For my friends who are currently preparing students for Grade 12 finals, this is a quote from Bronte's novel about the method of schooling in Villette.
"Here was a great house, full of healthy, lively girls, all well-dressed and many of them handsome, gaining knowledge by a marvellously easy method, without painful exertion or useless waste of spirits; not, perhaps, making very rapid progress in anything; taking it wasy, but still always employed, and never oppressed...
Masters came and went, delivering short and lively lectures, rather than lessons, and the pupils made notes of their instructions, or did not make them - just as inclination prompted; secure that, in case of neglect, they could copy the notes of their companions. Beside the regular monthly outings, the Catholic feast days brought a succession of holidays all year round; and sometimes on a bright summer morning , or a soft summer evening, the boarders were taken out for a long walk in the country and regaled with sweets and white wine...
Here, in short, was a foreign school; of which the life, movement, and variety made it a complete and most charming contrast to many English institutions of the same kind."
--From Bronte's "Villette" published in 1853.
