he brightness of her mind. As it is the soul which
is the glory of a woman, so the soul sheds its rays of imperishable
light on the last pathway of existence. No beauty ever utterly passes
away when animated by what is immortal.

Madame Recamier died at last of cholera, that disease which of all
others she had ever most dreaded and avoided. On the 11th of May, 1849,
amid weeping relatives and kneeling servants and sacerdotal prayers,
this interesting woman passed away from earth. To her might be applied
the eulogy of Burke on Marie Antoinette.

Madame Recamier's place in society has never since been filled with
equal grace and fascination. She adopted the customs of the Hotel de
Rambouillet,--certain rules which good society has since observed. She
discouraged the _tete-a-tete_ in a low voice in a mixed company; if any
one in her circle was likely to have especial knowledge, she would
appeal to him with an air of deference; if any one was shy, she
encouraged him; if a _mot_ was particularly happy, she would take it up
and show it to the company. Presiding in her own _salon_, she talked but
little herself, but rather exerted herself to draw others out; without
being learned, she exercised great judgment in her decisions when
appeals were made to her as the presiding genius; she discouraged
everything pedantic and pretentious; she dreaded exaggerations; she kept
her company to the subject under discussion, and compelled attention;
she would allow no slang; she insisted upon good-nature and amiability,
which more than anything else marked society in the eighteenth century.

We read so much of those interesting reunions in the _salons_ of
distinguished people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that we
naturally seek to know what constituted their peculiar charm. It seems
to me to have been conversation, which is both an art and a gift. In
these exclusive meetings women did not reign in consequence of their
beauty so much as their wit. Their vivacity, intelligence, and tact, I
may add also their good-nature, were a veil to cover up all
eccentricities. It was when Madame du Deffand was eighty, and blind,
that Horace Walpole pronounced her to be the most interesting woman in
France. Madame de Stael, never beautiful, was the life of a party at
forty-five; Madame Recamier was in her glory at fifty; Hannah More was
most sought when she was sixty. There can be no high society where
conversation is not the chief attracti