indemnify herself for exclusion from their spiritual life by rendering herself necessary to their material existence!" Johannes made no reply. It was enjoyment enough for him to look at her and hear her. He wished her, before attempting to reply to her, to finish all that she had to say. Ernestine continued: "All this constitutes the ignominy of my sex,--an ignominy that must be overcome, or its revenge will be terrible; for luxury and self-indulgence have been the ruin of those nations who rendered no homage to the spiritual nature of woman. We must force this reverence from you, at any risk, before it is too late. Smile, if you will, at my presumption in arrogating the place of a feminine Arnold von Winkelried, breaking a path for our spiritual freedom through the lances of contempt and prejudice. I know what lies before me. No commonplace woman feels any pride in her sex; when one of her sisters achieves distinction, she is only all the more galled by the consciousness of her own inferiority, and takes her revenge, if she knows no better, with the wretched weapons of conventional prejudices,--casting the odium of indelicacy upon the woman who dares to be free; and men contemptuously close their doors upon her. My lot must be to struggle and suffer. Still, I do not hesitate. If I can effect nothing here, I will seek other lands, where woman striving after better things is treated with humanity and true chivalry." "Where humanity and chivalry assist woman to lay aside the very crown of her being,--her womanhood!" Johannes now interrupted her; "for how can you preserve it, if in anatomical studies you harden yourself to everything that shocks a compassionate woman, if you are forced into contact with things at which all maidenly delicacy must revolt? I have not interrupted you hitherto, because I wished thoroughly to understand you, and because your sacred zeal touched and delighted me. With much that is crude and exaggerated, there is truth, and beauty, in what you have just said. But, believe me, the physical frame of a woman is as little suited as her intellect to certain scientific pursuits. I directed you to the broad domain of the beautiful,--of art,--but you would not listen to me--there you would have to share your fame among too many. Your ambition craves something entirely new and unheard-of. But, Fräulein Hartwich, this ambition will be your ruin! If you long to create, create forms for your ideas that will speak for themselves, clothe them in poetic language, or give them local habitation and a name in art--you can complete such work, and your soul can find rest in it from its labours. A poetical idea can be fully embodied in a work of art; but a scientific hypothesis is inexhaustible, because, however clearly proved and demonstrated, it brings new problems in its train. Only a man's rude strength can endure such a restless pursuit that knows no pause; the woman's delicate nature must succumb even because