102 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



generation ago were considered proper only for the proud 

 and imperious male. They have proved beyond cavil that 

 genius knows not sex, and that, given a fair opportunity, 

 they are competent to achieve success in every department 

 of human effort. 



Thus, to speak only of Europe, there are to-day women 

 professors in the universities of Norway, Sweden, Switzer- 

 land, France, Greece and Russia, as there have been in 

 Italy since the closing years of the Dark Ages. They 

 lecture on science, literature, law and medicine, and in a 

 manner to extort the admiration of their erstwhile antag- 

 onists. In Germany and Hungary there are women chem- 

 ists and architects, while it is a matter of record that the 

 best construction work done on the trans-Siberian railroad 

 was that in charge of a woman engineer. 



As an illustration of the marvelous change which has 

 been brought about during the last three-quarters of a 

 century in the educational status of woman, I can do no 

 better than transcribe a few passages from a work by Sir 

 Walter Besant describing the transformation of woman 

 during the reign of Queen Victoria; for it applies to all 

 civilized countries as well as to England. 



"The young lady of 1837 has been to a fashionable 

 school; she has learned accomplishments, deportment and 

 dress. She is full of sentiment; there was an amazing 

 amount of sentiment in the air about that time; she loves 

 to talk and read about gallant knights, crusaders and 

 troubadors; she gently touches the guitar; her sentiment, 

 or her little affectation, has touched her with a graceful 

 melancholy, a becoming stoop, a sweet pensiveness. She 

 loves the aristocracy, even although her home is in that 

 part of London called Bloomsbury, whither the belted earl 

 cometh not, even though her papa goes into the City; she 

 reads a deal of poetry, especially those poems which deal 

 with the affections, of which there are many at this time. 

 On Sunday she goes to church religiously and pensively, 



