And so it came about that to some extent woman's special and privileged vocation as a home-maker began even in prehistoric times. Upon her it devolved to rear the children she bore; to cook, to mend, to make, to spin and dye and weave; to prepare a welcome for the victor and to minister to the sick or wounded. No sense of menial limitation in their duties was apparent among the notable women of the past. They were skilled workers, capable and respected managers, under whose direction men as well as women carried out the details of daily work, to whose care in later centuries castle and garrison were entrusted in the absence of their lords, and who most evidently assumed this responsibility with confidence and success. The changing conditions of the last three centuries, however, reacted in many ways to the detriment of women's domestic energies and sapped their pride in the vocation of housewife. Industrial developments took much occupation out of their hands, and they were not apparently concerned to undertake others more in consonance with modern life. As concentration of the population in large centres undermined the last survival of feudal conditions, the strong conservative instinct of women made it hard for them to adapt themselves and their households to revised methods:--to substitute "new lamps for old," so that gradually it seems women became split up into two parties, somewhat out of sympathy one with the other. Adherence to the traditions of the past and the attractions of social life distinguished the one party; a restless desire to give scope to their whole nature and to work out their own salvation on unconventional lines possessed the other. In the one case there was no desire for domestic reformation. What methods could be better than their great-grandmother's! In the other, glimpses of what seemed a far wider and more intellectual life than that of the ordinary housewife diminished interest in the physical needs of human nature, which it was thought made no claims on mental faculties, and of which the daily care was constantly associated with irksome restrictions and a position of financial dependence.