glorious nor chivalrous truly about its fall.

In the Emigration of 1789 there were some traces of a loftier feeling;
but in the Emigration of 1830 from Paris into the country there was
nothing discernible but self-interest. A few famous men of letters, a
few oratorical triumphs in the Chambers, M. de Talleyrand's attitude
in the Congress, the taking of Algiers, and not a few names that found
their way from the battlefield into the pages of history--all these
things were so many examples set before the French noblesse to show that
it was still open to them to take their part in the national existence,
and to win recognition of their claims, if, indeed, they could
condescend thus far. In every living organism the work of bringing
the whole into harmony within itself is always going on. If a man is
indolent, the indolence shows itself in everything that he does; and,
in the same manner, the general spirit of a class is pretty plainly
manifested in the face it turns on the world, and the soul informs the
body.

The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud disregard
of public opinion shown by the court ladies of olden time in their
wantonness, nor yet the simple grandeur of the tardy virtues by which
they expiated their sins and shed so bright a glory about their names.
There was nothing either very frivolous or very serious about the woman
of the Restoration. She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and
compounded, so to speak, with its pleasures. Some few families led
the domestic life of the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose connubial couch was
exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal. Two or three kept
up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer women with something
like disgust. The great lady of the new school exercised no influence at
all over the manners of the time; and yet she might have done much.
She might, at worst, have presented as dignified a spectacle as
English-women of the same rank. But she hesitated feebly among old
precedents, became a bigot by force of circumstances, and allowed
nothing of herself to appear, not even her better qualities.

Not one among the Frenchwomen of that day had the ability to create a
salon whither leaders of fashion might come to take lessons in taste and
elegance. Their voices, which once laid down the law to literature, that
living expression of a time, now counted absolutely for nought. Now
when a literature lacks a general system, it fails