ountess Ida Hahn-Hahn illustrates an opposite tendency in the
emancipation of woman. Born in a high sphere and miseducated by a
perverse father in the prejudices of her station, she has a perverted
view of her sisters of the people, of their struggles and desires and
possibilities. Only the "noblesse," which is free from the cares of
physical needs, is to her worthy of higher endeavors. The world of
highborn womanhood alone attracts her attention. Her study of this world
culminates in her opposition to marriage, which is to her an oppressive
fetter, handicaps the enjoyment of life, and, therefore, is in almost
all her novels the object of ridicule, and its abolition is recommended.
Her heroines are, therefore, sensuous egotists who according to her own
words seek nothing, wish for nothing, desire nothing but their own
satisfaction, without regard to others. Thus, her novels, with their
gospel of barefaced selfishness, are frequently offensive, but the
atmosphere of "high society" has never been depicted with such masterly
and many-colored vivacity as by Ida Hahn-Hahn.

The revolutionary year of 1848, which shattered many cherished idols
which she had formerly deemed eternal, made a profound impression upon
her. Under the influence of the eloquent Baron von Kettler, later Bishop
of Mainz, who explained to her the great social questions of that
stirring time, she became converted to Catholicism. The haughty spoiled
child of the world became an expiating Magdalena; her work From Babylon
to Jerusalem (Mainz, 1851) presents a wonderfully interesting revelation
of a forceful and original heart. Instead of liberating woman from the
yoke of man, she now endeavors, through the influence of the Catholic
Church, to liberate sinful, passionate mankind from earthly shackles.
When she died, in 1880, she left an immense amount of literature, more
or less valuable, but always intensely interesting to the searcher of
woman's soul and achievements.

Ida von Duringsfeld was a poet and novelist of considerable force. Her
novels present strong characters and fine descriptions of landscape and
architecture; her translations of Czech and Italian popular songs are
excellent; her work on _Proverbs of the Germanic and Romance Peoples_,
published by her in collaboration with her husband (Leipzig, 1875), is
very meritorious. What type of woman she must have been appears from the
fact that when she died suddenly on a journey, her husband, unable to