poetic a fascination to the Christian and medieval types. Mme.
de la Fayette painted with rare delicacy the old struggle between
passion and duty, but character triumphs over passion, and duty
is the final victor. In spite of the low standards of the age,
the ideal woman of society, as of literature, was noble, tender,
modest, pure, and loyal.

But the eighteenth century brings new types to the surface. The
precieuses, with their sentimental theories and naive reserves,
have had their day. It is no longer the world of Mme. de
Rambouillet that confronts us with its chivalrous models, its
refined platonism, and its flavor of literature, but rather that
of the epicurean Ninon, brilliant, versatile, free, lax,
skeptical, full of intrigue and wit, but without moral sense of
spiritual aspiration. Literary portraits and ethical maxims have
given place to a spicy mixture of scandal and philosophy,
humanitarian speculations and equivocal bons mots. It is piquant
and amusing, this light play of intellect, seasoned with clever
and sparkling wit, but the note of delicacy and sensibility is
quite gone. Society has divested itself of many crudities and
affectations perhaps, but it has grown as artificial and self-
conscious as its rouged and befeathered leaders.

The woman who presided over these centers of fashion and
intelligence represent to us the genius of social sovereignty.
We fall under the glamour of the luminous but factitious
atmosphere that surrounded them. We are dazzled by the subtlety
and clearness of their intellect, the brilliancy of their wit.
Their faults are veiled by the smoke of the incense we burn
before them, or lost in the dim perspective. It is fortunate,