FRENCHWOMEN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.* THIS is a very pretty

new edition of a book which was worth reprinting, for it represents a great deal of conscientious work among memoirs and histories of the last century; and though its conclusions may now sometimes be thought mistaken, and its rather high-flown and old-fashioned style reminds us of our youth and such books as Alison's History of Europe, rather than of Taine or De Tocqueville, it is yet by no means without an attractiveness and a value of its own. Miss Kavanagh did not profess to be an analyst or a historical critic. She studied the women of that time, as far as it was then possible to her, from contemporary sources, made pictures of them from her own impressions, and used every point that could be pressed into the service to strengthen her theory that the eighteenth century, with all its great changes of thought and life in France, owed everything to the in- fluence of women.

On the whole, she seems at first to make out a good case ; her Frenchwomen, from Madame de Maintenon to Madame de Staid, had, to all appearance, great power in directing the destinies of France. Her point of view seems almost the right one, as we read her account of the salons, the bureaux

• Woman in France during the Eighteenth Century. By Julie, Kavanagh. 2 yols. Londott and pjew Tort ; G. P, yntnant's Song. 1893.

d'esprit, Madame de Tencin, Madame d'Epinay, Madame du Deffand, Mdlle. de Lespinasse, Madame Geoffrin, besides all those ladies, the mistresses of Louis XV., who influenced manners more than wit or philosophy. One must always remember, however, that these women originated nothing.

We are safe in saying that among them all there was not one real genius, at least not till the days of Madame de Stael.

They talked, they listened, they picked up and popularised new ideas ; they patronised talent, ruled taste, and sometimes failed very signally to appreciate the best work. For instance, when Bernardin de St. Pierre read his manuscript of Paul et Virginie in Madame Necker's salon, to a distinguished party of male and female critics, most of them yawned and whispered ; and though, it is true, one or two of the less important ladies ventured to shed a few tears, only Madame Necker spoke, and she to find fault. After which Paul et Virginie was nearly burnt by the discouraged author, and lay in a drawer for years. Miss Kavanagh does not tell this story, but it discredits the brilliant power of criticism which she claims for her bureaux d'esprit. It is not by fashion or by talk that the great events of history or of literature are brought into existence, and the causes of things lie very much deeper than the brains or characters of a few sharp- tongued women. Theories like this are apt, on the whole, to give a false view of history.

After all, the most learned ladies of the eighteenth century only foreshadowed very dimly those of the nineteenth. They played at classical knowledge, at geometry, astronomy and all the known sciences, as the shallowest and most ignorant of our " educated " women may play now. Whether it was Madame .du Chiltelet's devotion to science which chiefly attracted Voltaire, as Miss Kavanagh assures us, we cannot help doubting. It amused him, no doubt; but these lines are not exactly respectful ;—

"Cette belle lime est une etoffe Qu'elle brode en mile facons ; Son esprit est tres philosophe, Et son cceur aime les pompons."

However, it would be rather hard to take Madame du Chatelet —" Venus Newton," as Frederick the Great called her—as an example among the scientific women of any age. It is equally a mistake to take any of Miss Kavanagh's list of women, literary, scientific, fashionable, more or less moral, and to treat them as sovereign leaders of thought. At their strongest, they were like the current of a river, sweeping straws and leaves along with it, no doubt, but swept along itself by a wind from heaven.

Whether one goes all length with Miss Kavanagh or not in her views of the eighteenth century and its regime feminin, it cannot be denied that her two volumes are full of interest and information. With "the vagueness characteristic of well-informed people," as Mrs. Ritchie puts it so delightfully in one of her books, most of us must confess that the ladies mentioned above, and many more well-known in that society, are only known to us by name ; their personality is shadowy; there are few of us who could say much, on the demand of the moment, about Madame de Tencin or Madame d'Epinay. Yet Madame de Tencin—" the nun Tencin," as Miss Kavanagh not very gracefully calls her—had as varied and interesting a life as any woman of the century, and influenced politics more than most. She was a really clever and thoroughly unprincipled woman ; while Madame d'Epinay, in spite of her fame among the philosophers, her friendship with Hume, Rousseau, Grimm, and others, her pretensions to literature—which were oddly mixed up with her love - affairs — remained throughout a commonplace person, and in the end "wrote works on education, and became the rival of Madame de Genlis," that not very respectable and much overrated woman of letters. Gossip about the private lives of these ladies and many more, as well as of their friends the philosophers, is plentifully scattered through Miss Kavanagh's pages, where we have altogether a picture of the eighteenth century in all its pretension, shallowness, and immorality, more sad than amusing, reminding us usefully, however, from what sort of soil the Revolution sprang.

