Our purpose in these pages is not to touch upon anything connected with politics, or we could show, that, whilst apparently severed from all activity upon the more conspicuous field of the capital, the ancient French families were employed in reestablishing their influence in the rural provincial centres; the result of which was the extraordinary influx of Legitimist members into the Chamber formed by the first Republican elections in 1848.  But this is foreign to our present aim.  As to what regards French society, properly so called, it was, from 1804, after the proclamation of the Empire, till 1848, after the fall of Louis Philippe, in gradual but incessant course of sub-division into separate cliques, each more or less bitterly disposed towards the others.  From the moment when this began to be the case, the edifice of French society could no longer be studied as a whole, and it only remained to examine its component parts as evidences of the tendencies of various classes in the nation.  In this assuredly not uninteresting study, Mme. Ancelot’s book is of much service; for a certain number of the different salons she names are, as it were, types of the different stages civilization has attained to in the city which chooses to style itself “the brain of Europe.”

The description, given in the little book before us, of what in Paris constitutes a genuine salon, is a tolerably correct one.  “A salon,” says Mme. Ancelot, “is not in the least like one of those places in a populous town, where people gather together a crowd of individuals unknown to each other, who never enter into communication, and who are where they are, momentarily, either because they expect to dance, or to hear music, or to show off the magnificence of their dress.  This is not what can ever be called a salon.  A salon is an intimate and periodical meeting of persons who for several years have been in the habit of frequenting the same house, who enjoy each other’s society, and who have some reason, as they imagine, to be happy when they are brought in contact.  The persons who receive, form a link between the various persons they invite, and this link binds the habitues more closely to one another, if, as is commonly the case, it is a woman of superior mind who forms the point of union.  A salon, to be homogeneous, and to endure, requires that its habitues should have similar opinions and tastes, and, above all, enough of the urbanity of bygone days to enable its frequenters to feel at home with every one in it, without the necessity of a formal introduction.  Formerly, this practice of speaking to persons you had not been presented to was a proof of good-breeding; for it was well known that in no house of any distinction would there be found a guest who was not worthy to be the associate of whoever was noblest and best.  These habits of social intercourse gave a value to the intellectual and moral qualities of the individual, quite independent of his fortune or his rank; and in these little republics the real sovereign was merit.”