The women included in these sketches all belong to the same period, that about the year 1800, a generation or so on either side Of this date. The close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries mark a period Of Revolution for men and of Evolution for women. The ideas Of the French Revolution, that time Of upheaval, Of revaluing Of values, of imperious assertion of the rights of the individual, swept over Europe like a quickening Wind and every where there was talk Of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, realised (and perhaps only realisable) in that same order of precedence. At any rate, Liberty came first and fo ost. The rights of the individual became i us. The minds of intellectual women were stirred, they became more conscious of themselves, more philosophic, more independent. They began.