found that
the display of feminine cruelty, or of any vice, is of a time and place.
There has never been a universal rule of feminine depravity in any age.
Babylon, Carthage, Greece, Rome, and all the olden civilisations have
had their periods when female virtue was a matter of laughter, when
women outvied men in their moral degradation, when evil seemed
triumphant everywhere; but there always remained a few to "redeem the
time," and salvation always came from those few. Moreover, the sphere of
immorality and crime was always limited. The Roman world, when it was
the world indeed, might be given up to vice and sin, displayed in their
most atrocious forms by the women of the Empire; but there still stood
the North, calm, virtuous, patient, awaiting its opportunity to "root
out the evil thing" and to give the world once more a standard of purity
and righteousness. The leaven of Christianity was effective in its work
upon the moral degradation of the Roman Empire; but it was not until the
scourge of the Northmen was sent to the aid of the principle that
success was fully won. So the North was not of the same day with Rome in
civilised vice, and the reign of evil in the Latin Empire was but the
effect of conditions, not the instincts of humanity. Rome was taught
evil by long and steadfast evolution; it did not spring up in a day
with its deadly blight, but was the result of progressive causation.

It may be doubted if the feminine intellect has increased since the dawn
of civilisation. To-day woman stands on a different plane of
recognition, but by reason of assertiveness, not because of increased
mental ability. As with that of man, the possibilities of woman's
intellect were long latent; but they existed, and the result is
development, not creation of fibre. I repeat that I do not believe that
the feminine intellect has grown in power. I doubt if the present age
can show a mind superior in natural strength to that of Sappho; I do not
believe that the present Empress of China, strong woman as she is, is
greater than Semiramis, or that even Elizabeth of England was the equal
of the warrior-queen of Babylon. But there can be no doubt that there
exists a broader culture to-day than ever before and that thus the
intellectual sum of women is always growing, though there comes no
increase in the mental powers of the individual. It has been so with
man. We boast of the mighty achievements of our age; but we have not yet
built suc