er 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 siecle_ 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 throughou