er, I have generally to go
to the house of someone who is not a gentleman." Another said: "I don't
care for London any longer. It seems that the only people who are giving
balls to-day are people whose proper business would be to black my
boots." Utterances of this kind, though of course greatly exaggerated,
were straws which showed the direction in which the wind was blowing.

Let me turn from the world of balls to a _milieu_ which is less
frivolous, and take certain ladies as types of tendencies which then
prevailed in it. It will be enough to mention four, whose houses
represented society as, in some ways, at its best. I refer to Mrs.
William Lowther, Lady Marian Alford, Louisa, Lady Ashburton (whom I thus
group together because their isolated and commanding dwellings stood
practically in the same row), and Lady Somers. All these were women of
the highest cultivation. They were devoted to art. Mrs. Lowther was
herself an artist. Mrs. Lowther and Lady Ashburton, though thorough
women of the world with regard to their mundane company, were remarkable
for a grave philanthropy which they sacrificed much to practice. Indeed
at some of their entertainments it was not easy to tell where society
ended and high thinking began. This could not be said of Lady Somers or
of Lady Marian. Though in artistic and intellectual taste they equaled
the three others, the guests whom they collected about them were
essentially chosen with a view to the social charm which wit, manners,
or beauty enabled them, as if by magic, to communicate to the passing
moment. And here it may be observed conversely that in a world like that
of London the art of society depends not on choice only, but also, and
no less, on an equally careful rejection, and is for that reason beset
by peculiar and varying difficulties. Of these difficulties Lady Marian
herself once spoke to me. They had, she said, been lately brought home
to her by certain of her friends who had been urging her to give a
ball--a suggestion which, for the following reasons, she found herself
unwilling to entertain. "It is impossible," she said, "to give a
successful ball in London without being very ill-natured to a large
number of people. Many of those who would think they had a right to be
asked would--though on other occasions no doubt welcome enough--be as
much out of place in a ballroom as a man would be in a boat race who
could not handle an oar." But she was, so she added, going to make