Perhaps the most interesting feature of the education of Kildare is that it was not concerned exclusively, nor even for the major part apparently, with book-learning. The book-learning of the Irish schools was celebrated. Down at Kildare, however, certain of the arts and crafts were cultivated with special success. Lace-making and the illumination of books were two of the favorite occupations of these students at Kildare in which marvellous success was achieved. The tradition of Irish lace-making which has maintained itself during all the centuries began, or at least, secured its first great prestige, in Brigid's time. Gerald the Welshman, sometimes spoken of as Giraldus Cambrensis, told of having seen during a journey in Ireland centuries after Brigid's time, but nearly a thousand years ago, a copy of the Scriptures that was wonderfully illuminated. He thought it the most beautiful book in the world. His description tallies very closely with that of the Book of Kells. Some have even ventured to suggest that he actually saw the Book of Kells at Kildare. This is extremely improbable, however, and the Book of Kells almost surely originated elsewhere. There {232} seems, however, to have been at Kildare some book nearly as beautiful as the Book of Kells, made there, and establishing peradventure the thoroughness of the artistic education given at Kildare at this time. So much for feminine influence and education under Christianity. Most people are likely to know much more of the place of women in Greece and Rome than during Christian times. We are prone, however, to exaggerate the dependence of woman among both Latins and Greeks and to think that she had very few opportunities for intellectual development and almost none for expression of her personality and the exertion of her influence. Here, once more, as in many other phases of this subject we are, through ignorance, assuming conditions in the past that are quite unlike those which actually existed. Recently in the _Atlantic Monthly,_ Mrs. Emily James Putnam, sometime the Dean of Barnard, in an article on "The Roman Lady," [Footnote 17] has completely undermined usual notions with regard to the position of the Roman woman. The Roman matrons had rights all their own, and succeeded in asserting themselves in many ways. There was never any seclusion of the women in Rome and the Roman _matrona_ at all times enjoyed personal freedom, entertained her husband's guests, had a voice in his affairs, managed his house and came and went as she pleased. Mrs. Putnam suggests that "in {233} early days she shared the labors and the dangers of the insecure life of a weak people among hostile neighbors. It may not be fanciful to say that the liberty of the Roman woman of classical times was the inherited reward of the prowess of a pioneer ancestress, in the same way as the social freedom of the American woman to-day comes to her from the brave Colonial housemother, able to work and, when need was, to fight."