of Woman, as it marches to the conquest of this world,
flaunts over its legions the banner of art.

In one of the occasional passages of real poetic power with which Walt
Whitman now and then condescends to break the full tide of rhapsody over
the eternities and the last patent drill, he describes himself as seeing
two armies in succession go forth to the civil war. First passed the
legions of Grant and M'Clellan, flushed with patriotic enthusiasm and
hope of victory, and cheered onward by the shouts of adoring multitudes.
Behind, silent and innumerable, march the army of the dead. Something,
we must own, of the same contrast strikes us as we stand humbly aside to
watch the aesthetic progress of woman.

It is impossible not to feel a certain glow of enthusiastic sympathy as
the vanguard passes by--women earnest in aim and effort, artists,
nursing-sisters, poetesses, doctors, wives, musicians, novelists,
mathematicians, political economists, in somewhat motley uniform and
ill-dressed ranks, but full of resolve, independence, and
self-sacrifice. If we were fighting folk we confess we should be half
inclined to shout for the rights of woman, and to fall manfully into the
rank. As it is, we wait patiently for the army behind, for the main
body--woman herself. Woman fronts us as noisy, demonstrative, exacting
in her aesthetic claims. Nothing can surpass the adroitness with which
she uses her bluer sisters on ahead to clear the way for her gayer
legions; nothing, at any rate, but the contempt with which she dismisses
them when their work is done. Their office is to level the stubborn
incredulity, to set straight the crooked criticisms, of sceptical man,
and then to disappear. Woman herself takes their place. Art is
everywhere throughout her host--for music, the highest of arts, is the
art of all.

The singers go before, the minstrels follow after, in the midst are the
damsels playing on the timbrels. The sister Arts have their own
representatives within the mass. Sketching boasts its thousands, and
poetry its tens of thousands. A demure band of maidens blend piety with
art around the standard of Church decoration. Perhaps it is his very
regard for the first host--for its earnestness, for its real
womanhood--that makes the critic so cynical over the second; perhaps it
is his very love for art that turns to quiet bitterness as he sees art
dragged at the heels of foolish virgins. For art _is_ dragged at their
heels. Woman wil