Another interesting and suggestive phase of Southern education appears in a comparative study of the expenditures for schools in the various States. In the decade just closed the actual outlay in the sixteen States has increased from $11,400,000 in 1878 to about $20,000,000 in 1888, or seventy-five per cent. Again, the assessed valuation of taxable property in twelve Southern States from which returns are available aggregates a little less than that of the State of New York; the former nevertheless spent on the public schools, for the year 1885-'86, $1,058,000 more than the latter. Mississippi, Missouri, and West Virginia each spend more mills to the dollar than does New York, and the last of them three times as much as does Michigan.

The South is rapidly settling for itself the vexed problem of education.

Bibliography.

"Schools and Universities North and South," "De Bow's Review," 1855, p. 545; "Opposition to the Free-School System in the South," "American Social Science Journal," vol. ix, p. 92; "Sketch of Education in South Carolina," R. Means Davis, 1882; also, in "Creoles of Louisiana," by G. W. Cable, see "The Schoolmaster," chap. xxxiii, p. 256, for a picture of education before the war.

Upon the later period consult "The Freedmen during the War," General O. O. Howard, "Princeton Review," May and September, 1886; "Our Southern Colleges and Schools," C. F. Smith, "Atlantic Monthly," October, 1884, p. 542; "Proceedings of the National Educational Association," 1884 (fifty pages by Robert Bingham, Rev. A. D. Mayo, B. T. Washington, Miss Clara Conway, and others, in a very valuable discussion); “Twenty Years of Negro Education," J. M. Keating, “Popular Science Monthly," November, 1885; "The Case of the Negro," Rev. Atticus G. Haygood; "The South, the North, and the Nation keeping School," Rev. A. D. Mayo; "The Negro Question," by G. W. Cable, "New York Tribune," March 4, 1888; "Education in South Carolina," by Mayor Courtney. On the question of "Federal Aid to Education," see discussion by J. L. M. Curry, “Circular of Information, No. 3," 1884; H. R. Waite, " Princeton Review," May, 1884, p. 215; and D. H. Chamberlain, "Princeton Review," March, 1887. Consult also the "Annual Reports of the Peabody and Slater Funds," and of the "Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church."

CHAPTER XXI.

THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

THE caption is here used in its most general significance, to include the educational recognition accorded to girls and women in the United States. The popular sentiment touching the question has been an index to the attitude of the public upon many others. Woman's right to the highest culture has shared the national creed-the privilege of every individual to make the most of himself. A century of her education admirably illustrates the evolution of an idea among a people already committed to the doctrine of personal sovereignty, predisposed to a wholesome recognition of individual rights. It is in keeping with the character of a free people that no class, and no one of any class, shall be hindered in a rational participation in all manner of good and enjoyment. In the degree that the people have become less selfish and more rational, less individual and more personal, the privileges of superior training have become less exclusive.

In the last century the United States stood beside other nations touching the education of girls. No European government made anything like the same provision for the two sexes. The educational institutions of Prussia were first co-ordinated into a state system in the common law of 1794. There had been schools of a kind for girls for a hundred years, but "far less efficient than for boys." And it is said that not till 1804 had any one in Prussia courage to start a seminary for female teachers. The English schools came even later, Girton College being opened eight years after Vassar. It can not seem strange, then, that American schools have been only recently opened to girls.*

* Mayor Quincy, in closing the Girls' High School, Boston (1822), after a year's trial, said: "It is just as impracticable to give a classical education

The steps in the development of this best sentiment, from indifference to interest, while not always distinctly apparent, are distinguishable. There came first the girls' academies, many of which remain. Within the same generation, this secondary training had the effect to greatly increase the demand for the advanced. Refused admission to the established colleges, women sought to found others for themselves. With so much granted, access to institutions for young men was not long delayed-not to all, but to the younger colleges, and, generally, those most in sympathy with the spirit of the time. It was to be expected that the older and more conservative institutions, the product of a long past, and with established functions and courses, should more slowly accept the change. Even these, however, form an interesting class, making concessions recently, and giving assurances of their good intentions. Further, to concede the general education of women is, among a busy, practical, here-and-now people, to concede the use of that education, looking toward the general welfare. The professional training of women easily follows their admitted general culture. The subject is resolved, then, under the several heads enumerated, viz.:

