ABSTRACT
In this paper it is proposed to give a brief account of the lives of some celebrated Polish women of the present century, as illustrative of types evolved by the peculiarly unfortunate situation of their country, and as typifying some especial aspects of the struggle of the sex in general after increased mental development and 248opportunities, that are worth considering. The " woman question " can hardly be said to exist in Poland, except, as regards a constantly increasing conviction in regard to the necessity of creating new employments, aud gradually inducing a tone of broader education for women than has hitherto been in vogue. A great deal has of late years been done in the way of opening technical schools for girls in different towns, both of Russian and Austrian Poland, and several of the leading periodicals earnestly advocate the practice of rural industries, such as poultry-farming, bee keeping, fruit-growing, by ladies of email means resident in the country, by way of supplementing their incomes. But it is obvious that no question as to the advisability of political rights and privileges for women can be agitated where such rights are not even the property of men, and where both sexes alike suffer in a grievous community of wrongs. Recognising rights in no human being, the Russian government has never troubled itself to invent distinctions in punishment between the male and female victims of its displeasure. The martyr annals of Poland display at every turn forcible examples of this truth, notably during the terrible scenes of the latest insurrection in 18R3-4, when the indignation of the whole of civilised Europe was so greatly stirred by the horrible and unmentionable treatment of women by the monster Mouravieff. Both friends and enemies alike have borne fullest testimony to the patriotic spirit and conspicuous part taken by the women of Poland in the revolutions of their country, and nowhere do we find a more complete illustration of the words of the Poet Laureate:—
" The woman's cause is man's, they rise or fall together,"
and that the same aspirations, hopes, and struggles are the common property of both sexes, not created dissimilar in thought and feeling, and alike exposed to the same influences political and social.