CURRENT LITERATURE.
Woman in 'France during the :Eighteenth Century. By Julia Kavanagh:- A new edition. (Smith, Elder,-and Co.)--This edition, clearly printed on excellent paper in a convenient shape, will be a boon to the numerout admirersof Miss Kavanagh's writings, and the eightportraits considerably raise one's notions of the conversational powers of the ladies whose influence on society is here 'described. It cannot have been, due to -thelr-bean.ty, whieh is decidedly moderate. The book is written be ex- cellent taste. The-subject being the clever women of an utterly immoral' age, the writer gives us no perpetual-protest-against their vices—which would be as absurd as a history of . the Popes fall of perpetual protests- against "the corruptions of Rome." Nor can -anything be finer than. the contrast between the beginning of the book and its end, between Madame du Deffand and Marie Antoinette, Madame de Tencin and Madame Roland ; a contrast the more impressive because the reader is. left to draw it for himself. People talk of the brilliancy Of the society of the eighteenth century, when it was in fact vainly striving to hide beneath heartless witticisms its intolerable ennui.
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