free from
what may best be termed "cheap sentiment." Ada Negri, who started in her
career as a modest school teacher in Lombardy, is a lyric poet of no
mean ability. She has taken up the cudgel for the poor and the weak and
the oppressed, and so thorough and genuine are her appreciation and
understanding of the life of the people, that she seems to have touched
many hearts. Singing as she does of the hard lot of the poor, and of the
many struggles of life, it is appropriate that the two volumes of her
verses which have appeared up to this time should bear the titles
_Fatalita_ and _Tempeste_.

Many other women have acquired honored positions in literature, and
woman's increased activity and prominence in all intellectual branches
is a condition which may well excite wonder. While from many points of
view unfortunately backward, the women of Italy are beginning to realize
their more serious possibilities, and it is safe to say that the more
advanced ideas regarding woman's work and her position in society, which
come as the inevitable consequence of modern civilization and education,
will soon bear fruit here as in other parts of the continent.

Part Second

Spanish Women

Chapter XII

The Condition of Spain before the Moorish Invasion

To one whose fancy roves to Spain in his dream of fair women there comes
at once the picture of a dark-eyed beauty gazing out discreetly from
behind her lattice window, listening to the tinkling sound of her
lover's mandolin, and sighing at the ardor of his passion; or again, she
may be going abroad, with lace mantilla about her shapely head, armed
with her fan,--that article of comfort and coquetry, as it has been
called,--which is at once a shield and an allurement as wielded by her
deft fingers. With the thought of Spain there comes also the snap of the
castanets and the flash of bright-colored skirts as they move in time to
the _tarantella_. All in all, it is the poet's land of beauty and
pleasure, music and the dance, with _Dolce far niente_ as its motto,
rose-entwined.

Free from the poet's spell, however, and under the guidance of the
sterner muse of history, this picture of sweet content vanishes for a
time as the more rugged outlines of another and an earlier age attract
our attention. Fact and conjecture are somewhat intermingled as they
concern the early history of Spain, but enough is known to give us a
fairly clear idea of the general condition of the