News has just reached us from Paris of the death of Madame Sophie Gay. She was a writer of the half-historical, half-sentimental school of French fiction, of which Madame de Genlis, the Duchess d'Abrantes, and Madame de Souza were specimens more or less worthy; but in ease and grace, Madame Gay was superior to all we have mentioned. It is, in our minds, very affecting to witness the last lights of the ancient salons of Paris dropping out one by one. Mme Gay has herself, in a single volume published in 1837, entitled _Salons Célèbres_, left us a very beautiful picture of them as they were in their prime. We have translated--abridging, however, as we went--the opening chapters of this work, and may add a notice of more modern salons, as given by the lively pen of Mme Emile de Girardin--_née_ Delphine Gay--daughter of Mme Sophie. The reader will judge whether the fashionable Frenchmen and Frenchwomen have really profited much by the storms and tempests that have gone over their heads. To be sure, Mme de Girardin's pictures were given twelve years ago; but we believe they would require little change, at least up to the conclusion of the Orleans reign in 1848. The volume from which these last extracts are made, is entitled _Lettres Parisiennes_. It has all the wit and talent of the cleverest of fashionable Frenchwomen. The tone is sometimes extremely good--better than we were led to expect; but the picture it presents is about as mournful a one as pictures of French frivolity usually are. We will, however, leave them to make their own impression. First, then, for Mme Sophie Gay and the ancient _salons_. Now that the empire of the salons, she observes, has passed away with that of women, it would be difficult to convey to our youthful France an idea of the influence which certain of these were wont to exercise, in state affairs and in the choice of men in power. To have a salon is far from an easy thing; a crowd of people may, and do every day, give concerts and balls in their gilded apartments, and yet they may never have salons. Essential conditions are required which can rarely be found in conjunction. The most important of all is the talent and character of the lady who does the honours. Without being old, she must have passed the age in which a woman is chiefly spoken of for her prettiness or her dress, and be at that point of time when a woman's mind may rule over the self-love of a man more than her youthful attractions enabled her to rule over his heart.