neo-Hellenism, the aim of which seems to have been to inspire a love
and sympathy for the art, religion, and literature of ancient and
modern Greece. In her works she shows a deep insight into Greek
life and art. Her name will always be connected with the Republican
movement in France; as a salon leader, _femme de lettres_, journalist,
and female politician, no woman is better known in France in the
nineteenth century.

A woman who might be called the rival of Mme. Adam, but whose
activity occurred much earlier in the century, was Mme. Emile de
Girardin,--Delphine Gay,--who ruled, at least for a short time, the
social and literary world of Paris at her hotel in the Rue Chaillot.
Her very early precocity, combined with her rare beauty, made her
famous. In 1836, after having written a number of poems which showed
a weak sentimentality and a quite mannered emotion, she founded the
_Courrier Francais_, for which she wrote articles on the questions of
the day--effusions which were written upon the spur of the moment and
were very unreliable. Her dramas were hardly successful, although they
were played by the great Rachel. Her present claim to fame is based
upon the brilliancy of her salon.

The future will possibly remember Mme. Alphonse Daudet more as the
wife of the great Daudet than as a writer, although, according to
M. Jules Lemaitre, she possessed the gift of _ecriture artiste_ to
a remarkable degree. According to him, sureness and exactness and a
striking truth of impressions are her characteristics as a writer. She
exercised a most wholesome power over Alphonse Daudet, taking him away
from bad influences, giving him a home, dignity, and happiness, and
saving him from brutality and pessimism; she was his guardian and
censor; she preserved his grace and noble sentiments. The nature of
her relations to him should ensure the preservation of her name to
posterity.

We are accustomed to give Gyp--Sybille Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de
Riquetti de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville--little credit
for seriousness or morality, associating her with the average
brilliant, flippant novelists, who write because they possess the
knack of writing in a brilliant style. Her object is to show that man,
in a civilized state in society, is vain, coarse, and ridiculous. She
paints Parisian society to demonstrate that the apparently fortunate
ones of the world are not to be envied, that they are miserable in
their so-called joy