have sometimes seen in Austria or Germany-some Moravian settlement perhaps, standing on its cliff, with belfries and clock towers and windows upon windows. These windows, which outside seem too many for architectural effect, inside give light and air to two hundred maidens, asleep and awake.

The particular Sleeping Princess of Education who came to life in this charming spot certainly found herself in delightful surroundings when she opened her eyes upon this horizon, upon the flights and terraces and courts all looking seawards; while within, the great halls, the schoolrooms and laboratories, the gymnasiums and passages, lead from wing to wing, and-thanks to the innumerable windows-from cheerful light to light.1

Every corner of the great building speaks of light and freshness. And besides all this there is the inspiriting sight of the spreading sea-line to the south, and of the downs stretching north and east, and then, far away towards the sunset, Brighton with its spires and pinnacles. Sometimes the sea from Roedean looks almost like a living thing, heaving and throbbing, and with dark markings and a strange dazzle of white flame breaking from the far horizon. On this particular day of which I write it was vague, soft, mystical, with spring in the air and birds on the wing.

I have always liked the story of Roedean-of the seven sisters who founded the schools and raised the beautiful palace in which this particular Princess of Education awoke. After long years of constancy and work, with hope and good sense and a company to back them, they raised the palace for this Princess Egeria to rule, with her following of English girls. I have always thought the Sleeping Beauty of Roedean must have been originally christened Egeria. A prophetic nymph or divinity,' says the dictionary, ' an instructress invoked as the giver of life.' All this is extremely appropriate to the schools of Roedean. The air comes straight from the waves to the high cliffs where the two hundred maidens are imbibing instruction and fresh air with every breath.

I had heard at St. Andrews and elsewhere how much the young students of to-day owe to Mrs. Garrett Anderson, who came away in her youth, fresh from Cambridge honours, with new and healthy views of what education ought to be, not only for the mind but for the body, and who immediately began to

There are four great houses, all communicating, each under a different regent. Each house contains about fifty girls and has its separate staff of mistresses and servants.

preach the excellent doctrines of judicious hours, of exercise, of oxygen and hydrogen, the uses of amusement as well as of hard work; of thoroughness and good teaching. And with what success she preached any one may judge who looks about, with or without the guidance of my tutelary Fairy Blackstick.

Schools founded upon such lines prosper because they are schools of common sense; the children's happy health is considered as well as their vigorous mental progress.

It is just tea-time,' said Egeria, who had come out to welcome the Fairy Blackstick; 'come and see the girls,' and she led the way. It was pleasant to follow her and also to realise the young students talking, drinking tea, occupied by their various amusements; in libraries, gymnasiums, play-rooms; being Saturday afternoon the school-rooms only were empty.

'There is but one question I should like to ask you,' said Fairy Blackstick, a little gravely-she was pulling down her veil and preparing to take leave of Egeria: when your girls come away, returning to their own homes, to the outer world, where most assuredly everything is not arranged solely for their convenience, are you not a little afraid for them?'

'Afraid of what?' said Egeria.

Of their too great expectations,' said Blackstick, and consequent disappointment.'

We were crossing the courtyard as she spoke, and we happened to be passing an open window whence came a sudden delightful burst of laughter from some half-dozen maidens who were sitting round a table drinking tea. It was merry, charming laughter like a tune. That,' said Egeria, smiling, is as good an answer as any I can give you. Youth is lighthearted; it accepts the experiences of life as they come, not the less easily because of a good education! You take things too gravely, dear Blackstick.' And then we drove down the hill towards Brighton once more, while Egeria waved farewell from her high terrace.

THE MAKING OF A MARCHIONESS.

BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

I.

WHEN Miss Fox-Seton descended from the twopenny 'bus as it drew up, she gathered her trim tailor-made skirt about her with neatness and decorum, being well used to getting in and out of twopenny 'buses and to making her way across muddy London streets. A woman whose tailor-made suit must last two or three years soon learns how to protect it from splashes, and how to aid it to retain the freshness of its folds. During her trudging about this morning in the wet, Emily Fox-Seton had been very careful and, in fact, was returning to Mortimer Street as unspotted as she had left it. She had been thinking a good deal about her dress-this particular faithful one which she had already worn through a twelvemonth. Skirts had made one of their appalling changes, and as she walked down Regent Street and Bond Street she had stopped at the windows of more than one shop bearing the sign 'Ladies' Tailor and Habit Maker,' and had looked at the tautly attired preternaturally slim models, her large honest hazel eyes wearing an anxious expression. She was trying to discover where seams were to be placed and how gathers were to be hung; or if there were to be gathers at all; or if one had to be bereft of every seam in a style so unrelenting as to forbid the possibility of the honest and semi-penniless struggling with the problem of remodelling last season's skirt at all.

