three centuries, was not accepted practically in England until the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
Although we have been so backward in this department, it must be remembered that there have been, nevertheless, two remarkable periods of educational activity in our annals. The first had its flowering time in the thirteenth century, when the mediæval mind was more alert than before or later, and Oxford could rival Paris itself. The second came to a head from the time of Henry VIII. to that of our Civil War, during which epoch nearly eight hundred grammar schools were founded for the public benefit. And yet it happened that both these extraordinary efforts seemed in course of time to yield relatively poor fruit.
The reason of this strange weakness in the intellectual organisation of the most vigorous of peoples has called forth the speculations of thinkers, who, however, may not yet have touched the truth. Perhaps the real reason was our neglect of the education of women. Mediaeval pedagogy looked to the male rather than to the female, for the end of its instruction was the Church, and the highest purpose of its chantry and cathedral schools, those cradles of elementary education, was to produce clerics. Similarly with the second movement initiated at the Renaissance. In all the deeds of gift and statutes of founders instituting those eight hundred grammar schools,
