woman. It is possible that in the search for larger fields the
smaller but not less important ones have been in a measure
forgotten. The great stream of civilization flows from a
thousand unnoted rills that make sweet music in their course, and
swell the current as surely as the more noisy torrent. The
conditions of the past cannot be revived, nor are they desirable.
The present has its own theories and its own methods. But at a
time when the reign of luxury is rapidly establishing false
standards, and the best intellectual life makes hopeless
struggles against an ever aggressive materialism, it may be
profitable as well as interesting to consider the possibilities
that lie in a society equally removed from frivolity and
pretension, inspired by the talent, the sincerity, and the moral
force of American women, and borrowing a new element of
fascination from the simple and charming but polite informality
of the old salons.

It has been the aim in these studies to gather within a limited
compass the women who represented the social life of their time
on its most intellectual side, and to trace lightly their
influence upon civilization through the avenues of literature and
manners. Though the work may lose something in fullness from the
effort to put so much into so small a space, perhaps there is
some compensation in the opportunity of comparing, in one
gallery, the women who exercised the greatest power in France for
a period of more than two hundred years. The impossibility of
entering into the details of so many lives in a single volume is
clearly apparent. Only the most salient points can be
considered. Many who would amply repay a careful study have
simply been glanced at, and others have been omitted altogether.