'As it is only quite an ordinary brown,' she had murmured to herself, I might be able to buy a yard or so to match it, and I might be able to join the gore near the pleats at the back so that it would not be seen.'

She quite beamed as she reached the happy conclusion. She was such a simple normal-minded creature, that it took but little to brighten the aspect of life for her, and to cause her to break into her good-natured childlike smile. A little kindness from

Copyright in the United States of America by Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1901.

any one, a little pleasure, or a little comfort, made her glow with nice-tempered enjoyment.

As she got out of the 'bus, and picked up her rough brown skirt, prepared to tramp bravely through the mud of Mortimer Street to her lodgings, she was positively radiant. It was not only her smile which was childlike, her face itself was childlike for a woman of her age and size. She was thirty-four and a well-set up creature, with fine square shoulders and a long small waist and good hips. She was a big woman, but carried herself well, and having solved the problem of obtaining, through marvels of energy and management, one good dress a year, wore it so well, and changed her old ones so dexterously, that she always looked rather smartly dressed. She had nice round fresh cheeks and nice big honest eyes, plenty of mouse-brown hair and a short straight nose. She was striking and well-bred-looking, and her plenitude of good-natured interest in everybody, and her pleasure in everything out of which pleasure could be wrested, gave her big eyes a fresh look which made her seem rather like a nice overgrown girl than a mature woman whose life was a continuous struggle with the narrowest of mean fortunes.

She was a woman of good blood and of good education, as the education of such women goes. She had few relatives, and none of them had any intention of burdening themselves with her pennilessness. They were people of excellent family, but had quite enough to do to keep their sons in the army or navy, and find husbands for their daughters. When Emily's mother had died and her small annuity had died with her, none of them had wanted the care of a big raw-boned girl, and Emily had had the situation frankly explained to her. At eighteen she had begun work as assistant teacher in a small school; the year following she had taken a place as nursery-governess; then she had been reading-companion to an unpleasant old woman in Northumberland. The old woman had lived in the country, and her relations had hovered over her like vultures awaiting her decease. The household had been gloomy and gruesome enough to have driven into melancholy madness any girl not of the sanest and most matter-of-fact temperament. Emily Fox-Seton had endured it with an unfailing good nature which at last had actually awakened in the breast of her mistress a ray of human feeling. When the old woman at length died, and Emily was to be turned out into the world, it was revealed that she had been left a legacy

of a few hundred pounds, and a letter containing some rather practical, if hardly expressed, advice.

Go back to London,' Mrs. Maytham had written in her feeble crabbed hand. You are not clever enough to do any thing remarkable in the way of earning your living, but you are so good-natured that you can make yourself useful to a lot of helpless creatures who will pay you a trifle for looking after them and the affairs they are too lazy or too foolish to manage for themselves. You might get on to one of the second-class fashion papers to answer ridiculous questions about housekeeping or wallpapers or freckles. You know the kind of thing I mean. You might write notes, or do accounts and shopping for some lazy You are a practical honest creature, and you have good manners. I have often thought that you had just the kind of commonplace gifts that a host of commonplace people want to find at their service. An old servant of mine who lives in Mortimer Street would probably give you cheap decent lodgings, and behave well to you for my sake. She has reason to be fond of me. Tell her I sent you to her, and that she must take you

woman.

in for ten shillings a week.'

Emily wept for gratitude, and ever afterwards enthroned old Mrs. Maytham on an altar as a princely and sainted benefactor, though after she had invested her legacy she got only twenty pounds a year from it.

It was so kind of her,' she used to say with heartfelt humbleness of spirit. I never dreamed of her doing such a generous thing. I hadn't a shadow of a claim upon her-not a shadow.'

It was her way to express her honest emotions with emphasis which italicised, as it were, her outpourings of pleasure or appreciation.

She returned to London and presented herself to the exserving woman. Mrs. Cupp had indeed reason to remember her mistress gratefully. At a time when youth and indiscreet affection had betrayed her disastrously, she had been saved from open disgrace and taken care of by Mrs. Maytham. The old lady, who had then been a vigorous, sharp-tongued, middle-aged woman, had made the soldier lover marry his despairing sweetheart, and when he had promptly drunk himself to death, she had set her up in a lodging-house which had thriven, and enabled her to support herself and her daughter decently.

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