Not that the intellectual side is unimportant. A University degree is
normally required in an assistant and this involves a three or four
years' course of considerable expense (see p. 7). An honours degree
is often essential--always, nowadays, in the case of a headmistress.
Whilst well-trained foreigners hold an important place in some
schools, modern languages are more frequently taught by an
Englishwoman who has lived abroad rather than by a foreign governess;
even English, happily, is no longer entrusted to any one not specially
qualified. As will be seen from the article on domestic work, the
graduate in chemistry has in this a promising field, while the
botanist or zoologist and the geologist have the basis on which to
specialise in nature-study or geography. This, however, usually comes
after the preliminary general academic training. It is well to keep up
a many-sided interest apart from bread-and-butter subjects, not
only in view of demands that may be made on one, but because the
intellectual woman will best qualify by developing her own powers as
far as possible. If of the right calibre, she can afterwards readily
take up even a new subject and make it her own. A good secondary
school needs that some of its mistresses should have the habits and
tastes of the scholar who loves work for its own sake, or rather for
the sake of truth. A woman with strong well-trained intellectual power
need not fear the competition of even the capable woman of action
indicated in the preceding paragraph. Both qualifications may, in
fact, exist in the same person.

The woman with brains is indeed needed in the schools. The work of
women's education was but begun by the illustrious pioneers to whom
reference has already been made. There are to-day many new problems
to solve, new difficulties caused by the very success of the older
generation. On the one hand it was necessary that women should at