At the opening of the nineteenth century, practically unfettered opportunity extended in all directions before women; but it was necessary for the century to spend its force before they had fully availed themselves of the privileges which were objected to only by those who still descanted on woman's sphere as a purely domestic one. The "woman question" is very modern, because woman has so lately come to be seriously regarded as a factor in the work of life. The changed conditions of the nineteenth century resulted from those forces which were operating for the larger liberty of the sex. Contributions to the widening of the scope of their lives came from many sources. Religion has been the evangel of woman; but even it cannot claim that the modern woman, with her versatility of touch and her multiform influence, is its product. Law reluctantly acknowledged the rights of the sex where it was futile to deny them; but it has sinned too grievously in the years that are past to receive recognition as a promoter of the new Renaissance, although it cherishes the rights which woman has achieved, and is to-day one of her most chivalrous defenders. Convention is too unadaptive to do more than recognize adjustments which have been otherwise brought about, but, as representing the rules of society, it is promotive of the dignity and the rights of the sex to the extent that these dignities and rights have been otherwise afforded.

MRS. ELIZABETH FRY
After the painting Mrs. E. M. Ward
________
Mrs Elizabeth Fry was a Quakeress of gentle birth; though the
mother of a large family, she made the condition of the social outcasts
her constant care. The moral and physical degradation and suffering
of the inmates of prisons particularly appealed to her compassionate
nature, and she set herself the task of alleviating their
condition. Her first visit to Newgate Prison was in 1813; she
entered the pandemonium where nearly two hundred women were
confined, among them some of the most degraded and desperate of
their sex. Mrs. Fry's sincere compassion, gentleness and purity
conquered these women. Though her name is chiefly associated
with the reform of prisons and prisoners, her philanthropy embraced
the promotion of ecucation of the needy, religious movements, the
cause of freedom, and private charity.

Acknowledgment for the position which woman attained during the last century is due not to any one of these forces, but to all working together, although Nature must be chiefly credited with having brought it about. The great increase in population in England, and the excess of the female portion, led women to ponder the question of other spheres for their lives than solely the domestic. At the same time, the complex nature of modern business offered, to some extent, a practical solution of the problem. While the question of woman's sphere was greatly agitated, and was academically and forensically debated pro and con, women themselves were practically settling the matter at issue by accepting positions in commercial life, with little regard to the censure of critics or the praise of friends. The independence shown by women, their self-assertiveness, indicated that their failure previously to break into the outer world of affairs was not due to the force of convention, but to the lack of opportunity. Their excess in the population of the country afforded them strong ground for the claim, which they practically made in accepting the opportunities of business life,—that the sphere of domesticity was not open to them all. It is not a question as to whether woman is or is not in her sphere outside of the home or the limited circle of Ãsthetic following; for the time of theorizing is already past, and women have become so identified with industry as to preclude the possibility of a return to the narrower life. Vestigia nulla refrorsum is the motto of woman to-day, and has been from the early part of the nineteenth century. She is in the line of progress, and following her manifest destiny. The fears of the faint-hearted and the regrets of the conservative cannot alter the established fact that the practical status which women achieved in the nineteenth century is theirs, to be recognized and furthered.

The views prevailing in the nineteenth century with regard to matrimony were not greatly different from those of the eighteenth: it was considered just as discreditable to be an old maid, and marriage was the goal of existence for young women; but there was a portion of the sex who were willing to brave the aspersions cast upon them and to remain single—when the opportunity to do otherwise was not wanting—in order that they might follow careers which offered to them greater interest or profit. It was inevitable that such choice should lay them open to the charge of unsexing themselves and of being recreant to that esprit de corps of womankind which finds its common interest in the achieving of matrimony. Women would never have wrought out their independence of action if there had not been a great widening of life's opportunities. The ease of locomotion, abundant opportunities for education, and the lightening of domestic labor by inventions, were the important factors which made it possible for women to step out into the avenues of active business. The middle-class women, who were thrust out into the arena of life, were still the women who best preserved the pure idea of marriage. They were not subjected to the temptations which assailed those in the higher and the lower ranks of society, and, being less affected by tradition, they wrought out for themselves independent ideals. The marriage of convenience of the higher ranks and the marriage of necessity of the lower were not the forms which were common to the middle-class women. Unaffected by either of these influences, they regarded well the character of the men to whom they were to plight their troth, and were not disposed to pass over the weaknesses of suitors. Marriages were no longer contracted at the early ages of fifteen and sixteen years, which had been commonly the case heretofore. A bride under twenty-one was thought very youthful.

The entrance of woman into the ranks of labor has not been uncontested, for she has been charged with taking the bread out of the mouths of husbands and fathers; and, by working for much less wage than is given the men, she has been thought dangerously to affect the standard of payment for men's work. Just what will be the effect of the innovation of woman in industry cannot at present be stated, as she has not as yet gotten into normal and recognized relationship to men as a sharer of their work. One effect, however, of woman's contact with the other sex in the brusque business world has been to reduce her claim to special consideration in the way of the amenities which were accorded her at a time when she was not nearly so sincerely respected as she has become in recent years. A modern writer has summed up the matter in the following words: "Not the least among the changes is that effected by the fuller and freer life led by all women. A greater companionship and friendship is permitted them with the other sex; there is a larger sharing of interest, and women are expected to have a higher standard of education and to conceal their knowledge and culture with tasteful skill. Their interest in the political life of the country, and their acknowledged usefulness in their place in the working out of the political machine, the works, philanthropical and social, which are admitted by all to be within their sphere, have broadened and deepened the stream of life which is common to both sexes, and brought the social life on to a different level."

This broadening influence brought greater recognition of woman's activities in social and philanthropic measures and a corresponding increase of responsibility on her part. There are many women of this century whose noble deeds will never be forgotten, but one may be singled out as a splendid example of self-sacrifice and devotion to others, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry was a Quakeress of gentle birth, though the mother of a large family, she made the condition of the social outcasts her constant care. She was, in truth, a worthy successor to John Howard. The moral and physical degradation and suffering of the inmates of prisons particularly appealed to her compassionate nature, and she set herself the task of alleviating their condition. Her first visit to Newgate Prison was in 1813; alone and unprotected, she entered the pandemonium where nearly two hundred women were confined, among them some of the most degraded and desperate of their sex. Mrs. Fry's sincere compassion, gentleness, and purity conquered these women. Four years later she organized an association for the reformation of female prisoners. Though her name is chiefly associated with the reform of prisons and prisoners, her philanthropy embraced the promotion of education of the needy, religious movements, the cause of freedom, and private charity. The influence of this good woman was widespread, and her labors were not confined to her own country, but extended to the continent of Europe.

