1. In the early part of 1865, the people of Victoria, in Australia, assembled to elect a member of Parliament, were surprised to find the whole female population voting. Some quick-sighted woman had discovered that the letter of the new law permitted it; and their votes were accepted, and wisely given. The "London Times," in the month of May, says, that, in a country like Australia, it can easily believe that such an extension of the franchise will be a marked improvement, and thinks that the precedent will stand!
2. The government of Moravia has also, within the past year, granted the municipal franchise to widows who pay taxes.
3. In January, 1864, the Court of Queen's Bench in Dublin, Ireland, restored to woman the old right of voting for town commissioners. The justice (Fitzgerald) desired to state that ladies were entitled to sit as town commissioners as well as to vote for them; and the chief-justice took pains to make it clear that there was nothing in either duty repugnant to womanly habits.
4. The inhabitants of Ain (or Aisne), in France, lately chose nine women into their municipal council.
5. At Bergères, the whole council consisted of women; and the mayor, not being prepared for such good fortune, resigned his office.
6. Our cause has found able advocates in John Stuart Mill, the "New-York Evening Post," and Theodore Tilton. If I were asked, whether, in connection with this gain, we have lost any ground, I should reply that we have decidedly lost it in connection with the daily press. I do not know any newspaper, if I except the "Boston Commonwealth," which will print a letter touching civil rights, from any woman, precisely as it is written. I think what we need most is to purchase the right to a daily use of half a column of the "New-York Tribune."
RECORD AND OBITUARIES.
I have been accustomed to connect with reports of this kind some honorable mention of distinguished women obscure or recently dead. I cannot do this at any length, after a pause of so many years; but a few names must be mentioned, a few facts recorded.
I had occasion, some years ago, to commemorate the services of Maria Sybilla Merian, painter, engraver, linguist, and traveller, who published, at Amsterdam, two volumes of engravings of insects and sixty magnificent plates, illustrating the metamorphoses of the insects of Surinam. I did not, at that time, know that some of her statements had been held open to suspicion. In the first place, she asserted, that a certain fly, the Fulgoria Lantanaria, emitted so much light, that she could read her books by its aid; still further, that one of the large spiders, called Mygale, entered the nests of the humming-bird in Surinam, sucked its eggs, and snared the birds. To all the contention which arose over these statements, Madame Merian could oppose only her word. Men who knew that her statements in regard to Europe were indisputable decided that her word could not be taken in Asia. A very common folly; but two hundred years have passed, 1866 arrives, and her justification with it. An English traveller, named Bates, has recently rescued quite large finches from the Mygale, and poisoned himself with its saliva, in preparing them for his cabinet.
I do not know how many years Madam Baring, the mother of the great banker, has been dead. It is only recently that I have heard, that to her prudence, activity, and business habits, the family attribute the sure foundation of their fortunes. Matthew Baring came to Larkbeare, near Exeter, from Bremen. His wife superintended, in his day, the long rows of "burlers," or women who picked over the woollen cloth he made. Her sons, John and Francis, sought a wider field for the fortune their father left, but did not forget to erect a monument to their mother's industry.
About a year since, Eliza W. Farnham laid down her weary head. I did not know her, nor did I sympathize in her theories. They were sustained by her imagination rather than her reason; by her impulses rather than any practical judgment. No moral superiority can justly be conferred on either sex of a being possessed of intellect and conscience. God has conferred no such superiority; yet I gladly name Mrs. Farnham here as a woman whose life—a bitter disappointment to herself—was useful to all women, and whose books, published since her death, show a marvellous mental range.
During the last year, Madame Charles Lemonnier died in Paris. She devoted her life to the professional education of women. For six years she found it so difficult to raise the necessary funds, that she had to content herself with sending her pupils to institutions in Germany. In 1862 the Society for the Professional Instruction of Women was at last constituted, and opened a school in the Rue de Perle. Two other schools have since been opened,—one in the Rue de Val Sainte Catherine; the other, in the Rue Roche. The morning is occupied in these schools with general studies; the afternoon, with industrial drawing, wood-engraving, the making-up of garments, linen, &c. She died after initiating a thoroughly successful work.
In July, 1865, there died at Corfu a Dr. Barry, attached to the medical staff of the British army. He was remarkable for skill, firmness, decision, and great rapidity in difficult operations. He had entered the army in 1813, and had served in all quarters of the globe, with such distinction as to ensure promotion without interest. He was clever and agreeable, but excessively plain, weak in stature, and with a squeaking voice which provoked ridicule. He had an irritable temper, and answered some jesting on the topic by calling out the offender, and shooting him through the lungs. In 1840 he was made medical inspector, and transferred from the Cape to Malta. He went from Malta to Corfu; and, when the English Government ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece, resigned his position in the army, and remained at Corfu. There he died last summer, forbidding, with his latest breath, any interference with his remains. The women who attended him regarded this request with the shameless indifference now so common; and unable to believe, that an officer, who had been forty-five years in the British service, had received a diploma, fought a duel, and been celebrated as a brilliant operator, was not only a woman, but at some period in her life a mother; they called in a medical commission to establish these facts. A sad, sad picture, which those of us who inquire into the fortunes of women can readily understand.
Last November deprived us of Mrs. Gaskell and Fredrika Bremer, of whom a fuller record will be found in the body of this work.
In Paris recently died Mrs. Severn Newton. She was the daughter of the artist Severn, the friend of Keats, who is now British Consul at Rome. About five years since, she married Charles Newton, Superintendent of Greek Antiquities at the British Museum. She was a person in whom power and delicacy were singularly blended. Ary Scheffer was accustomed to hold up her work as a model for his pupils. Her renderings of classic sculpture were so true that they were termed translations; and she had recently devoted herself to oil painting with great success. She died of brain fever at the early age of thirty-three, one of the most honored of female English artists.