Such was the verdict of this famous Commission, whose ‘revelations’ have figured in so many prizegiving speeches. The report filled twenty stout volumes, which were duly relegated to their place on official shelves, to accumulate dust; and there, thirty years after, they have been joined by the nine volumes drawn up by our latest educational Commission. Truly has it been said that the best way to shelve a question in England is to let a Royal Commission sit upon it. But even a Royal Commission and a twenty-volume report could not shelve the subject of girls’ education; the reformers were too much in earnest. Miss Beale extracted from these ponderous blue tomes all that related to girls, and reprinted it in a compact little volume. Even before its appearance action had been taken. The Cambridge Local Examinations had drawn schoolmistresses together and given them a common interest. They now began to form associations in different parts of the country. One was started in London, with Miss Buss as President and Miss Davies as Secretary. The North of England proved a specially congenial sphere for this form of union. The Ladies’ Honorary Council of the Yorkshire Board of Education was an outcome of the introduction into that county of the Local Examinations, but it soon extended its operations over wider fields, _e.g._ domestic economy and sanitary science, as well as the extension of endowments to girls. Even more far-reaching in its results was the North of England Council. This too originated in Schoolmistresses’ associations, among which Miss A. J. Clough was a moving spirit. In 1865 she contributed to _Macmillan’s Magazine_ an article setting forth certain schemes for improving girls’ education. One of these was to establish in other large towns courses of lectures similar to those given at Queen’s and Bedford Colleges, to be attended by the older pupils from schools and by teachers. Co-operation between several towns would make it possible to engage really able lecturers from Oxford and Cambridge. The experiment was first tried at Liverpool, and spread to Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield. Associations were formed in these four towns, and by the election of two representatives from each, the ‘North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women’ was constituted in 1867, with Miss Clough as secretary and Mrs. Butler as president. The lectures proved a phenomenal success. In the autumn of 1868 the numbers of the combined audiences in nine towns amounted to 1500, and Mr. F. Myers writing of them in _Macmillan_, enumerated their advantages thus: ‘1. They contain within themselves the germ of university extension. ‘2. They confront young women in a reasonable manner with reasonable men. ‘3. They encourage and help governesses, who attend in large numbers, and are glad to have good teaching and to know of the best books. ‘4. They form a nucleus for educational libraries and for the friendships of fellow-students.