One of the most striking of the phenomena of modern life which came about in the nineteenth century is the fusion of classes, making it increasingly difficult to use class definitions. The passage from one to another has become so easy as to make mobility the principal characteristic of modern society. Travel, education, art appreciation, and home decoration are not confined to any section or class. The degree of luxury of living, and not the distinction between luxury and lack, is the only way to set aside one circle of society from another. A result of this wider diffusion of the comforts of life has been the awakening of the altruistic spirit, which finds expression in many and varied benevolences—so many, in fact, that the danger of the times is over-organization. This tendency, if pursued, will react to the disadvantage of women by depriving them of a sense of personal responsibility and individual initiative.

The assumption by society, as a whole, of the responsibility of its members of necessity gives an organized form to all efforts for its improvement. The nature of problems of this sort requires wide organization in order to bring into touch with the social need, for its satisfying, as many persons as possible of means and talent. If the philanthropist is rich, she employs her money as the expression of her interest in and recognition of her duty toward society. If not wealthy, but possessed of time and talent, the woman herself becomes the instrument of social amelioration, and the money from the coffers of others is placed in her hands for judicious expenditure. The great interest in philanthropy which in modern times is evinced by all classes of society tends to unite the women of to-day in a bond of common sympathy and purpose. It is not solely because they have more abundant leisure than men that the burden of philanthropy rests upon their shoulders, for their wider sympathy and clearer insight lead them to perceive more readily and to meet more effectively the needs of mankind.

One of the prominent women of England who gave herself largely to benevolent labors was the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. The generous and wise use of her immense fortune has secured her an enduring name; she built churches, she founded charities; and although London was the chief field for her philanthropy, her native country of Ireland was remembered in a way to shrine her name there in grateful memory. She possessed the spirit of the great ladies of old England, who felt a responsibility toward the dependent and necessitous classes about them, and to this spirit she gave the wide expression her fortune and her exceptional environment made possible. The great variety of her benevolent sympathies and the personal part she took in the various charities which enlisted them cause her life to mark an era in the history of philanthropy. There was nothing beyond the catholicity of her spirit.

The modern temperance movement, which enlisted largely the interest of the women of England and America, and which led, in the latter country, to the organization of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, found its best representative in England in the person of Lady Henry Somerset. Lady Somerset's efforts in behalf of temperance and social reforms in England are too much matters of present-day knowledge to need more than a notice of them in these pages; they have enrolled her name in the list of great women of the century, where it had already been long placed by the affections of a nation. Another expression of the interest of women in society is found in the Young Women's Christian Association, Girls' Friendly Society, the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, and other organizations which care for the interests of young women exposed to imposition or temptation. It is impossible to enumerate even the more important of the organizations which owe their institution to women and are conducted by the sex for the benefit of society. Wide as has been the field in the past, new phases of modern life are constantly coming under the purview of women's societies, which, although to a large extent voluntary, are none the less splendidly organized and disciplined forces, occupying, for the most part, independent fields.

Woman as a nurse is not a new aspect of her nature, but not until the last quarter of the century was nursing elevated to the dignity of a profession. There were not wanting women who bore the title of professional nurse, but these did not have the training to justify the name. Before the Crimean War there were upward of two thousand five hundred such nurses in England. Florence Nightingale, whose name will ever be identified with the founding of schools for nurses, said: "Sickness is everywhere. Death is everywhere. But hardly anywhere is the training necessary to relieve sickness, to delay death. We consider a long education and discipline necessary to train our medical man; we consider hardly any training at all necessary for our nurse, although how often does our medical man himself tell us, 'I can do nothing for you unless your nurse will carry out what I say.'" The revelation of suffering on the part of uncared-for soldiers which Miss Nightingale brought back from the Crimea profoundly moved English society; and a large sum of money was presented to her, with which she founded the Nurses' Training Institution at St. Thomas's Hospital. At about the same time, the Anglican sisterhood founded training schools of a similar kind. From these sources arose the sentiment for trained service for the sick which has led to the wide respect with which modern society regards the nurse who has been thoroughly trained for her profession. This feeling toward nurses is in striking contrast to the one which prevailed before the days of special training: that which was once considered a degrading occupation has come to be thought of as an ennobling ministry. In 1870, the date of the founding of the Metropolitan and National Nursing Association by the Duke of Westminster, James Hinton, in a paper in the Cornhill Magazine on "Nursing as a Profession," called attention to this new activity as a trained service for women: "It is considered, though an excellent and most respectable vocation, not one for a lady to follow as a means of livelihood, unless she is content to sink a little in the social scale.... Can any one think it is, in its own nature, more menial than surgery? Could any occupation whatever call more emphatically for the qualities characteristically termed professional, or better known as those of the gentleman and the lady?... Here is a profession, truly a profession, equal to the highest in dignity, open to woman in which she does not compete with man."

Nursing no longer has to be defended as a suitable occupation for the sex, for in its ranks can be found women of all grades of society; it is one of the levelling influences of modern times, as well as one of the most elevating of callings. No other sphere of public activity has opened up to woman in which she has not met the opposition of men. Nursing is a striking instance of the modern trend toward specialization, which is but another term for professionalism. Consonant with the whole spirit of the times, the amateur nurse was relegated to the background by the modern trained nurse.

Society, however, has not taken so kindly to women's departure in another direction: women as physicians are still regarded as a novelty and a doubtful expedient. Nursing created a profession, and so conservative sentiment did not have to be met; but the old faculties of law, medicine, and theology had been so long intrenched in their privileged places in relation to society that any attempt to widen their confines or to enlist their hospitality toward innovations is met with the resistance which custom and precedent always present to novelty. Although their progress into the medical profession has been slow, yet the nineteenth century records the opening of this calling to women. During the last quarter of the century women were admitted to the ranks of accredited practitioners. Yet, the vocation is not a novel one for the sex, for in the remote past they have been looked upon as possessing knowledge and skill in the treatment of diseases; but, as we have seen, the woman who followed the art of healing as a profession was often regarded as in league with the powers of evil. Down to the nineteenth century, women never held any recognized place as practitioners, excepting in the capacity of midwives.

