With the foregoing glimpses, the sketch of woman’s active efforts in art during the eighteenth century may be closed; completing our bird’s-eye view of her share in those ennobling pursuits during a history covering over two thousand years. As we approach the present time, the various branches in which her enterprise has been influential develop into more distinct and vigorous growth. It may now be interesting to notice the indications of our own--the nineteenth century. The progress of female talent and skill, accelerated toward the close of the preceding age, has become more remarkable than ever within the last fifty years. The number of women engaged in the pursuits of art during that time far exceeds that of the whole preceding century. This accession is probably owing, in a great measure, to the more general appreciation of art, growing out of better intellectual cultivation, and to the growing taste for paintings and statuary as ornaments of the abodes of the wealthy. But it is due, in some degree, to the increased freedom of woman--to her liberation from the thraldom of old-fashioned prejudices and unworthy restraints which, in former times, fettered her energies, rendered her acquisition of scientific and artistic knowledge extremely difficult, and threw obstacles in the way of her devotion to study and the exercise of her talents. We have seen that, the more enlarged is the sphere of her activity among any people, the greater is the number of female artists who have done and are doing well, by their sustained and productive cultivation of art. At the present time, the prospect is fair of a reward for study and unfaltering application in woman as in man; her freedom--without regarding as such the so-called “emancipation,” which would urge her into a course against nature, and contrary to the gentleness and modesty of her sex--is greater, and the sphere of her activity is wider and more effective than it has ever been. The general and growing apprehension of the importance of female education will gradually lead to dissatisfaction with the superficial culture of modern schools, and to the adoption of some plan that shall develop the powers of those who are taught, and strengthen their energies for the active duties of life. Many advantages besides these have encouraged the advancement of women as artists beyond any point reached in preceding ages. We may thus find an increasing number of young women who, bent on making themselves independent by their own efforts, spare no pains to qualify themselves as teachers in various branches of art.