Artists, Students, and Professors of Letters and of Law, filling these
positions with honor, as women do in these days.

In 1859 T. Adolphus Trollope, in his "Decade of Italian Women," in which
he wrote of the scholarly women of the Renaissance, says: "The degree in
which any social system has succeeded in ascertaining woman's proper
position, and in putting her into it, will be a very accurate test of the
progress it has made in civilization. And the very general and growing
conviction that our own social arrangements, as they exist at present,
have not attained any satisfactory measure of success in this respect,
would seem, therefore, to indicate that England in her nineteenth century
has not yet reached years of discretion after all."

Speaking of Elisabetta Sirani he says: "The humbly born artist, admirable
for her successful combination in perfect compatibility of all the duties
of home and studio." Of how many woman artists we can now say this.

Trollope's estimate of the position of women in England, which was not
unlike that in America, forty-five years ago, when contrasted with that
of the present day, affords another striking example of the expansion of
the nineteenth century.

* * * * *

Although no important changes occur without some preparation, this may be
so gradual and unobtrusive in its work that the result appears to have a
Minerva-like birth. Doubtless there were influences leading up to the
remarkable landscape painting of this century. The "Norwich School,"
which took shape in 1805, was founded by Crome, among whose associates
were Cotman, Stark, and Vincent. Crome exhibited his works at the Royal