In the eighteenth century there were, outside of the recognized profession, a number of women who practised medicine with considerable success; but, although skilful, they would be regarded to-day as mere quacks. Mrs. Joanna Stephens, who proclaimed that she had found a remarkable cure for a painful disease, appears to have been so successful in her treatment of cases as to enlist genuine respect for her attainments. Parliament voted her a grant of five thousand pounds sterling. Mrs. Mapp, commonly termed "Crazy Sally," who had repute as a bonesetter, received from the town of Epsom the offer of an annuity of one hundred pounds sterling if she would remain in that neighborhood. She was such a popular character that the managers of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre sent her a special request to attend a performance at which they desired to have a large audience. She complied, and the attendance was satisfactory.

Early in the century there was a renewal of attempts which had formerly been made to require women who practised obstetrics to come under some form of registration; but when the matter came before Parliament, in the form of an enactment prepared by the Society of Apothecaries, a committee of the House of Commons reported that "It would not allow any mention of female midwives." Although women were not received into the regular profession as qualified practitioners until after the middle of the century, they were under no legal prohibition to practise medicine; but in 1858 the passage of the Medical Act, which required a doctor to qualify by passing the examination of one of the existing medical boards, set up a barrier to women, as it placed them subject to the discretion of the boards, which unanimously refused to admit them. The only exceptions to this rule were made in favor of those persons who had received a medical degree abroad and had been practising before the passage of the act. It was in this way that Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell became registered. Miss Elizabeth Garret, whose studies did not begin till two years after the compulsory registration law, was also enrolled under exceptional conditions.

At last matters came to an issue, and a notable struggle occurred which marked an era in the medical profession of England in its attitude toward female practitioners. The case of Miss Sophia Jex-Blake brought on the contest. She applied to the London University for admission, and was informed that the charter of that institution had been purposely framed to exclude women who sought medical degrees. Returning to Edinburgh, she exhausted every legal resource in a combat with the authorities, and was signally worsted. The plucky fight she made won the admiration of Sir James Simpson, the dean of the medical faculty, and others, but Professor Laycock observed to her that he "could not imagine any decent woman wishing to study medicine; as for any lady, that was out of the question." Success finally crowned persistent endeavor, and, the University Court having passed a resolution that "Women shall be admitted to the study of medicine in the university," Miss Jex-Blake and four other ladies passed the preliminary examinations for entrance. Other women soon entered the open door; but the contest was not yet ended, for, after these ladies had pursued their studies for three years and paid the fees, they were informed by the University Court that no arrangement could be effected by which they could continue their studies with a view to a degree, instead of which they were offered certificates of proficiency; the latter, however, would not be recognized by the Medical Act. They then took legal measures to secure redress, and followed the matter up by a bill in Parliament, which was lost. In 1876 another bill was introduced to enable all British examining bodies to extend their examinations and qualifications to women, and this became a law. A number of colleges availed themselves of the privilege and opened their doors to women, until at the present time there are medical schools for women in a number of the principal cities in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

The advance of women in the professions was in line with the general widening of the educational horizon of the sex. Partly as the result of her broader education, and partly as a cause of it, there was a juster appreciation of the relative position of the sexes, and into this there entered as well the new economic measure of value. Society was no longer regarded as a congeries of individuals, but as an organism, and an organism whose function was chiefly the creation of wealth. This broader economic estimate of society could but be favorable to women, whose valuation as a part of the commonwealth was largely regulated by their utility. The ideal of political economy is that everyone shall be employed, and employed at that for which he is best adapted, under the condition of freedom of self-development. The prevalence of such truer theories of society aided in dispelling the mists of error which had surrounded the popular notions as to women. Buckle observes, in his Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge, that women are quicker in thought than men, and he says: "Nothing could prevent its being universally admitted except the fact that the remarkable rapidity with which women think is obscured by that miserable, that contemptible, that preposterous system called their education, in which valuable things are carefully kept from them, and trifling things carefully taught to them, until their fine and nimble minds are too often irretrievably injured."

The close of the nineteenth century witnessed a complete revolution in the constituents of girls' education. French, dancing, flower painting, and music no longer comprised a young lady's accomplishments. The fear of singularity, which was a social bugbear to the young women of other generations, no longer served to prevent them from studying classics and mathematics and science. To-day, they are expected to add their quota to the contribution of the times, in thought as well as in the graces of deportment. The latter can no longer atone for the absence of the former. It is no more the case among the middle classes that only the girl who intends fitting herself to take the position of governess needs an education above the rudiments and the embellishments. Not the least of the departures in the educational scheme for women is the notable change of attitude which has taken place with regard to the development of their bodies. It is but recently that physical training has entered into the curriculum of colleges, but it is even more recently that an opinion has prevailed favorable to the physical culture of women.

Before the educational revolution occurred, women were making their mark in intellectual spheres. In 1835 the names of two women, Mary Somerville and Caroline Herschell, were enrolled as members of the Astronomical Society. In its report containing the recommendation of the election of these ladies, the council of the society observed: "Your Council has no small pleasure in recommending that the names of two ladies distinguished in astronomy be placed on the list of honorary members. On the propriety of such a step from an astronomical point of view, there can be but one voice: and your Council is of opinion that the time is gone by when either feeling or prejudice, by whichever name it may be proper to call it, should be allowed to interfere with the payment of a well-earned tribute of respect. Your Council has hitherto felt that, whatever might be its own sentiment on the subject, or however able and willing it might be to defend such a measure, it had no right to place the name of a lady in a position the propriety of which might be contested, though upon what it might consider narrow grounds and false principles. But your Council has no fear that such a difference could now take place between any men whose opinion would avail to guide that of society at large, and, abandoning compliments on the one hand, and false delicacy on the other, submits that while the tests of astronomical merit should in no case be applied to the works of a woman less severely than to those of man, the sex of the former should no longer be an obstacle to her receiving any acknowledgment which might be held due the latter. And your Council, therefore, recommends this meeting to add to the list of honorary members the names of Miss Caroline Herschell and Mrs. Somerville, of whose astronomical knowledge, and of the utility of the ends to which it has been applied, it is not necessary to recount the proofs."

