long as the number of Associates is limited,
a difficulty would arise in the fact that the higher rank has to be
recruited from that body." Miss Hill regards this as a grievance,
because it virtually makes the matter of sex a disqualification, and
quotes with endorsement Miss Ellen Clayton, as follows: "The Academy
has studiously ignored the existence of women artists, leaving them to
work in the cold shade of utter neglect. Not even once has a helping
hand been extended, not once has the most trifling reward been
given for highest merit and industry. Accidents made two women
Academicians--the accident of circumstances and the accident of birth.
Accident opened the door to girl students--accident, aided by courage
and talent. In other countries, they have the prize fairly earned
quietly placed in their hands, and can receive it with dignity. In
free, unprejudiced, chivalric England, where the race is given to the
swift, the battle to the strong, without fear or favour, it is only by
slow, laborious degrees that women are winning the right to enter the
list at all, and are then received with half-contemptuous indulgence."

Whether or not women artists have a real grievance against the Royal
Academy, certain it is that the last half of the nineteenth century
has been notable for the progress of women in art. It was in the
galleries of the Society of Lady Artists, which came into existence
in 1859, that Lady Butler first exhibited and pictures by Rosa
Bonheur were displayed. With the multiplicity of art schools and
every facility for obtaining instructions under the most favorable
conditions, women have been brought into prominence as artists.
Landscape, portrait painting, oil, water-colors, pastel--the whole
range of subjects and styles of painting includes pictures of merit by
women.

In many of the lesser branches of art, hundreds of women have found
congenial vocations. They have shown excellent taste and aptitude
in china painting and other forms of decorative work--in book
illustration, as designers of carpet and wall-paper patterns, as
preparers of advertisements, designers of calendars, and a host of
other minor art industries.

Women as musical composers had appeared in the last half of the
eighteenth century. Mrs. Beardman, who made her debut as a singer
at the Gloucester festival in 1790, was equally gifted as composer,
singer, and pianist. Ann Mounsey displayed early talent, and her
precocity brought her in