Let me turn from the world of balls to a _milieu_ which is less frivolous, and take certain ladies as types of tendencies which then prevailed in it. It will be enough to mention four, whose houses represented society as, in some ways, at its best. I refer to Mrs. William Lowther, Lady Marian Alford, Louisa, Lady Ashburton (whom I thus group together because their isolated and commanding dwellings stood practically in the same row), and Lady Somers. All these were women of the highest cultivation. They were devoted to art. Mrs. Lowther was herself an artist. Mrs. Lowther and Lady Ashburton, though thorough women of the world with regard to their mundane company, were remarkable for a grave philanthropy which they sacrificed much to practice. Indeed at some of their entertainments it was not easy to tell where society ended and high thinking began. This could not be said of Lady Somers or of Lady Marian. Though in artistic and intellectual taste they equaled the three others, the guests whom they collected about them were essentially chosen with a view to the social charm which wit, manners, or beauty enabled them, as if by magic, to communicate to the passing moment. And here it may be observed conversely that in a world like that of London the art of society depends not on choice only, but also, and no less, on an equally careful rejection, and is for that reason beset by peculiar and varying difficulties. Of these difficulties Lady Marian herself once spoke to me. They had, she said, been lately brought home to her by certain of her friends who had been urging her to give a ball--a suggestion which, for the following reasons, she found herself unwilling to entertain. "It is impossible," she said, "to give a successful ball in London without being very ill-natured to a large number of people. Many of those who would think they had a right to be asked would--though on other occasions no doubt welcome enough--be as much out of place in a ballroom as a man would be in a boat race who could not handle an oar." But she was, so she added, going to make an attempt at reviving a kind of entertainment to which no such difficulties would attach themselves. During the months of the coming winter she proposed to send out cards to all her more intimate acquaintances; announcing that she would always be at home after dinner on a certain day each week, and begging them to give her their company whenever, and as often as, they pleased. A certain number of people--all of them agreeable and distinguished--responded to this appeal; but their number rarely exceeded fifteen or twenty, and Lady Marian was at length bound to admit that the competitive attractions developed by the enlargement of social life were such as to render a revival of the _salon_ impossible, even among acquaintances so carefully chosen as her own.