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LIST OF THE
PRINCIPAL AUTHORITIES CONSULTED.

• Beloe's Herodotus.
• Booth's Diodorus Siculus.
• Hearne's Justin.
• Murphy's Tacitus.
• Suetonius (Bohn's Classical Library).
• Abbé Guyon. Histoire des Amazones. Paris, 1740.
• Rollin. Histoire Ancienne.
• Grote. History of Greece.
• Gibbon. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
• Mills. History of Mohammedism.
• Neale. Islamism: its Rise and Progress.
• Miss Strickland. Queens of England and Scotland.
• Mrs. Matthew Hall. Queens of England before the Conquest.
• Mrs. Forbes Bush. Queens of France.
• Michaud. Histoire des Croisades.
• Lingard. History of England.
• Sir J. Mackintosh. History of England.
• Tytler. History of Scotland; and Worthies of Scotland.
• Wolfgang Menzel. History of Germany (Mrs. Geo. Horrocks).
• Kelly. History of Russia.
• Coxe. House of Austria.
• Motley. Rise of the Dutch Republic.
• Berriat St. Prix. Jeanne d'Arc. Paris, 1817.
• Lebrun des Charmettes. Hist. de Jeanne d'Arc. Paris, 1817.
• Jollois. Hist. Abrégée de la Vie et Exploits de Jeanne d'Arc. Paris, 1821.
• Prescott. Conquest of Mexico.
• Ralegh's Guiana. With Introduction and Notes, by Sir Robert Schomburgh (Hackluyt Society).
• Life of Mrs. Christian Davies, alias Mother Ross. London, 1741 (Defoe).
• Lamartine. Hist. of the Girondists. (Capt. Rafter)
• Sir John Carr. Tour through Spain.
• Maria Graham. Journal of a Voyage to Brazil, etc.
• Garibaldi. An Autobiography. Edited by Alexandre Dumas.
• Scenes of the Civil War in Hungary, with the Personal Adventures of an Austrian Officer. London, 1850.
• Ferishta. History of Mahommedan India (Jo. Briggs). 1828.
• Ferishta. History of the Dekkan, and History of Bengal (J. Scott). 1794.
• Gladwin. History of Hindostan.
• Francklin. History of Shah Aulum, Emperor of Hindostan.
• Private Life of an Eastern King.
• Nolan. Illustrated History of British India.
• Bruce's Travels.
• Winwood Reade. Savage Africa. 1864.
• Duncan. Travels in Dahomey. 1847.
• Captain Burton. Mission to Dahomé. 1864.
• Matilda Betham. Cyclopædia of Female Biography.
• Mrs. Ellet. Women Artists.
• Fullom. History of Woman.
• Mrs. Hale. Woman's Record.
• Mrs. Starling. Noble Deeds of Woman.
• Watson. Heroic Women of History. Philadelphia. 1852.
• Wilson's Wonderful Characters. 1821.
• Kirby's Wonderful and Eccentric Museum. 1820.
• Annual Register.
• Notes and Queries.
• Illustrated London News. Galignani.
• Edinburgh Annual Register.
• Biographie Universelle.
• Etc. etc.

I.

Mythology.—Warlike Goddesses.—The Amazons.—The Sarmatians.—The Machlyes and Auses.—The Zaveces.—More Modern Tribes of Amazons in Asia and Africa.

WERE it not for fear of Mrs. Grundy, whose awful visage is to the modern Briton what the Gorgon's head was to the ancient Greek, it might be said that Popular Prejudice is the deaf, deformed sister of Justice. Popular Prejudice makes up her mind on certain subjects, and is grandly unconscious of any fault within herself; ignorant that she is deaf, and that she is morally blind, although able to see every petty object that passes within her range. Popular Prejudice, like her stately cousin, Mrs. Grundy, arranges fixed rules of etiquette, of conduct, even of feeling, and never pardons the slightest infringement of the lines she marks out. A man may lay down his life for "an idea," but if it be outside the ramparts of Popular Prejudice, he does so as a rebel, maybe a fool. A man may have high aspirations, but if by the breadth of a hair's line they run not parallel with the views of Popular Prejudice, let him be anathema maranatha, let him be bound in chains, away with him to outer darkness, to the company of the few who share his—"crotchets."

Whisper it not in Gath that a woman should dare ever to transgress the lines laid down by Popular Prejudice. A woman is a subordinate accident in Creation, quite an afterthought, a supplementary notion, a postscript, though Humour might laughingly say, much like the famous postscript to a lady's letter. Man (though he is permitted to include in his superb all-comprehensive identity, Woman) is big, strong, noble, intellectual: a Being. Woman is small, weak, seldom noble, and ought not to be conscious of the significance of the word Intellectual.

The exception is supposed to prove the rule. A woman may be forgiven for defying Popular Prejudice, if she is very pretty, very silly, and very wicked. Popular Prejudice has the natural instinct of yielding to any little weakness that may be imagined to flatter a Man. But Popular Prejudice is superbly angry with a woman who is perhaps not pretty, yet ventures to claim good sense and personal will, and who may be innately good. Popular Prejudice is the fast friend of lean-faced Envy; and woe betide the woman (or even the man) who would presume to sit down at the board of these allies uninvited.

Popular Prejudice, having decided that woman is a poor, weak creature, credulous, easily influenced, holds that she is of necessity timid; that if she were allowed as much as a voice in the government of her native country, she would stand appalled if war were even hinted at. If it be proved by hard facts that woman is not a poor, weak creature, then she must be reprimanded as being masculine. To brand a woman as being masculine, is supposed to be quite sufficient to drive her cowering back to her 'broidery-frame and her lute.

Popular Prejudice abhors hard facts, and rarely reads history. Yet nobody can deny that facts are stubborn things, or that the world rolls calmly round even when wars, rumours of wars, revolutions, and counter-revolutions, are raging in every quarter and sub-division of its surface.

War is, undoubtedly, a horrid alternative to the average woman, and she shrinks from it—as the average man shrinks. But, walking down the serried ranks of history, we find strange records of feminine bravery; as we might discover singular instances of masculine cowardice, if we searched far enough.

As argumentation is unpleasant and unprofitable, be it counted only idle pastime gathering a handful of memories from the playground of history.

Opinion among the ancients on all subjects was as fairly divided as it has been among moderns. Naturally, however, in that uncivilised stage of the world's development, men and women inclined more towards brute force than they now do. Plato, the Athenian philosopher, lamented that the lives of women should be wasted in domestic, and sometimes servile, duties; arguing that if the girls were trained like the boys, in athletic sports and warlike exercises, and