Mrs. Somerville suffered from the educational limitations of her day, and when she desired to learn Latin, in order that she might study the Principia, she referred to Professor Playfair with regard to the propriety of her doing so, and was assured by him that there was no impropriety involved for the purpose she had in mind. At that time there were many women with the best of education, acquired outside of university halls, but such were usually brought up by scholarly parents possessed of well-stocked libraries. To-day, the position of Ruskin is a commonplace of experience. In his lecture on the Queen's Gardens, he advised that women have free access to books, and asserted that they would find out for themselves the wholesome and avoid the pernicious with an instinct as unerring as that which directs the browsing of sheep in pasture lands. It has been sufficiently demonstrated that wholesome-minded girls are ever less in danger of contamination from literature than are their brothers.

The opening of Queen's College in 1848 marked the beginning of an attempt to give a wider education to women. This college grew out of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution. It was a training school for teachers, a normal institute; but, besides this, it was open to all who cared to enter. The name of that leader in modern educational movements, Frederick Denison Maurice, was identified with this departure. In the face of hostile comment, he defended the system which was adopted by himself and his brother professors, all of whom had come from King's College. The educational opportunities offered by this college were exceptional; the fees were low, and many students hastened to avail themselves of the new privilege.

It was twenty years later, however, before there was fought out the issue through which women came to be admitted to the universities. In 1856, Miss Jessie Merriton White was applying vainly for admittance to the matriculation examination of the University of London. In 1869, Girton College, the building of which cost fourteen thousand seven hundred pounds sterling, was established largely through the efforts of women. It was intended to afford training for women along university lines, and the plan of study was modelled on that of Cambridge University; the idea in the adoption of this parallel course was to establish beyond doubt women's fitness for pursuing the same studies as men. Other colleges of the same nature were founded soon after.

In the last century, the old theory that women were not capable of higher education on account of the "moisture of their brains" was not one of the pleas upon which was based the opposition to the higher education of women. The more plausible ground was taken that women ought to avoid certain lines of study which are a part of a university course. But it is coming to be realized that the proprieties of knowledge do not reside in the subject or in the sex of the student—that whatever is important for higher investigation is worthy of the pursuit of women as well as men, and can be pursued by them at the point of ripened discretion to which they have arrived when capable of meeting the requirements for entrance into a university.

The high-school system that has developed in England during the last quarter of a century has done much for the education of the middle classes, affording sound instruction and mental discipline for all. At the present day, poor girls, who, if they were dependent upon their personal resources, would never acquire an education, have wider facilities than were enjoyed by the women of the aristocracy a century earlier.

Of those who promoted the secondary education for girls, perhaps no name among female educators in England stands higher than that of Frances Mary Buss. Her splendid powers of organization and administration raised to such a degree of efficiency the private school which she had established in the north of London, that, when the Brewers Company desired to invest a sum of money for the education of girls, it entered into negotiations with Miss Buss and acquired her establishment, retaining her as head mistress.

Voluminous as are the works of women in the realm of fiction, it is nevertheless a field little exploited by them until recent years. In the eighteenth century the sex had produced few historians, poets, or essayists who could be compared with the group of romance writers which included such names as Catherine Macauley, Eliza Haywood, Elizabeth Carter, Fanny Burney, Mrs. Inchbald, and Mrs. Radcliffe; but when we pass to the nineteenth century, while women as romanticists are more prominent than women as authors in any other field, there is no limit upon the versatility which they exhibit, and all branches of literature have felt their moulding impress. To take the names of women out of the list of authors of the nineteenth century would be to diminish the glory of the literary skies by blotting out the lustre of some of its brightest constellations.

Beginning with Jane Austin and continuing to Mrs. Humphry Ward, the line of literary descent in the realm of fiction is a roll of honor for womankind; but it is a far cry from these to that earliest of women novelists, Mrs. Aphra Behn, who, at the direction of Charles II., wrote her novel Oronooko, the purpose of which was not dissimilar to the social end which Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had in mind in her Uncle Tom's Cabin. Thus, the sixteenth century is brought into touch with the nineteenth, although the connecting links were few and slight until the middle of the latter. The number of women novelists indicates that women have found in fiction the line of literary pursuit which is most agreeable to their tastes and adapted to their natures. There seems to be absolutely no limit to the range of subjects which women are capable of working up in romance; whether in novels of incident or novels of character, treating historical or social subjects, didactic or imaginative themes, with the plot in any period of time, among any people or set of conditions, women writers appear to be equally at home.

While the vast majority of literary women have been writers of fiction, every branch of literature numbers in its promoters the names of eminent females. In poetry and in dramatic literature women have not achieved the fame of men. Lord Byron gave as the reason for women's apparent lack of imaginative and creative power that they had not seen and felt enough of life. As translators, editors, compilers, as writers on social topics and current questions, as well as on educational subjects, memoirs, travels, literary studies, they have been prolific and excellent workers. Besides which, they have given to journalistic and magazine work their special capabilities.

Women no longer fear to write under their own names, and do not resort to pseudonyms as did Charlotte Brontë, and Mary Ann Evans—George Eliot. It was at one time thought that the demands of research and study outside of the range of ordinary feminine acquaintance precluded the sex from doing many forms of intellectual work which were open to men. Fiction did not present special difficulties; and as the line of least resistance, as well as that of especial adaptation, women took to this form of writing.

At the present day, however, there is no question as to woman's faithfulness, accuracy, and ability to attend to detail; and so there are no lines of research or of authorship in which women are not engaged. This is in part due to the similar lines upon which women and men are now educated. Their broad acquaintance with the whole range of intellectual subjects eminently fits the sex for special work in any department. To distinguish by their method of treatment the writings of women is no longer possible. Their pens have the same grace and vigor of style as those of men, while there is no fineness or daintiness of touch in their writings which does not find counterpart in those of men.

The fiction of the century reveals woman intrepidly discussing political, economic, and labor questions with a large degree of assurance, and others with a great deal of acuteness and insight. Although there is intense competition in the realm of literature, yet the complexity of modern society, the universality of education, the opportunities of leisure for reading, the social demands for acquaintance with standard and recent works, and the incitement to reading given through the newspapers, magazines, book reviews, and lectures of the times, furnish unlimited opportunities for gifted women to exercise their talents in writing.

