queen's vanity lay more in shining by her own learning than in
encouraging men of genius by her liberality."

Lady Jane Grey and the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke are familiar
examples of learned women, and many English titled and gentlewomen were
well versed in Greek and Latin, as well as in Spanish, Italian, and
French. Macaulay reminded his readers that if an Englishwoman of that day
did not read the classics she could read little, since the then existing
books--outside the Italian--would fill a shelf but scantily. Thus English
girls read Plato, and doubtless English women excelled Englishmen in
their proficiency in foreign languages, as they do at present.

* * * * *

In Germany the relative position of Art and Letters was the opposite to
that in France and England. The School of Cologne was a genuinely native
school of art in the fourteenth century. Although the Niebelungen Lied
and Gudrun, the Songs of Love and Volkslieder, as well as Mysteries and
Passion Plays, existed from an early date, we can scarcely speak of a
German Literature before the sixteenth century, when Albert Dürer and the
younger Holbein painted their great pictures, while Luther, Melanchthon
and their sympathizers disseminated the doctrines of advancing
Protestantism.

At this period, in the countries we may speak of collectively as German,
women artists were numerous. Many were miniaturists, some of whom were
invited to the English Court and received with honor.

In 1521 Albert Dürer was astonished at the number of women artists in
different parts of what, for conciseness, we may call Germany. This was