y was made so rapidly, and
the startling events of a century were condensed into a decade,
had wrought many vital changes. It was no longer the spirit of the
eighteenth century that reappeared under its revived and attractive
forms. We note a tone of seriousness that had no permanent place in that
world of esprit and skepticism, of fine manners and lax morals, which
divided its allegiance between fashion and philosophy. The survivors of
so many heart-breaking tragedies, with their weary weight of dead hopes
and sad memories, found no healing balm in the cold speculation and
scathing wit of Diderot or Voltaire. Even the devotees of philosophy
gave it but a half-hearted reverence. It was at this moment that
Chateaubriand, saturated with the sorrows of his age, and penetrated
with the hopelessness of its philosophy, offered anew the truths that
had sustained the suffering and broken-hearted for eighteen centuries,
in a form so sympathetic, so fascinating, that it thrilled the sensitive
spirits of his time, and passed like an inspiration into the literature
of the next fifty years. The melancholy of "Rene" found its divine
consolation in the "Genius of Christianity." It was this spirit that
lent a new and softer coloring to the intimate social life that blended
in some degree the tastes and manners of the old noblesse with a refined
and tempered form of modern thought. It recalls, in many points, the
best spirit of the seventeenth century. There is a flavor of the same
seriousness, the same sentiment. It is the sentiment that sent so many
beautiful women to the solitude of the cloister, when youth had faded
and the air of approaching age began to grow chilly. But it is not to
the cloister that these women turn. They weave romantic tales out of
the texture of their own lives, they repeat their experiences, their
illusions, their triumphs, and their disenchantments. As the day grows
more somber and the evening shadows begin to fall, they meditate, they
moralize, they substitute prayers for dreams. But they think also. The
drama of the late years had left no thoughtful soul without earnest
convictions. There were numerous shades of opinion, many finely drawn
issues. In a few salons these elements were delicately blended, and if
they did not repeat the brilliant triumphs of the past, if they focused
with less power the intellectual light which was dispersed in many new
channels, they have left behind them many fragrant memories.