one time her studies were treated
with such scorn among her circle in Saint Petersburg that she retired to
the more appreciative atmosphere of Moscow. She was much admired by the
leading men of letters of her time. To the life of the primitive Slavs
she devoted two of her most important works. A poet and a musician, she
wrote cantatas and composed music for them. She spent about one-half of
her life in Rome, where she died, a devout Catholic.

Beginning with the year 1860, women began to appear in the lecture rooms
of Russian universities. The attitude of universities to the presence of
women within their walls was not always the same, but their attendance
was generally discouraged. Finally, a lack of social and political
discretion and tact on the part of some women legally closed the
university doors to all, and Russian women were forced to seek higher
education abroad. A movement was started at home in favor of
establishing schools of higher learning for women, and resulted in the
so-called "higher courses for women" in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kasan,
Kief, and Odessa, which were conducted by the university professors of
those cities. The "courses" were not uniformly successful. Those of
Saint Petersburg have shown the greatest strength and vitality, having
been conducted with skill and having met with strong moral and financial
support on the part of Russian society. Professional schools for women,
medical schools, normal schools, and the like, have had a more uniformly
successful career. The status of education for woman is not so advanced
in Russia as it is in some countries, but the future is promising.

About the time of the emancipation of Russian peasants by Alexander II.
(1855-1881), Marko-Vovchok (Maria Alexandrovna Markovich) attracted much
attention by her stories picturing Russian life and advocating the
liberation of the serfs. Among the large number of Russian women who
have acquired reputation in Russian literature, special mention should
be made of Khvoshchinskaya. She received a fine preparatory training at
home; then in 1867 she began to study law in German universities, and
took her doctor's diploma in Leipzig. She spent several years studying
the Common Law of the Southern Slavs, and made several original
contributions to legal literature. In 1885 she began to publish a
magazine, _Severnyi Vestnih_ (The Northern Messenger), which had many
women among its contributors. It remained five years under