It was not until 1861 that women were admitted to all the privileges and opportunities of art education which centred in the Royal Academy schools. In that year these were opened to women students. It is interesting to notice how in almost an accidental manner the limitations placed upon women were removed. At the annual dinner of the Academy in 1859, Lord Lyndhurst felicitated those present on the benefits which were conferred upon all her majesty's subjects by the Academy schools. Miss Laura Herford, an artist, wrote to Lord Lyndhurst and pointed out the fact that half of her majesty's subjects were excluded. This made the discussion of the propriety of admitting women a kindly one, and a memorial was prepared and signed by thirty-eight women artists, copies of which were sent to every member of the Academy, praying the admission of women and pointing out the benefit it would be to them to study, under qualified teachers, from the antique and from life. It was regarded as impracticable that women and men should study life subjects together, and the request was refused. There was nothing in the constitution of the Academy either for or against the admission of women. A drawing with the signature "L. Herford" was then sent in by Miss Herford, and it was admitted by a letter addressed to "L. Herford, Esq." The question then arose whether a woman who had been accepted as a man should be allowed to enter. Miss Herford had her way.

No women had been admitted into the Academy since the days of Angelica Kaufmann and Mary Moser. The reason for their non-reception, as assigned by Sanby in his History of the Royal Academy of Arts, and quoted by Georgiana Hill in her Women in English Life, is as follows: "One or two ladies, if elected members, could scarcely be expected to take part in the government or in the work of the society; and as the practice even of giving votes by proxy has long since been abolished, the effect of their election as Royal Academicians would be, virtually, to reduce the number of those who manage the affairs of the institution and the schools in proportion as ladies were admitted to that rank: and as long as the number of Associates is limited, a difficulty would arise in the fact that the higher rank has to be recruited from that body." Miss Hill regards this as a grievance, because it virtually makes the matter of sex a disqualification, and quotes with endorsement Miss Ellen Clayton, as follows: "The Academy has studiously ignored the existence of women artists, leaving them to work in the cold shade of utter neglect. Not even once has a helping hand been extended, not once has the most trifling reward been given for highest merit and industry. Accidents made two women Academicians—the accident of circumstances and the accident of birth. Accident opened the door to girl students—accident, aided by courage and talent. In other countries, they have the prize fairly earned quietly placed in their hands, and can receive it with dignity. In free, unprejudiced, chivalric England, where the race is given to the swift, the battle to the strong, without fear or favour, it is only by slow, laborious degrees that women are winning the right to enter the list at all, and are then received with half-contemptuous indulgence."

Whether or not women artists have a real grievance against the Royal Academy, certain it is that the last half of the nineteenth century has been notable for the progress of women in art. It was in the galleries of the Society of Lady Artists, which came into existence in 1859, that Lady Butler first exhibited and pictures by Rosa Bonheur were displayed. With the multiplicity of art schools and every facility for obtaining instructions under the most favorable conditions, women have been brought into prominence as artists. Landscape, portrait painting, oil, water-colors, pastel—the whole range of subjects and styles of painting includes pictures of merit by women.

In many of the lesser branches of art, hundreds of women have found congenial vocations. They have shown excellent taste and aptitude in china painting and other forms of decorative work—in book illustration, as designers of carpet and wall-paper patterns, as preparers of advertisements, designers of calendars, and a host of other minor art industries.

Women as musical composers had appeared in the last half of the eighteenth century. Mrs. Beardman, who made her début as a singer at the Gloucester festival in 1790, was equally gifted as composer, singer, and pianist. Ann Mounsey displayed early talent, and her precocity brought her into notice when she was but nine years of age. In her maturity, her compositions gave her high rank among female composers, and in 1855 her oratorio The Nativity was produced in London. She was a member of the Philharmonic Society and also of the Royal Society of Musicians. Another gifted woman, whose talents brought her early into notice and who was a member of the Royal Academy of Music, was Kate Fanny Loder. She had been instructed in piano-forte by Mrs. Lucy Anderson, teacher to Queen Victoria when she was princess and afterward to the children of her majesty. Miss Loder was a king's scholar at the Royal Academy, and when but eighteen years of age was appointed professor of harmony at her alma mater. Eliza Flower—whose sister, Mrs. Adams, wrote the words of the hymn Nearer, my God, to Thee—was another of the gifted composers of the century, and her name appears as the author of many hymn tunes.

To give the names of all the women composers of hymn tunes would be to give a history of hymnology in modern times, for there is no sacred song collection but embraces the compositions of many women gifted in music. To give the names of those who have figured in opera would involve a history which includes a great many more foreign artists than English; but without seeking to do more than mention a few of those whose names have figured in popular favor as operatic prima donnas, and omitting particular mention of their individual capabilities, there are some names which suggest themselves to the patrons of the opera as worthy of first mention in the list of England's great singers. Catherine Tofts, Anastasia Robinson, Lavinia Fenton,—afterward Duchess of Bolton,—achieved celebrity in the opera during the first thirty years of the century. Lavinia Fenton was the heroine of The Beggars' Opera, which took London by storm. The names of Catherine Hayes and Louisa Pyne are still treasured by those whose recollections go back to the forties.

The general ill repute under which the stage rested in the seventeenth century continued to hang about it throughout the eighteenth. There was still a great deal of license allowed spectators, and it was not unusual for them to pass on the stage and behind the scenes. The rude and boisterous conduct of the patrons of the theatre made it extremely unpleasant for persons of refinement to attend it. The city streets had not yet become well protected, and the degree of security which is now afforded to pedestrians was lacking in the eighteenth century. It was out of the question for any gentlewoman to attend the theatre unaccompanied by male escort. There were always loiterers about the streets, and any man of rank whose character was bad enough to permit him to do so felt at liberty to salute a woman with insults—which, when they came from such a source, were then styled as gallantries; and women who adopted the stage as a profession, being looked upon as having forfeited their claims to gentility, were regarded as fair game by the rakes of the day. Notwithstanding the attempts of Queen Anne to reform the manners of theatre-goers by the passage of edicts looking to that end, the evils which made it so unpleasant to a respectable person to attend the theatre and which brought the playhouse under odium continued to be flagrant.

