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ELIZABETH CARTER.

To my thinking there is no more agreeable biography in the language than the life of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter by her nephew, the Rev. Montagu Pennington. It is an oldfashioned book, long since out of print, and not likely, on account of its supernumerary second volume, to be reprinted. But the delightfulness of the life itself, and the naïve, affectionate spirit of the biographer, whose pride in his subject crops up in every page, makes it a book to be joyfully hailed whenever found on a book-stall, and to be lent to all our acquaintances, young and old, learned and simple, ever after.

Never was such an age of memoir-writing as the present, and without doubt we cannot have too many when alike style and subject are admirable. We could, nevertheless, well afford to turn from time to time to such records of by-gone lives as these, forgotten for the most part, wholly ignored indeed by the great bulk of readers, yet full of entertainment and instruction. People subscribe to libraries now-a-days, but there are few readers of old books. It suffices for a book to wear a shabby cover and to belong to a past generation. It is old, it is out of date, it must therefore be dull.

From one point of view the biography of Elizabeth Carter has an especial interest in our own country just now. She was a scholar, "a good ripe one," and her scholarship was attained under disadvantages from which Englishwomen do not suffer any more. There was no Girton College, or Merton Hall, in those days, where young women

could pursue matical studies as freely and advantageously as men; no classes open to them at London University and King's College; no temporary homes in Cambridge where they could stay during periods of systematic study under university professors; no educational associations affording first-rate teaching even in remote places; lastly, there were no Local Examinations for girls, and no Higher Examinations for Women, thus granting them precisely the same tests of knowledge long enjoyed only by the other sex.

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In the present day, indeed, it is rather matter for astonishment that the number of girl and women students in the higher fields of knowledge should not be far greater than that many are availing themselves of these privileges. Perhaps it is too much to expect that the enthusiasm of the projectors of any scheme should be equally shared by those it