egeneration must begin in the
mind, and not in the soil. The proprietor of that soil should be the
true New England gentleman. His house should be the home of
hospitality, the embodiment of solid comfort and liberal taste, the
theatre of an exalted family-life which shall be the master and not
the servant of labor, and the central sun of a bright and happy social
atmosphere. When this standard shall be reached, there will be no
fear for New England agriculture. The noblest race of men and women
the sun ever shone upon will cultivate these valleys and build their
dwellings upon these hills; and they will cling to a life which
blesses them with health, plenty, individual development, and social
progress and happiness. This is what the farmer's life may be and
should be; and if it ever rise to this in New England, neither prairie
nor savanna can entice her children away; and waste land will become
as scarce, at last, as vacant lots in Paradise.

LES SALONS DE PARIS.[1]

The title is an ambitious one, for the _salons_ of Paris are
Paris itself; and, from the days of the Fronde and of the Hotel
Rambouillet down to our own, you may judge pretty accurately of what
is going on upon the great political stage of France by what is
observable in those green-rooms and _coulisses_ called the
Parisian drawing-rooms, and where, more or less, the actors of all
parties may be seen, either rehearsing their parts before the
performance, or seeking, after the performance is over, the several
private echoes of the general public sentiment that has burst forth
before the light of the foot-lamps. Shakspeare's declaration, that
"all the world's a stage," is nowhere so true as in the capital of
Gaul. There, most truly may it be said, are

----"All the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts."

Therefore might a profound and comprehensive study of the
drawing-rooms of Paris be in a manner a history of France in our own
times.

Madame Ancelot's little volume does not aim so high; nor, had it done
so, would its author have possessed the talent requisite for carrying
out such a design. Madame Ancelot is a writer of essentially
second-rate and subordinate capacity, and consequently her account of
those _salons de Paris_ that she has seen (and she by no means
saw them all) derives no charm from the point of view she takes. To
say the truth, she has no "