In the nineteenth century came a great uplift of the status of the stage and workers upon it, and, in contrast to the opinions which prevailed in the eighteenth century, an actress suffered no disparagement and had the same opportunity for cherishing her reputation as any others of the sex. The stage no longer brought its followers into disrepute, for it rested with the actress herself to preserve or to tarnish her character. She was no longer, by virtue of being an actress, regarded as a Bohemian, and it was not considered a regrettable thing for a girl of character to enter upon a histrionic career. It was her course and conduct after she had entered the profession, and the nature of the plays in which she appeared and the parts which she allowed herself to present, that determined the public verdict with regard to her. As a result of the changed character of the theatre,—although it was by no means cleared of all the odium that had so long attached to it,—a larger number of men and women attended dramatic performances than ever before.

The introduction of women into commercial life was followed by the opening up of civil service appointments and a change of sentiment with regard to women engaging in trade. In 1870, when the government bought the interests of the telegraph company, the officials were brought under the existing civil service rules. Some of them happened to be women, and thus, inadvertently, women were admitted to civil service appointments under the government. In 1871 the postmaster-general bore striking testimony to the efficiency of the women employed in his department. When commenting upon the transfer of the telegraphs from private control to post office direction, he said: "There had been no reason to regret the experiment. On the contrary, it has afforded much ground for believing that, where large numbers of persons are employed with full work and fair supervision, the admixture of the sexes involves no risk, but is highly beneficial." Then, remarking upon the better tone of the male staff by reason of their association with women as fellow employés, he added: "Further, it is a matter of experience that the male clerks are more willing to help the female clerks with their work than to help one another; and on many occasions pressure of business is met and difficulties are overcome through this willingness and cordial coöperation."

The experience of employing women in the post office was duplicated in other departments of the public service, until it has become a recognized fact that women can be employed in connection with men without any of the results which it was apprehended would follow the departure. In the country districts, postmistresses and female carriers are not a novelty. It was the post office which first Opened up to women employment under the government, and its various departments now utilize them extensively. Although other of the public services have received women as clerks, their position is still in a measure tentative, but it can hardly be said that the employment of them by the government is any longer an experiment. In addition to the large numbers of young women who have found employment in the government service, there is no railroad company, insurance company, or any other large semi-public or private business firm or company, which has not found women to be of peculiar serviceability. The great number of women who, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, fitted themselves for business careers indicates not only a change of ideal, with a realization of their self-sufficiency, but the increased adaptability of women to the peculiar conditions of modern society.

It is no longer a curious phenomenon to see the name of a woman upon a business letterhead, or on the sign over some large commercial establishment, for frequently, when their husbands die, women themselves now take in hand the business interests of the deceased and conduct them with marked success, and with no question from their business competitors as to the propriety of their so doing. Nor do such women forfeit the esteem of society. Society as such is no longer concerned chiefly with matters of pedigree, but more largely with the question of prosperity. While it would be asserting too much to say that the nineteenth century witnessed the iconoclastic shattering of the old aristocratic ideals, nevertheless, while the woman of blood maintains her rightful place in the select circles of society, the door stands ajar for women who have no other claim for recognition than that they have amassed fortunes, or inherited them, or are the wives of wealthy men. However, they must not have clinging to them the odor of their humble beginnings, if they rose from lowly walks of life. The real test applied to them is not the test of breeding, which relates to the past, but of gentility, which is the measure of the present life.

Besides the women who managed large business interests in their own names, the nineteenth century witnessed the advent of the business woman in numerous lines of small trade. To name the various kinds of business in which women are found making for themselves a sustenance would be to give a list of the many lines of retail trade; but the shopwoman of the earlier part of the nineteenth century is quite a different person from the tradeswoman of the latter half. Instead of a small, obscure shop, conducted in a hesitating, apologetic manner, to-day women are as aggressive advertisers, make as fine displays in their shops, and sustain the same business relations with the wholesale dealers, as do the retail dealers of the other sex. Beyond any peradventure, women have become a part of the business organism of England, and are competing upon terms of equality with men for the patronage of the public; and they have before them just as hopeful prospects of amassing a competence for an easy and independent old age.

Great as is the army of women who enrolled themselves in the ranks of commerce and clerkship during the nineteenth century, they are in a minority as compared with the greater host of industry,—the women who are found in the factories, working upon the raw materials of human comforts and luxuries, toiling unremittingly and often under hard conditions for a mere pittance as compared with the value of their products. In 1895 there were one hundred thousand women in England holding membership in the various trade unions, and, besides these, a far larger number who were without such enrolment, such as fifty-two thousand shirtmakers and seamstresses and four hundred thousand dressmakers and milliners; and these were but a mere fraction of the immense host of women who, outside of the home, found themselves earning their own bread by their personal labor. With the growth of manufactures, women were drawn from the rural districts. It became an uncommon thing, where formerly it was the usual practice, for women to perform the work of field laborers, or to depend chiefly for support upon butter and cheese making, or service at the inns or in the shops of the neighboring towns. It is now only the women of the lowest rank who devote themselves for a livelihood to berry picking, hop picking, garden weeding, and like menial outdoor services.

The competition of women with men in manufactures was greeted at first with the sullen resentment and open opposition with which machinery was viewed when first introduced; but as women have been drawn into manufactures, men have absorbed many of the outdoor duties which formerly fell to woman's lot in the country districts. The "bakeresses," "brewsters," and the "regrateresses"—retailers of bread—are now known simply in the history of industry; their names have become archaic and their offices obsolete. As machinery took the place of the individual intelligence of the handworker of other days, leaving only a monotonous series of mechanical manipulations for the men, aside from the superior skill called into play by the complexity of the machinery, which demanded expert and intelligent direction, women found relegated to them the simplest parts of factory work and those which did not require any large degree of mentality. As a result, the women of the factories have not developed coördinately in intelligence with their sisters in other lines of active work. This has unfortunately led them to be looked down upon as inferior to girls who work in stores or in offices. As the factory laws came to be framed with regard to greater investigation and regulation of the conditions of women's work in factories, many of the abuses were to a degree corrected. It is not now commonly the case that a self-respecting operative is without redress if subjected to the coarse insults of brutalized foremen, nor are women now permitted to work as formerly under conditions so harmful to their peculiar constitutions. Better sanitation, fewer hours of employment, and greater regard for their comfort, have done much to brighten what was in the early part of the nineteenth century the dreariest life to which any woman could be chained.

