There are cross-roads at about sixteen in a girl’s life.  After two or three troublesome years she is going to make her choice, not always consciously and deliberately, but those who are alive to what is going on may expect to hear about this time her speech from the throne, announcing what the direction of her life is going to be.  It is not necessarily the choice of a vocation in life, that belongs to an order of things that has neither day nor hour determined for it, but it is when the mental outlook takes a direction of its own, literary, or artistic, or philosophical, or worldly, or turning towards home; it may sometimes be the moment of decisive vocation to leave all things for God, or, as has so often happened in the lives of the Saints, the time when a child’s first desire, forgotten for a while, asserts itself again.  In any case it is generally a period of new awakenings, and if things are as they ought to be, generally a time of deep happiness—­the ideal hour in the day of our early youth.  All this is faithfully rendered in the essays of that time; we unsuspectingly give ourselves away.

After this, for those who are going to write at all, comes the “viewy” stage, and this is full of interest.  We are so dogmatic, so defiant, so secure in our persuasions.  It is impossible to believe that they will ever alter.  Yet who has lived through this phase of abounding activity and has not found that, at first with the shock of disappointment, and afterwards without regret, a memorial cross had to be set by our wayside, here and there, marking the place of rest for our most enthusiastic convictions.  In the end one comes to be glad of it, for if it means anything it means a growth in the truth.

The criticism of essays is one of the choice opportunities which education offers, for then the contact of mind with mind is so close that truth can be told under form of criticism, which as exhortation would have been less easily accepted.  It is evident that increasing freedom must be allowed as the years go on, and that girls have a right to their own taste and manner—­and within the limits of their knowledge to form their own opinions; but it is in this period of their development that they are most sensitive to the mental influence of those who are training them, and their quick responsiveness to the best is a constant stimulus to go on for their sakes, discovering and tasting and training one’s discernment in what is most excellent.

From this point we may pass to what is first in the order of things—­but first and last in this department of an English education—­and that is reading, with the great field of literature before us, and the duty of making the precious inheritance all that it ought to be to this young generation of ours—­heiresses to all its best.