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The girls begin the work of the year at the following ages: --

11 between 20 and 23.
14 " 19 " 20.
23 " 18 " 19.
24 " 17 " 18.
6 " 16 " 17.
1 " 15 " 16.

This is a fair average class, except that it is singular in the last item. That is almost the only instance in the history of the college of a student entering as a freshman under sixteen. Few are under seventeen; seventy-two of the seventy-nine are over that age. Forty-eight, or three-fifths, are over eighteen. "Eighteen," writes Dr. Avery, "is young enough for any woman to begin this course. At that age, with an average endowment of mind and body, she pursues it with gladness and ends it with rejoicing, as many of our classes can prove."

I consider this a most valuable exhibit, and it is the book before us that has called it out. Vassar never yet insisted on a "regimen not to be distinguished" from that impressed upon boys, and her pupils are guided physiologically with a watchful tenderness impossible in most homes. Such care is quite as much needed by boys. Whenever co-education becomes a fact, the social head of the mixed college must be a woman who will exercise loving motherly care for both, and -who will find no practical difficulty in the natural differences.

Of one other case cited by Dr. Clarke as an instance of over or unwise education, I had an intimate and sorrowful knowledge. The degeneracy imputed to excessive culture was, in fact, the result of a tendency inherited from a vicious father, -- a tendency recognized by its unfortunate subject with morbid pain from the beginning.

Nothing will pain women more in this book than the assertion that "old age is sexless." Men and women do not lose the distinctions of perfect womanhood and manhood as they draw nearer to each other, unless we are prepared to account these purely physical. A woman ceases to be a mother only to fulfil the quite as sacred functions of the grandmother. She is set free from certain cares that a large experience of life may show her all the more fit for certain other cares, both social and philanthropic; but if she be not to her heart's core womanly, even at the age of eighty, her life has been a failure. Man, ripening alike through success and reverse, grows nearer to woman as he grows old; but his advanced life is also worthless if it cannot offer manhood's ripest fruit to her hand. Sweet memories of happy firesides, where the winter blaze crowned snowy heads with halos, bring the quick tears to my eyes as I write. God be thanked for manhood and womanhood completed at fourscore, as I recall them! It would seem as if Dr. Clarke can hardly yet understand what a blow his essay deals at the industry of woman. Did the world accept it, the movement now advancing would be checked in the bud. Thousands of women are thrown upon themselves for self-support at the age of fourteen. The moment that school-tasks are remitted three days out of thirty, clerks will leave the desk, servant-girls their accustomed work, shop-girls their counters. It is not too much to say that male labor must replace service as intermittent as this.

Having shown what the facts are in reference to the noblest institution for the culture of girls, I will add that I am utterly tired of seeing any class of God's creatures singled out for especial care. Bad habits, houses built like packing-cases set on end, unwholesome food, precocious reading, have much to do with the ill-heath of American women. If they put their money into comfort instead of flounces, if they employed two servants where they now have six, much of their mental lassitude would disappear, and their bodies would bear witness to the release. It is time that a generation of healthy men were provided: the occult causes lie within their own control:

The book before us may do something by rousing mothers and daughters to contemplate the situation, but, if properly trained in wise homes towards average health, the ends of life will be far better served by the women who forget their own inconveniences and think chiefly of those endured by others.

Nothing is so absurd as to press upon a young woman's thought the idea that she is to become a mother. What if she is? Let her make herself a healthy, happy human being, and what will may befall. What would be thought of a community which definitely undertook to train young men to the functions and duties of fathers? A shout of derision would be raised at once. "Let us have citizens!" the world would cry. I echo the demand. Mothers are no more important to the race than fathers: We must gain both by seeking first the "kingdom of God." People should live out their young and happy days, unconscious of this issue, as the flowers take no thought of seed. This is best done when their minds are occupied with other subjects than "periodicity" or "development."

VI.

BY C.

A FEW years ago an eminent divine felt it his mission to expound to woman "the great facts of her being." He began his harangue with flattering admissions of her "intuitions" and "delicacy of taste," and, having thus secured himself a hearing, he proceeded to declare that "woman cannot compete with man in a long course of mental labor," and that "as for training young ladies through a long intellectual course, as we do young men, it can never be done, -- they will die in the process."