Along with the improvements in the condition of women's labor have gone improvements in the housing of factory people. The industrial evils that brought out such chivalrous champions of the poor as the younger Lord Shaftesbury and his associates no longer generally prevail in factory life. There yet remains much to be done for the congregated women and girls of the factories. It was inevitable that by the bringing of them together in great numbers, many from homes of abject poverty where they had none of the benefits of careful training, and by the herding of them together in factories where the nature of their work did not furnish employment for their minds, the moral tone of the young women of daily toil should have been lower than that of their sister workers in other lines. But the dictum of Lord Shaftesbury has been sinking into the social consciousness, and has borne splendid fruit in the improvement of the conditions of factory work for women. "In the male," says he, "the moral effects of the system are very bad; but in the female they are infinitely worse, not alone upon themselves, but upon their families, upon society, and, I may add, upon the country itself. It is bad enough if you corrupt the man; but if you corrupt the woman, you poison the waters of life at the very fountain." In the first half of the nineteenth century, the actual number of women employed in factories appears to have been larger than that of men.

The existence of the factory, drawing out from the homes so many women and making their home life only a secondary consideration and an additional burden, presents one of the gravest problems of modern times—a problem that must be approached harmoniously by the philanthropists and the legislators if it is to be satisfactorily solved. Habit begets contentment, so that it is not the employés of the factory who feel most keenly the unfortunate circumstances of their existence. It is the social reformer, whose one aim is not the uplifting of the individual as such, but the betterment of the individual as the unit of the social fabric, who is most concerned for the betterment of the town life of England. As to the women themselves, when they are compensated by extra wage they have no complaint to make about the long hours; indeed, they sometimes even prefer the factory and the excitement of their surroundings to the dreary and forbidding prospect of their desolate tenements. One unnatural result of women's work in factories is the reversal of the positions respectively of husband and wife in the home. It is not an extraordinary occurrence for women to go out to the factories and earn the bread of the family, while the men remain at home to mind the babies and care for the house. This begetting of shiftlessness in men, who are buoyed up to the point of self-supporting labor only by the dependence of their families upon them, is an incidental but a significant result of factory life upon women. It is seriously to be doubted that, in the aggregate earnings of the family, there is any real compensation for the binding of wives and children to the wheel of toil. It has been observed by careful students of industrial conditions that, for one reason or another, the maximum wage of a family and the degree of comfort in their living are not, ordinarily, greater than that of the family whose sole wage earner is the husband.

There is not a concurrence of views as to the wisdom of special legislation with regard to the industrial place of women. Some see in the various acts passed to regulate the circumstances of their employment a distinct gain, while others view all such enactments as a regrettable interference of the state in a matter where it is not capable of taking cognizance of all the circumstances involved and of displaying the broadest wisdom in dealing with the subject. Then, too, it is objected on the part of some that sex legislation is unwise of itself. The women themselves have not always looked with favor upon the passage of acts for the regulation of their labor, and often complain of such as an infringement of their personal privileges as adults. They complain that the competition of labor is already severe, and that by imposing upon them the limitations of certain acts the difficulty of making a subsistence is increased. They complain against the association of female with child labor, and assert that the conditions are dissimilar and the abuses to be corrected cannot be classed under the same legislative conditions. Industrial legislation was first directed to the correction of offences against women on account of their sex, but the later enactments, and those most complained of, were resented because of their making the securing of a livelihood more precarious. The Times in 1895 pointed out that there were eight hundred and eighty thousand women affected by the Factories and Workshops Bill, introduced into Parliament in that year. The lack of flexibility of the measure, failing to take account of the different natures and conditions of the various employments affected, made it obviously unjust to the women employed in certain trades. Some industries have their seasons of activity and of dulness, while others fluctuate without regard to periods; and to class all such under legislation regulating the hours of labor at the same number for them all could but work injury to the women employed in such trades and disproportionate advantage to other women employed in industries pursued evenly throughout the year.

The crux of such contentions lies in the paternal attitude of the state to the female sex. The expediency of depriving women of the same amount of liberty to regulate their own affairs as is accorded to men is a matter of doubt. Women feel that they can decide better for their own needs than can the legislators who have as their guide only industrial statistics, the petitions of well-meaning social reformers, and the views of those who claim expert knowledge from the outside. Just what will be the outcome of the attempt to resolve woman into a normal relationship to modern industry without violation of the rights of self-direction and protection, which she claims as her prerogative, and at the same time to preserve society from the social blight of the reduction of considerable numbers of workingwomen to prostitution and abandoned living, remains to be determined by the wisdom and experience of the twentieth century.

One of the most curious of the industrial problems at the front in the nineteenth century was the servant question. While the wheels of work were set to moving with more or less smoothness in all other ways, this important wheel in the domestic machinery has never run without friction, jarring to the nerves of housewives. Such women find a common bond of sympathy in the incompetence and dereliction of their domestics; domestics find a common subject of interest in their grievances against their mistresses. The whole matter is almost ludicrous, because it is one simply of adjustment. After the sex has asserted for itself a position in the realm of industry not inconsistent with the self-respect which it has sought to maintain, the women who work in the kitchens and the chambers of other women sullenly resent the imputation of their menial status in so doing. Just why the modern servants should be looked upon as inferior to other women workers is a difficult question, for their close relation to their mistresses would appear to give them an individuality which the "hands" in a factory do not possess. The line of demarcation between the domestic employers and employés is not always a clearly pronounced one, for it not uncommonly occurs that those who themselves employ a maid send out their own daughters to similar service. The low regard in which servants are held, and the application to them of this very term, which carries with it an implication of ignominy, is responsible for the poor grade of efficiency, intelligence, and character found among domestics as a class. There is no reason, in the nature of the case, why a young girl with intelligence and fair education should not self-respectingly take domestic service, and rank above factory hands and many of her sister workers in inferior clerical positions.