But after all, it is a one-sided picture. The author gives us with a free hand the frivolities and philosophies, the false wisdom and false virtue of the time. With a dash of her pen she informs us that the great ladies of Louis XV.'s court, who flattered Madame de Pompadour, spent much of their

time in cabarets, breaking plates and glasses after the manner of men, while their husbands played with panting at home.

These toys, often mentioned in old letters, were figures of

painted cardboard put in motion by a string, and being brought over from Paris, were found very fascinating by

English persons of fashion. If one knew no more of the France of the last century than is to be found here, one would conclude that religion, honesty, modesty, good sense, real

intelligence, decency of behaviour, had died out completely among the French nobility. It is the same mistake which people always make when they generalise from details. In this way some future writer might assure the world that " Dodo " was a type of the Englishwoman of 1893, just as people now, who know no better, place all Frenchwomen of rank on a level with those who make themselves conspicuous in the most advanced society of Paris. There were plenty of distinguished old ladies in France, contemporary with Madame du Deffand, but amazingly unlike her. The qualities shown in Revolutionary troubles did not spring up in a day; much of that heroism was the fruit of Christian belief and Christian lives ; though perhaps we can hardly expect this to be realised by a writer who compares Madame Roland with St. Teresa. But when Miss Kavanagh says that she has considered Madame du Chittelet as " a sample of what the women of high rank then really were," she seems to us to insult the best French society in a very extraordinary way. And she personally insults the noble Duchene de Gramont, the sister of Choiseul, by imputing her enmity to Madame du Barry to the lowest and wickedest motive,—a woman who might have saved herself from the guillotine by a lie, but whose fine words, "Ma vie ne vaut pas un mensonge," ought never to be forgotten. And Miss Kavanagh shows what must be called ignorance by describing how when Madame du Barry's influence banished her from Court, Madame de Gramont " became a provincial canoness, and lived in a state of mediocrity ; " a way of writing which suggests that the writer had no idea of the position of a chanoinesse before the Revolution, and even down to our own day.

The book, in truth, would have been much increased in value by a little careful editing before it was given once more to the world. Some of its expressions are very odd ; for instance, Louis XVI. is described as "weak and resistless." French names are curiously treated; we have the "Marchioness of Lambert," the "Marquess of Prie," and so forth, but this is only occasional, consistency being impossible ; it is therefore much better to keep to the French form. There is some want of courtesy in writing of " Old Ninon de l'Enclos." We hear a good deal of Madame de Pompadour's bad taste in art, which is scarcely proved by her being made responsible for Watteau and Boucher, as well as for the furniture of the period.

The second volume is in fact a history of the Revolution and the part taken in it by women. The old familiar story loses none of its terrible fascination. Miss Kavanagh had nothing new to tell, and her enthusiasm for Madame Roland is a little overstrained. She fails really to understand the Queen, though she does full justice to her heroism, as well as to that of many other victims. From her point of view it was Marie Antoinette and Madame Roland, working in different directions, who brought about the chief horrors of the Revolu- tion, and it was Madame Tallien who brought them to a close. Thus she works out her theory to its end, ascribing Napoleon's fall greatly to the sarcasms of Madame de Stael.

The interest of the book is increased by portraits of the principal women mentioned in it; some of them much better than others, but all interesting. The cover is scattered with fleurs de lig, and the contrast of those bright and stainless flowers with the society described within is suggestive and saddening. But we can assure Miss Kavanagh's readers that there were yet a few " thousands in Israel."