In the rising tide of intellectual and material progress, woman has been carried along to a great extent unconsciously. It is a matter of grave doubt whether the early “suffragists” did more than be the first to recognize and herald the logical drift of contemporary events. It is through higher education that woman has quietly forged her way to the place she occupies in the modern community, and that she is claiming her share of the common heritage of freedom and independence. The prophecy embodied in Bulwer’s “Coming Race” is being realized. From year to year her sphere is broadening. She is fast becoming self-supporting. In education she already holds a leading place. Her influence as a moving force is becoming patent. It is officially recognized to a varying degree in certain parts of the civilized world,—England, New Zealand, Russia, and twenty-two of the United States, where she stands before the law not only in her relation to man as his mother, wife, or sister, but in a direct relation to society, as a reasoning being and as a citizen. [Illustration: SIR EDWARD BULWER.] The increased self-respect born in woman’s mind of a consciousness of equal training and culture, the growing number of women whose ambitions have been stimulated to higher achievement, and the consequent increasing influence wielded by them in the community, suggest the thought that in time their legal status will be generally established, as it already is now in several localities. Much leveling has taken place since the abolition of the “ancient régime,” not only in the relations of the various classes composing society, but in the relation of men and women. The process is still steadily going on. And it is not unreasonable to believe that, with the gradual elevation of the ideals of one half of the population,—that half which is in control of the early training of children of both sexes,—a common standard of character and morality may in time be acknowledged which will admit of but one rule by which the actions of mankind, without distinction of persons, class, or sex, may be measured. The fact that all distinction in favor of the privileged class has already been removed in the eyes of modern public opinion holds out such a hope. The casuistry which still discriminates between evil-doers can but retard moral progress, and the more earnestly modern parents urge upon their sons the same observance of the laws of hygiene and propriety, of truth and self respect, as they exact from their daughters, the nearer to true civilization will society reach.