1. Girls' seminaries and academies.

2. Colleges for women only.

3. Colleges admitting women.

4. College "annexes," and examinations. 5. Women in the professions.

1. Girls' Seminaries.

The story of the rise of girls' schools in the United States is almost biographical, so interwoven is it with the lives of four women in the first half of the century, whose names and services have become historical. Mrs. Emma Willard,

to all the girls of a city whose parents would wish them to be thus educated at the expense of the city, as to give such a one to all the boys at the city's expense; no funds of any city could endure the expense of it."

in Vermont and New York; Miss Catherine E. Beecher, in Connecticut and Ohio; Mary Lyon, in Massachusetts; and Miss Grant, in New Hampshire, did for girlhood and woman what Horace Mann did for school systems-brought them to consciousness; what Mary Carpenter and Mary Somerville did in England.

After a short service in Bradford Academy (1804), Mrs. Willard (then Miss Emma Hart) opened a school for young ladies at Middlebury, Vermont (1808). Six years later it was made a boarding-school, and the curriculum extended. In 1819 she removed, by invitation, to Waterford, New York, and two years later founded the celebrated Troy Female Seminary,* to which, for seventeen years, says a recent Regents' Report, "she brought unparalleled success.” While here she prepared and published, in an address, a “Plan for improving Female Education," which, being submitted to the New York Legislature, secured to Waterford Academy, and a few other proposed girls' schools, a share, for the first time, in the Literature Fund, or State appropriation for academies. The "Plan " was a sensible and comprehensive discussion of the "education of girls.'

Her published address and the fame of her teaching reached other States, and similar institutions were founded in Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, etc., besides one at Bogotá, in South America, and another at Athens, Greece, as a school for the preparation of native teachers. She visited Europe twice, first in 1830, and again twenty-three years later, to attend the World's Educational Conference at London-both times inspecting schools, conferring with the most eminent foreign educators, and studying systems; received in France as the friend of Lafayette, and everywhere welcomed, both for her womanhood and her profession.+

*For a very interesting sketch of Mrs. Will d's school and her educational doctrine, see Barnard's " American Journal of Education," vol. vi, pp. 125-168.

Mrs. Willard was a successful author, also, of two histories of the

Miss Beecher, born in 1800, and educated in Connecticut, opened, when twenty-two years of age, at Hartford, in that State, an academy for young ladies, which is said to have been for ten years so successful as to have attracted students from every State in the Union. She was assisted by her sister Harriet, the pupils frequently numbering more than one hundred and fifty. In 1832, settling in Cincinnati, she again opened a seminary, which failing health, after two years, compelled her to abandon. She immediately gave her influence to the forming of public sentiment on the subject of female education, and, through a National Board and Society, to the enlargement of its facilities. For forty years she was a controlling spirit in the organization, which sent hundreds of teachers to Western schools, to the Territories, and to the South.*

Since the active period of these two women, young ladies' seminaries have become both fashionable and numerous. There are reported two hundred and seven institutions now of about the same grade as the Troy Seminary, most of which have been founded within a generation. Of these, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, and Missouri have each more than a dozen; Ohio has eleven, and North Carolina, New York, and Alabama, ten each, these nine States having more than half the whole number. In seven Southern States are forty-seven per cent of them. About two thirds of them are authorized to confer degrees, though the course is various as to scope and fullness.

2. Colleges for Women.

One of the oldest of the higher grade schools was the somewhat famous Wesleyan Seminary and Female College

United States, a universal history. a number of historical charts, and works on physiology, astronomy, and morals.

* Miss Beecher was the author of text-books on arithmetic, mental and moral science, a "Course of Calisthenics" for young ladies, and one or two books on female education.