ught
them all together.'

To our minds, there seems something unique and infinitely touching in
this bursting out, though but for a short time, of the slumbering
fires of an older society, from underneath the heaps of hard and alien
material which had gone far to extinguish every spark of gentleness
and refinement. The relics of families--their hearts still bleeding
from their wounds--came to forget, if possible, the terrible past, and
indulge their quiet hopes for the future. Very soon, indeed, the dream
was dispelled; the tyranny proved to some unbearable; and some it
vanquished in their highest part--their inward conscience--making them
subservient when they might have shunned the danger altogether. But
while the quiet interval lasted, it was like an Indian summer,
prolonging the intellectual and tasteful beauty which was soon to be
overwhelmed by the vulgar splendours of the Empire.

The greatest loss this circle could have had was the first. Mme de
Beaumont died at Rome in 1804--attended only by Chateaubriand--who has
given an account of the closing scene in his memoirs, and thenceforth
it does not appear that the same society reassembled.

But another and third edition of the salon, under Mme de Stael, was
witnessed at the Restoration. Hitherto we have sketched from Mme
Sophie Gay's pictures. At this period, she declares herself unable to
bear the mortification of mingling with the public of Paris: she could
not see the Cossacks without shuddering. She shut herself up in her
house, and knew what passed only through the kindness of friends, who
wrote narratives for her amusement of any remarkable incidents they
might note. Among these communications, Mme Sophie Gay has preserved
one from the Marquis de Custine, and she has given it as a faithful
picture of one of the last of Mme de Stael's soirees in Paris.

'I am just returned, and will not go to bed without telling you what
has most amused me--not that _amused_ is the right word, for Mme de
Stael's salon is more than a scene of amusement: it is a glass in
which is reflected the history of the time. What we see and hear there
is more instructive than books, more exciting than many comedies....

'You know that the Duke of Wellington was to visit her this evening
for the first time. I went in good time; she was not yet in the room:
several others were also waiting--such as the Abbe de Pradt, Benjamin
Constant, La Fayette. They were conversing; I remained in one