquired, even against her will, a feeble amateurishness in one or more of the arts. Only when it is generally recognised that unless art is spontaneous, unless it is a freely chosen medium for an honest self-expression, it is utterly and absolutely valueless, in fact non-existent, will the standard of artistic taste in this country begin to rise. The tradition, at all events, has made Englishwomen great dabblers in the arts, and they have been assisted in carrying this dabbling beyond their schooldays by their independence which is younger than the tradition. By this independence—for the good of our nation may it never grow less—they go on sketching tours, set up studios in Chelsea, invade foreign _ateliers_ unattended, trip off to foreign _conservatoires_ free from the tethering ropes which still attach the native pensionnaires to censorious hearths. Never was there such a nation of woman painters and sketchers and etchers, singers, players, music-teachers, journalists and novelists as ours. Yet, for all their quantity, the quality which they achieve is disheartening. Why is it? What do they lack? Is it the furious energy of concentration, is it discontent with easy achievement, is it honesty, is it vision, is it passion? Or is it simply that, except in rare instances, they are weak, birds of short flight who cannot sustain the upward sweep of more powerful masculine pinions? The attainments of a few exceptional women artists go a little way to atone for the shortcomings of the multitude. Here, at least, there is room for progress on the part of Englishwomen during the remainder of the century. Let them throw off the last remnant of hampering tradition and use their increasing independence to better purpose.