In Japan, in China, and in India, we find many names of great women whose influence has endured through the ages. The Taj Mahal is sufficient to remind us of what a woman has been in the Moslem world. J. S. Mill says that
if a Hindû principality is strong, vigilantly and energetically governed; if order is preserved without oppression, in three cases out of four that principality is under the regency of a woman.
Coming to Western lands we find the valiant British queen Boadicea. In ancient Germany there was Queen Radigünde, who founded a school for women. In Sweden Birgitta was famous as a patron of learning; her schools numbered eighty, and there still exist six schools of her order on the Continent and one in England, the only one that can boast of an unbroken existence from pre-Reformation times. Ireland too had a Saint Brigit, some of whose wonderful works were evidently transferred to her from the Celtic goddess Ceridwen.
Who has not seen the beautiful picture of Queen Louise of Prussia, of whom such a great historian as Mommsen speaks so enthusiastically? She is said to have been by no means a genius, nor in any way abnormal, but she was so beautiful, so winning, so optimistic, and combined such dignity and charm, such cheerfulness, faith and fortitude, that she gained Silesia for her husband from Napoleon. Then we have such great women as Madam Guyon, the mystic; Caroline Herschel; Frances Power Cobbe; Florence Nightingale; Queen Olga of Greece; Queen Victoria; Madame Curie, and many others whom time does not permit to mention. There is no need here to speak of H. P. Blavatsky and Katherine Tingley, the heralds of a new age, except to say that the world in that new age will render them that justice which is so tardily given now.
While the greatness to which women have attained proves to us what woman is capable of doing, yet, in a sense, it may be a little depressing, for all cannot be queens or rulers. But true greatness consists in doing well what has to be done. Besides, who can say what is great and what is small in the Divine Economy? "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," is an old saying. And for the great majority of women the making of the home to be a real home is the highest service that can be done to help the world; for the home is the foundation of the nation. And as Ruskin says:
Wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head, the glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot, but home is yet wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far around her, better than ceiled with cedar or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless.
THE TURKISH WOMAN: by Grace Knoche
THE Sultan of Turkey recently received a deputation of representative Ottoman women and in the course of his conference with them pledged them his support in their efforts to bring about a reform of certain conditions. Press dispatches state that the members of this deputation were heavily veiled.