reath of a spirit born of our days; new
ideas, new opinions, new hopes, nay, even new recollections, were
evident all around, and served to render social unity impossible; but,
above all, what failed in this one particular centre was youth,--there
were few or no young people." This was perfectly true; and
Mme. Lebrun's _salon_ is interesting only from the fact of its
being the last, perhaps, in which French people of our day can have
acquired a complete notion of what the Pre-Revolutionary _salons_
of France were.

The evening _reunions_ at the house of Gerard, the celebrated
painter, were among the most famous features of the society of the
Restoration. The gatherings at Mmes. de Duras's and de Montcalm's
splendid hotels were all but exclusively political and diplomatic;
whereas at Gerard's there was a mixture of these with the purely
mundane and artistic elements, and, above all, there was a portion of
Imperialist fame blended with all the rest, that was hard to be found
anywhere else. Gerard, too, had painted the portraits of so many
crowned heads, and been so much admitted into the intimacy of his
royal models, that, whenever a foreigner of any note visited Paris, he
almost immediately asked to be put in a way to be invited to the
celebrated artist's Wednesday receptions. This was, to a certain
degree, an innovation in regular French society; the French being most
truly, as has been said, the "Chinese of Europe," and liking nothing
less than the intermixture with themselves of anything foreign. But
Gerard was one of those essentially superior men who are able to
influence those around them, and bring them to much whereto no one
else could have persuaded them. Gerard, like many celebrated persons,
was infinitely superior to what he _did_. As far as what he
_did_ was concerned, Gerard, though a painter of great merit, was
far inferior to two or three of whom France has since been justly
proud; but in regard to what he _was_, Gerard was a man of
genius, who had in many ways few superiors. Few men, even in France,
have so highly deserved the reputation of _un homme d'esprit_. He
was as _spirituel_ as Talleyrand himself, and almost as
clear-sighted and profound. Add to this that nothing could surpass the
impression made by Gerard at first sight. He was strikingly like the
first Napoleon, but handsomer; with the same purity of outline, the
same dazzlingly lustrous eyes, full of penetration and thought, but
with a certai