The loss of opportunities of education for the women of the middle classes, which was a result of the dissolution of the religious houses, had never quite been made good, and even down to the second half of the seventeenth century there was no adequate system of popular education. In the case of the children of the nobility, suitable education and training for their station in life could be obtained only by sending them abroad to Italy, France, or Germany, or by bringing foreign teachers into the country. Girls were never sent abroad for their education; and in the case of the daughters of middle-class society, all that was regarded as needful was training in the practical affairs of housewifery--to which, in the case of the Puritans, was added inculcation of the Scriptures and the reading of other devout books. The current opinion is well expressed in the following citation from _The Art of Thriving_: "Let them learne plaine workes of all kind, so they take heed of too open seeming. Instead of song and musick, let them learne cookery and laundry, and instead of reading Sir Philip Sydney's _Arcadia_, let them read the grounds of huswifery. I like not a female poetesse at any hand: let greater personages glory their skill in musicke, the posture of their bodies, the greatnesse and freedome of their spirits, and their arts in arraigning of men's affections at their flattering faces: this is not the way to breed a private gentleman's daughter." Even if higher education for women were not recognized as important in the seventeenth century--and the facilities were not at hand, even if the sentiment had existed--it would be captious criticism to construe this into a grievance against the sex. In all that pertained to dignity and real worth, the women of the Commonwealth, with all the narrowness of their training, were much in advance of womankind at the beginning of the modern era, and their moral differentiation from the women of the same class before the spread of Puritanism was most marked. Puritanism was a distinct gain for woman, for through that movement the process of raising women in the social scale received great impetus. A comparison with the girls of France of about the same period certainly shows that the low state of education among the sex in England was not in any wise peculiar to English conditions. Fénelon, in referring to the neglect of the education of the girls of his country, says: "It is shameful, but ordinary, to see women who have acuteness and politeness, not able to pronounce what they read; either they hesitate or they intone in reading, when, instead, they should pronounce with a simple and natural tone, but rounded and uniform. They are still more deficient in orthography, whether in the manner of composing their letters or in reading them when written."