Page:Varia.djvu/14

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VARIA.

was reserved for the nineteenth century to discover woman; " and this remarkable statement has been gratefully applauded by people who have apparently forgotten all about Judith and Zenobia, Cleopatra and Catherine de Medici, Saint Theresa and Jeanne d'Arc, Catherine of Russia and Elizabeth of England, who played parts of some importance, for good and ill, in the fortunes of the world.

"Les Anciens ont tout dit," and the most curious thing about the arguments now advanced in behalf of progressive womanhood is that they have an air of specious novelty about them when they have all been uttered many times before. There is scarcely a principle urged to-day by enthusiastic champions of the cause which was not deftly handled by that eminently "new" woman, Christine de Pisan, in the fourteenth century, before the court of Charles VI. of France. If we read even a few pages of "La Cité des Dames,"—and how delightfully modern is the very title!—we recognize the same familiar sentiments, albeit disguised in archaic language and with many old-time conceits, that we are accus-