nction
between the sexes, and practically all schools, classical and technical,
under government control, and the universities, are open to both men
and women. Special schools, both public and private, have been
established exclusively for women, but they are not the rule. With
regard to matters of attendance, statistics show that the proportion of
women is larger in the universities than in the preparatory schools. As
yet, the legal profession is not open to women practitioners, but many
have pursued the study of medicine, and there are several who enjoy a
large and lucrative practice. With all these advantages, the ordinary
woman in Italy to-day rarely possesses what we would call an ordinary
education, and there is absolutely no public opinion in favor of it.
There are frequent bluestockings, it is true, but they have no influence
with the public, and are showing themselves entirely ineffectual in
forcing public opinion in this regard.

Though the great singers seem to come from Germany in these modern days,
Italy has held a distinguished place upon the boards for the last
half-century by reason of its great tragic actresses, Adelaide Ristori
and Eleonora Duse. Ristori was beginning her career in the fifties when
she went to Paris, where the great Rachel was in the very midst of her
triumph; and there in the French capital, in the very face of bitter
rivalry, she was able to prove her ability and make a name for herself.
Later, in the United States she met with a most flattering reception,
and for a season played with Edwin Booth in the Shakespearean
repertoire. Duse first came into public notice about 1895, when her
wonderful emotional power at once caused critics to compare her to
Bernhardt, and not always to the advantage of the great French
tragedienne. At one period her name became linked most unpleasantly with
that of the young Italian realist Gabriele d'Annunzio.

In modern Italian literature two women stand out conspicuously--Matilda
Serao and Ada Negri. The Signora Serao, who began life as a journalist,
is to-day the foremost woman writer of fiction in Italy, and her novels,
which are almost without exception devoted to the delineation of
Neapolitan life, are quite graphic and interesting, though her literary
taste is not always good and she sometimes lapses into the commonplace
and the vulgar. Also, she inclines somewhat toward the melodramatic,
and, like many of her brothers in literature, she is far from