WOMEN AS INSPECTORS OF SCHOOLS.
[TO TEE EDITOR OF THE"SPECTATOR,"] Sin,—" A School-Board Mistress" writes in your columns that a woman's nature is too small for the work of judging. By the hypothesis, accordingly, this Mistress is not a competent judge of her judges, of whom she says precisely those depreciatory things which are supposed to be peculiarly pleasant flattery to the ears of men. But why is she so anxious not to have a woman Inspector of her school ? The mystery recalls to my mind a pregnant saying of one of those " small-natured "creatures whom the mistress despises, my dear and honoured friend Mary Carpenter. Speaking to me one day on the subject of male Inspectors, she said, with her peculiarly im- pressive manner, not unmingled with fun, "My dear Miss Cobbe, depend upon it, there never yet was a man whom the matron or mistress of an institution could not entirely bamboozle respecting every department under her control."
Can that law of nature, discovered by that widely-experienced philanthropist, have anything to do with the preference of "A School-Board Mistress" for gentlemen Inspectors ?—I am,
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