apt to savor too much of the library; we take them too seriously,
and bring into them too strong a flavor of personality. We find
in them, as a rule, little trace of the spontaneity, the variety,
the wit, the originality, the urbanity, the polish, that
distinguished the French literary salons of the last century.
Even in their own native atmosphere, the salons exist no longer
as recognized institutions. This perfected flower of a past
civilization has faded and fallen, as have all others. The salon
in its widest sense, and in some modified form, may always
constitute a feature of French life, but the type has changed,
and its old glory has forever departed. In a foreign air, even
in its best days, it could only have been an exotic, flourishing
feebly, and lacking both color and fragrance. As a copy of past
models it is still less likely to be a living force. Society,
like government, takes its spirit and its vitality from its own
soil.


CHAPTER IX. AN ANTECHAMBER OF THE ACADEMIE FRANCAISE
The Marquise de Lambert--Her "Bureau d'Esprit"--Fontenelle--
Advice to her Son--Wise Thoughts on the Education of Women--Her
love of Consideration--Her Generosoty--Influence of Women upon
the Academy.

While the gay suppers of the regent were giving a new but by no
means desirable tone to the great world of Paris, and chasing
away the last vestiges of the stately decorum that marked the
closing days of Louis XIV, and Mme. de Maintenon, there was one
quiet drawing room which still preserved the old traditions. The
Marquise de Lambert forms a connecting link between the salons of