In their struggle for freedom for the same opportunities of study, for the same fields of work, the same citizenship as man, women have encountered all possible opposition, from that of the Pope, who recently pronounced the most positive condemnation of the whole movement for the emancipation of woman, and that of Parliament, to the rough pranks of students. Man’s attempt to define the boundaries of “woman’s natural sphere” continues always. The woman physician, for example, had to struggle, in her student years, against prejudice in the dissecting room, and, in her practice, against the professional jealousy of men. The history of emancipation has much shameful conduct on the part of man toward woman to record. Great reluctance to recognise the results of woman’s work is still common. When this work, in literature and art for instance, is compared with man’s, the comparison is made not for the purpose of getting a finer understanding of woman’s peculiar characteristics, but only to disparage it. The energy which men of the present time not infrequently lack they cannot endure to recognise in women, who often possess it in high degree. In the Romance countries, self-supporting working women are always looked upon as a special caste—a caste into which a man does not marry however high respect he pays, theoretically, to “les vierges fortes.” And yet how different—and more beautiful—are the present relations between men and women in general, especially among the Germanic peoples. A friendly comradeship prevails among the young men and women studying at the university, in art academies, music schools, business colleges, etc. In the North, this comradeship often continues from the primary schools, through the grades to the university, with results advantageous to both sexes. Especially in the years under twenty, this comradeship has a significance which cannot be overestimated. Girls, who were, earlier, confined to a narrow, uninteresting, joyless family circle, now often find in the circle of masculine and feminine comrades their share of the joy of youth without which life has no springtime. Youths who formerly had known no other young women than those with whom they should never have come in contact, now learn to know soulful, pure-minded girls, and this gives them a new conception of woman. Both sexes now experience together the joys of youth in such fresh and significant forms as folk-dancing, sport, etc. They have opportunity for stimulating interchange of ideas in a great circle, and quiet discussion with a few congenial friends. During the last twenty or thirty years, young men and young women have again begun to discover one another spiritually, discoveries which since the days of romanticism have been made only through the stained glass of literature. In the romantic period, men and women exercised reciprocally upon one another a humanising influence. A like influence again obtains at the present time, but upon a much broader basis.