female teacher, obtained in a normal school, is despised by the male teachers who obtained theirs in the university. It is too obvious that the women are found only in subordinate positions (exceptions not counted) of the school organism. No wonder that the pupils sometimes refuse them the respect which is offered as a matter of course in England, where the female teachers are provided with the highest professional education." Quoting again, she says: "In France there were no preparatory schools for the university. Only after the downfall of the second empire, after the humiliating experiences in 1870-'71, steps were taken favorable to women. The Government became convinced of the fact that an elevation of the whole people is only possible by means of an elevation of its women. The motion of Camille Sée to found and maintain lyceums for women was adopted without delay. ' Our law is a moral as well as a social and political law'—thus he pleaded for it, in 1880, before the Chamber of Deputies—'it concerns the future and security of Trance, for upon the women depends the greatness or decay of the nations.'"
In Portugal "the question of establishing special girls' lyceums is being agitated; a violent controversy has been going on concerning this, and the desire of many Portuguese is that 'their ladies may remain in future as charmingly amiable and foolish children as they have been since Adam's time.'" "Clemens Nohl speaks in his Pedagogy for Higher Schools of the absolute necessity to grant the female sex a thorough education, and says the mother needs it for the sake of her family, the unmarried woman for her own sake."
One forcible argument which is not urged by Miss Lange comes to one when he realizes how much work is done by women in the post-office, telegraph, and other public departments in England, or, if he chances to pass the Treasury and other departments in Washington at the noon hour, and sees the thronging thousands of women pour out from these buildings, he feels that, in case of war, hardly a man would be needed at home to carry on the minute details of office work. The Landwehr and the Landsturm could march out to a man, and not a wheel of government machinery would be checked in its movement. Germany, in this respect, is still in the Oriental stage, and it behooves her public men to look into this matter from the standpoint of military strength. Certainly such an argument might reach her, despite the uniform brutality which marks a German's attitude toward women as contrasted with their treatment by other nations.
A Washington Bible-Class. By Gail Hamilton. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 303. Price, $1.50.
The story of the Bible-class is told in an introductory chapter. A mother in Washington, embarrassed by the refusal of her sons to accept certain doctrines as they are held by the theologians, and finding it equally embarrassing to teach them what her reason could not approve, consulted with other mothers about the religious instruction of their children. The end of the consultation was the formation of a class to study the Bible, not with reference to speculation, but to find the truth in it; not what there might be of Calvinism, or Lutheranism, or agnosticism, or Catholicism, or Universalism, but what is Scripture; not what men say Scripture says and means, but what Scripture itself means and says. "The class, as it grew, embraced members of the families of the Cabinet, of Congressmen, diplomats, scientific and literary men, etc., and persons of a great variety of shades of belief. The class was at first intended to be conversational, and its idea one of common study, comparison of results, and general conference"; but the woman who was chosen leader soon found herself doing most of the talking, and the proceedings, as they are presented in the book, took the form of lectures. The tenor of these lectures is what we might describe, without presuming to express an opinion or to approve or disapprove, as embodying a common-sense view of the questions that arose. The narrative is composed, as to its most remarkable passages, in an anthropomorphic state of mind, which sees God in everything, regards all phenomena as his direct act, and personifies him as the actor. It is assumed that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was by an eruption of natural gas in that asphaltic region; that Lot was warned by a messenger who
