In this volume are presented some examples of women who have risen to the better chance afforded them through the general amelioration of manners. The most fortunate of them have been cruelly obstructed by the large remainder of barbarism which exists in every community, and they have done their work in the teeth of every conceivable disadvantage. They have had to snatch it from a cross-fire of hostile circumstances. That Charlotte Brontë, that Mary Anne Evans, that Mrs. Stowe, should have been able to exercise their beautiful talents at all, was wonderful. That they should have employed them so triumphantly, is a kind of miracle, at which we can but stand amazed. In reading of their exploits we perceive that the Maid of Orleans was one of their kind, and saved her country by the exercise of qualities akin to theirs.
One pleasing duty remains to me. In the preparation of this volume, I have received the most essential and efficient assistance from my beloved niece, Miss Ethel Parton. Many of these articles I could not have done without her aid, which was rendered with a ready tact and sympathetic zeal beyond her twenty years, though they were to be expected from her lineage. Whenever the reader comes upon a passage that betrays a finer insight and a happier touch than ordinarily appears in the work, he will know to whom to attribute it.
The chapters on Queen Victoria and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, subsequently added, are from the pen of Prof. John P. Lamberton, of Philadelphia.
