rrors, our ladies (in a double sense, of grace and
utility), sweep past us in the streets or rustle in the ball-room in
Louis Quinze brocades, with the boddice, if not the train, of pattern
identical with that of Madame de Pompadour, as depicted in the excellent
portrait before us in Mr. Redfield's elegant volumes, and we are, if
scandal does not lie more than usual, making very practical acquaintance
with Louis Quinze morals. It may be as well, therefore, to become more
familiar with a period we find it so convenient to imitate. The great
events of French history since 1789, their rapid sequence and ever
varying character, have thrown into the shade the previous annals of the
kingdom. Especially has this been the case with the period immediately
preceding the days of terror. This period has been dispatched in a few
sentences, in the opening chapters of works on the French Revolution--in
some vague generalities on its profligacy and chaotic infamy. We have
had glimpses, through the _Oeil de Boeuf_, at groups of exquisite
gentlemen and gay ladies; abbes who wrote every thing but sermons, and
were free from the censure of not practising what they preached since
they did not preach at all; generals who fought a campaign as
deliberately and ceremoniously as they danced a minuet; statesmen whose
diplomacy was more of the seraglio than the council; painters who
improved on nature, applying the same tricks of art to the landscape as
with powders to their curls; and simpering lips of the Marquise, and
poets whose highest flights were a sonnet to Pompadour, or a pastoral to
a sheep-tending Phillis. Our casual observations of all these people,
however, have been vague and slight, for few have probably had patience
to follow these worthies to their retirement, and look over their
shoulders at the memoirs which every mother's son and daughter of the
set, from the prime minister to the cook, found--it is impossible to
tell how--time to scribble down for the edification of posterity. In the
volumes of Arsene Houssaye before us, these gay but unsubstantial
shadows take flesh and blood, and become the _Men and Women_--the living
realities of the Eighteenth Century. We have here the most piquant
adventures of the _Memoirs_ and the choicest _mots_ of the _Anas_,
culled from the hundreds of volumes which weigh down the shelves of the
French public libraries. Not only indeed have we the run of the _petites
soupers_ of Versailles, but we may
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