to the artist than homosexuality in men.  Among the Greeks, indeed, homosexuality in women seldom receives literary consecration, and in the revival of the classical spirit at the Renaissance it was still chiefly in male adolescents, as we see, for instance, in Marino’s Adone, that the homosexual ideal found expression.  After that date male inversion was for a long period rarely touched in literature, save briefly and satirically, while inversion in women becomes a subject which might be treated in detail and even with complacence.  Many poets and novelists, especially in France, might be cited in evidence.

Ariosto, it has been pointed out, has described the homosexual attractions of women.  Diderot’s famous novel, La Religieuse, which, when first published, was thought to have been actually written by a nun, deals with the torture to which a nun was put by the perverse lubricity of her abbess, for whom, it is said, Diderot found a model in the Abbess of Chelles, a daughter of the Regent and thus a member of a family which for several generations showed a marked tendency to inversion.  Diderot’s narrative has been described as a faithful description of the homosexual phenomena liable to occur in convents.  Feminine homosexuality, especially in convents, was often touched on less seriously in the eighteenth century.  Thus we find a homosexual scene in Les Plaisirs du Cloitre, a play written in 1773 (Le Theatre d’Amour an XVIIIe Siecle, 1910.) Balzac, who treated so many psychological aspects of love in a more or less veiled manner, has touched on this in La Fille aux Yeux d’Or, in a vague and extravagantly romantic fashion.  Gautier made the adventures of a woman who was predisposed to homosexuality, and slowly realizes the fact, the central motive of his wonderful romance, Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835).  He approached the subject purely as an artist and poet, but his handling of it shows remarkable insight.  Gautier based his romance to some extent on the life of Madame Maupin or, as she preferred to call herself, Mademoiselle Maupin, who was born in 1673 (her father’s name being d’Aubigny), dressed as a man, and became famous as a teacher of fencing, afterward as an opera singer.  She was apparently of bisexual temperament, and her devotion to women led her into various adventures.  She ultimately entered a convent, and died, at the age of 34, with a reputation for sanctity. (E.C.  Clayton, Queens of Song, vol. i, pp, 52-61; F. Karsch, “Mademoiselle Maupin,” Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. v, 1903, pp. 694-706.) A still greater writer, Flaubert, in Salammbo (1862) made his heroine homosexual.  Zola has described sexual inversion in Nona and elsewhere.  Some thirty years ago a popular novelist, A. Belot, published a novel called Mademoiselle Giraud, ma Femme, which was much read; the novelist took the attitude of a moralist who is bound to treat