olish, 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 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
leaning to the side of the latter, intellectually, but retaining much of
the finer morality that distinguished the best life of the former. Her
attitude towards the disorders of the regency was similar to that which
Mme. de Rambouillet had held towards the profligate court of Henry IV,
though her salon never attained the vogue of its model. It lacked a
certain charm of youth and freshness perhaps, but it was one of the few
in which gambling was not permitted, and in which conversation had not
lost its serious and critical flavor.

If Mme. de Lambert were living today she would doubtless figure openly
as an author. Her early tastes pointed clearly in that direction. She
was inclined to withdraw from the amusements of her age, and to pass her
time in reading, or in noting down the thoughts that pleased her. The
natural bent of her mind was towards moral reflections. In this quality
she resembled Mme. de Sable, but she was a woman of greater breadth and
originality, though less fine and exclusive. She wrote much in later
life on educational themes,