who came within the sphere of her influence.  Even the gossiping Duchess D’Abrantes has only words of respectful admiration for her.  The preconceived prejudices of Madame Swetchine, whom Miss Muloch numbers among her “Good Women,” vanished at a first interview.  She wrote to her,—­“I found myself a captive before I dreamt of defending myself.  I yielded at once to that penetrating and undefinable charm which you exert even over those persons to whom you are indifferent.”  Madame de Genlis, equally prejudiced, was alike subdued.  She made Madame Recamier the heroine of a novel, and addressed letters to her full of affectionate admiration and extravagant flattery.  “You are one of the phenomena of the age,” she writes, “and certainly the most amiable....  You can look back upon the past without remorse.  At any age this is the most beautiful of privileges, but at our time of life it is invaluable.”  Madame Lenormant, even more enthusiastic, calls her a saint, which she certainly was not, but a gracious woman of the world.  Some acts of her life it is impossible to defend.  They tarnish the lustre of an otherwise irreproachable career.  Still, when we think of the low tone of morals prevalent in her youth, together with her many and great temptations, it is surprising that she should have preserved her purity of heart, and earned the respect and love of the best and wisest of her contemporaries.  No woman has ever received more universal and uniform homage, or has been more deeply lamented.  Her death left a void in French society that has never been filled.  The salon, which, from its origin in the seventeenth century, was so vital an element in Paris life, no longer exists.  That of the Hotel de Rambouillet was the first; that of the Abbaye-aux-Bois the last. “On se reunit encore, on donne des fetes splendides, on ne cause plus.”

* * * * *

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN.

Having walked about eight miles since we struck the beach, and passed the boundary between Wellfleet and Truro, a stone post in the sand,—­for even this sand comes under the jurisdiction of one town or another,—­we turned inland over barren hills and valleys, whither the sea, for some reason, did not follow us, and, tracing up a hollow, discovered two or three sober-looking houses within half a mile, uncommonly near the eastern coast.  Their garrets were apparently so full of chambers that their roofs could hardly lie down straight, and we did not doubt that there was room for us there.  Houses near the sea are generally low and broad.  These were a story and a half high; but if you merely counted the windows in their gable-ends, you would think that there were many stories more, or, at any rate, that the half-story was the only one thought worthy of being illustrated.  The great number of windows in the ends of the houses, and their irregularity in size and position, here and elsewhere on the Cape, struck us agreeably,—­as if each of the