Then there are the evenings when grave professors come in, and they talk in Latin of the affairs of the day, the religious persecutions, or some disputed dogma. Sometimes they sing one of her Greek psalms which her husband has set to music. She has her heart full with the care of her young brother and the little daughter of a friend, who has been sent to her for instruction. But her life is bound up in that of her husband, whom she “cannot live without.” A pure and generous spirit, happy in her sacrifices, and true to every relation, she is a living refutation of the fallacy, too often heard even now, that learning and the gentler qualities of womanhood do not go together. There were many other women of great distinction in the universities, whose names still live in enduring characters after four or five centuries--professors, and wives of professors who worked side by side with their husbands, and received their due meed of consideration. We have women of fine scholarly attainments to-day, though in the great universities they are mostly relegated to the anterooms and honored with second-class degrees; but fancy the consternation of the students of Harvard or Oxford if asked to listen to the lecture of a woman on law or philosophy, or, indeed, on any subject whatever! Yet there were great men and great scholars in Italy, possibly too great to fear competition. Society was in no sense upset, and, so far as women were concerned, the harmony of creation was not interfered with. Indeed, the best mothers and the most devoted, helpful wives in Italy of whom we have any knowledge were among the women who spoke Latin, read Greek, and worshiped at the shrine of the Muses--all of which may be commended to the college girls of to-day as well as to their critics. V In other fields there were equally accomplished women. Cassandra Fidelis was the pride and glory of Venice in the days when Titian walked along the shores of the Adriatic, absorbing the luminous tints of sea and sky, and picturing to himself the faces that look out upon us to-day from the buried centuries, instinct with color and the fullness of life. Poet and philosopher, she wrote in many languages, even spoke publicly at Padua. She caught, too, the spirit of beauty and song, and was as noted for her music and her graceful manners as for her learning. Men of letters paid court to her, Leo X wrote to her, and Ferdinand tried to draw her to Naples; but the Doge refused to part with this model of so many gifts and virtues. She lived a century divided between literature and piety, but drifted at last, in her widowhood, to the refuge of so many tired souls, and ended her brilliant career in a convent.