In earlier times domestic work fell largely to men. The kitchen work which now is performed by scullery maids was done by boys and youths; and before the office of housemaid had been established, that of chamberlain signified the service of men for the work which maids are now employed to do. The very titles of those who are connected with the person of majesty signify the lowly household functions which were ordinarily performed by those to whom now fall the honors, but none of the duties, of those offices. In ecclesiastical households there were no women employed at all in former times, excepting "brewsters." The personal relationship which used to endear the tie between servant and mistress no more exists than it does between other working people and their employers. Instead of the idea of personal attachment, the monetary consideration is the only one that enters into the relationship. The maid is but a part of the machinery of the household, and must deport herself in a deferential and often an abject manner, assuming a mask of propriety which is thrown off as soon as she is among her companions, when the pent-up animosity and resentment find expression. How different the modern condition from that which obtained in other times, when a lady considered no one fitting to attend upon her excepting those who were of gentle blood and between whom and herself were ties of endearment and a measure of equality! Gentle maidens performed many household duties which to-day are disdained by young ladies of lesser position. The real "servants" did only the coarse and rough work of the household. They had no particular place to sleep, and, even down to the time of Elizabeth, it was not thought important to provide regular beds for "menials" in the great houses—"As for servants, if they had any shete above them it was well, for seldom had they any under their bodies to keep them from the pricking strawes that ranne off thorow the canvas and raxed their hardened hides." The servants who were thus treated were, of course, the antecedents of the present-day servants. It is from the traditional attitude toward them that much of the present-day spirit of superiority toward domestics is derived. During the eighteenth century the condition of domestics improved, and, during the last quarter, the description of them, their tastes and their manners, is such as would be quite applicable to-day. Already the scarcity of good servants had come to be a matter of domestic concern. The lament of the lady of to-day, that her maid dresses as well as she herself, is not a new one, for it is met as far back as the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century Defoe remarks upon the same fact. He says, writing in 1724: "It would be a satire upon the ladies such as perhaps they would not bear the reading of, should we go about to tell how hard it is sometimes to know the chamber-maid from her mistress; or my lady's chief woman from one of my lady's daughters." He adds that: "From this gaiety of dress must necessarily follow encrease of wages, for where there is such an expence in habit there must be a proportion'd supply of money, or it will not do." The same subject furnished concern for people generally, and a correspondent to the Times wrote, in 1794: "I think it is the duty of every good master and mistress to stop as much as possible the present ridiculous and extravagant mode of dress in their domestics.... Formerly a plaited cap and a white handkerchief served a young woman three or four Sundays. Now a mistress is required to give up, by agreement, the latter end of the week for her maids to prepare their caps, tuckers, gowns, etc., for Sunday, and I am told there are houses open on purpose where those servants who do not choose their mistresses shall see them, carry their dresses in a bundle and put them on, meet again in the evening for the purpose of disrobing, and where I doubt not many a poor, deluded creature had been disrobed of her virtue. They certainly call aloud for some restraint, both as to their dress as well as insolent manner."

The great majority of domestic servants come from the rural districts, and upon entering into town life have no one to exercise any personal concern in their welfare, and, where they do not fall into worse courses, they acquire an extravagant and reckless habit of life that uses up their earnings simply in the furthering of their vanity or pleasure. The servant question, as that of women's position in the factory system of the country, presents problems which have proved as yet stubborn to all attempts at their solution.

One of the most curious facts of the last quarter of the nineteenth century was the evolution of the "new woman." Women, representing all manner of social pleas, running the gamut of the extremes, sought a hearing upon the platform, in the pulpit, through the press, and in literature. It looked as if the Anglo-Saxon race were on the verge of a great revolution in which the men would, either passively or in strenuous opposition, be ignominiously relegated to the rear in the lines of new progress. The new movement grew out of a sense of social inequality on the part of some women, and this grievance was exploited in all ways and illustrated from all viewpoints. Some of these strenuous advocates for the "rights" of the sex gave themselves over to the question of dress reform, and their diverse views represented the whole range of the question, from the sensible and sane declaration for the abolishment of the tyranny of style to the adoption of male attire. Others discussed the injustice to women from the physiological viewpoint, and affirmed that motherhood was not an honorable office, but a type of feudalism to men and a subservience to their wills that was highly dishonoring to womankind. It looked as though the household gods were to be tumbled out of the home without much ado; but while some of the advocates of reform went to absurd lengths and presented extreme views and sought by all the ingenuity of sophistry to present the status of woman as a most deplorable one, there were others, more moderate in their views and expressions, who felt that there might be a clear gain for women in the affirming of her rights in the matter of conventions which held over from the eighteenth century. Whether in deportment or in dress, in intellectual pursuits or in the province of amusement, women were to exercise their judgment and common sense and live in the light of their own reason and not with reference to the mandates of men.

When the "new woman" craze passed away, it left, as its effect, young women more self-reliant, more independent, a little more pert and self-assured, with less reverence and greater capability, than before. On the whole, the English girl of to-day has wrought out of the complex conditions of modern society the naturalness which was asserting itself throughout the eighteenth century, but was hampered by new conventions, rigid customs, and stately formalisms. It is true that the English girl of to-day would be to her grandmother a revelation, and perhaps not an agreeable one; but the standards by which estimates are made are safest and most satisfactory when contemporary. It would be venturesome to forecast the view of the fin de siècle girl which may be taken at the close of the new century by those who shall cast back over the years a historical glance. Certain it is that, on the whole, she comes approximately up to the best standards of to-day, although a certain air of flippancy and the flavor of the independence of judgment, not always balanced by reason, suggest the possibility of an intellectual and spiritual trend not consistent with her most fortunate lines of development.

It will be seen that the twentieth century takes woman as a practical matter of fact, and proposes to bestow upon her no fulsome eulogies, chivalrous dalliance, to place her in no position of inferiority, or to exalt her to the transcendent estate of the celestial beings. She has demanded recognition in the practical affairs of life; she has claimed the right to determine her own destiny; she has achieved the freedom of the outer world. Lofty as are the summits of human ambition, she has climbed up to the very highest peaks and written her name in letters of immortality on the scroll of the great ones of the earth, in the arts, in literature, in philanthropy. Does she ever pause to take a backward look over the steps by which she has come to her present eminence? Does she ever consider the "pit from which she was digged"? It is a far cry from the twentieth century to the early dawn of history, and none but the Eye which runs to and fro throughout the whole earth can trace the entire course of woman's ascendency from degradation to exaltation. But it is always well to pause and to ask of the past years what report they have borne to Heaven; and the history of woman, studied in the light of fact and with such proper reflections as historical circumstance suggests, must not only be a profitable one for the correction of any ill-balanced tendencies which may appear to close observation of woman in her present position and spirit, but it must as well be an important section of, and, in a sense, interpretation of, the social development of England.