a woman of the Middle Ages to express herself publicly by any means
whatever was almost impossible. A great lady, a great Saint or
church-woman, might do so very occasionally. But the individuality
of the ordinary wife was merged in that of her husband, and for one
Abbess of Shrewsbury or Whitby, for one St. Clare or St. Hilda, there
were how many thousand obscure sisters, who were buried in the daily
routine of a life hidden with Christ in God! Doubtless the artistic
temperament burst out now and again in woman, and would take no
denial. It blew where it listed, appearing in the most unexpected
places. A young nun in a Saxon convent, for instance, would write
little dramas in Latin for the amusement and edification of the noble
maidens under her charge. These comedies, written in the days of the
Emperor Otho, can be read with pleasure in the reign of King George,
by those who find fragrant the perfumes of the past. They deal with
the pious legends of the Saints, and are regarded with wistful
admiration by the most modern of Parisian playwrights. In their
combination of audacity and simplicity they could only be performed by
Saxon religious in the times of Otho, or by marionettes in the more
self-conscious life of to-day. Or, again, an Abbess, the protagonist
of one of the great love stories of the world, by sheer force of
personality, would compose letters to one--how immeasurably her moral
inferior, in spite of his genius--expressing with an unexampled
poignancy the most passionate emotions of the heart. Or, to take my
third illustration, here are a woman's poems written in an age when
literature was almost entirely in the hands of men. Consider the
strength of character which alone induced these three ladies to stray
from the beaten paths of their sex. To the average woman it was
enough to be an object of art herself, or to be the inspiration of
masterpieces by man. But these three women of the Middle Ages--and
such as they--shunned the easier way, and, in their several spheres,