Another, and an essentially practical advantage of boarding-schools, is the facilities they offer for differentiation. We are coming to realise that all schools cannot teach all things, unless indeed like Cheltenham, they are really a number of different schools under one head. While many new subjects have been drawn within the sphere of a girl’s curriculum, the old still keep their place. The only escape from smatter and overstrain lies in a wise selection, and a girl’s general education may gain almost as much by the exclusion of some subjects as by the inclusion of others. With the constant increase of science schools, technical institutes, special endowments for science, etc., selection and differentiation are rapidly increasing in one direction, and it becomes essential to provide elsewhere against the complete neglect of the literary side. This the boarding-school may do without inflicting any injustice, since it does not profess to supply all the local needs. Up to the age of fourteen there can be no thought of specialising; by that time most parents have some general idea about their daughter’s probable future and special inclinations. If it is a question of a definite career, the choice becomes easier, because confined within narrower limits. Yet after all, when we have reviewed in our minds all the careers open to women, and the great social changes due to their entering the lists with trained instead of unskilled labour, the fact still remains that, at any rate in the upper and upper-middle classes, the majority of women do not earn their own living. As Hannah More reminded us long ago, their profession is to be that of ‘wives, mothers, and mistresses of households,’ and to this we must now add the duties of a philanthropic and public character that social position brings with it. What is commonly called ‘a life of leisure’ may be an exceedingly busy life, and nowhere do the advantages of mental training, habits of accuracy, and a disciplined will tell to more advantage than in promoting the happiness of others. Most of these girls must receive any education, beyond the early part which a private governess can undertake, in boarding-schools, if only because the leisured classes to which they belong seldom live near enough to towns to make use of day-schools. To quote a very able and experienced schoolmistress:—‘The demand for private schools and for the individual attention which girls require has been increased by the habits of modern life among the upper and upper-middle classes. From my own personal knowledge there are many parents who spend nearly the whole year away from home or in entertaining a “house party” when they are at home. There is really no place at home for the poor girls who have not “come out.” What the parents seek for them is a school that can supply the place of a home, where they can receive individual attention, cultivation, training, and be prepared for society.’ She might have