This is to be found in some _salons_. There are homes where young girls are not excluded from general conversation. They are not, as elsewhere, banished to a corner of the drawing-room to enjoy the privilege and habit of discussing together every sort of nonsense, but are allowed to listen to anything that interests them, and even to talk agreeably without being thought conspicuous. This was the habit at M.----'s, where his two daughters joined the most serious _réunions_, mingling in very interesting conversations, or at least listening, and all quite naturally, without pretension or pedantry. Those two young girls have become very superior women. How many, on the other hand, suffer from _ennui_ or become deteriorated, because their active minds receive no nourishment! Is it then so difficult to prove that the intellectual development of women through literature and the fine arts, far from introducing a foreign element into their lives, or creating necessities and interfering with duty, is, on the contrary, a source of daily advantage to domestic life and to society? In the domestic circle, whose moral atmosphere they create as it were, elevating or debasing by their influence, sentiments, occupations, and ideas; and in society, where a well-directed employment of their talents and cultivation would substitute solidity for the hollow frivolity of the reunions of the present day. "For three years I have seen society in the provinces," writes to me a young woman. "It differs little from that of other (provincial) places, I suppose. Ah me! sometimes at the end of the day I sum up six or seven hours spent, with or against my will, in gossip about my neighbors that, while compromising charity, has exhausted the mind and narrowed the already narrow horizon." Is there no middle course for women between the folly of dangerous and frivolous amusements, such as balls and theatres, and the insupportable bore of parties where long evening hours are spent in the smallest of small talk? Efforts in a different direction meet with success. Last winter, an intelligent and religious woman, who likes society but does not dance, tried the experiment in a provincial town. She conceived the idea of having really good music in her drawing-room. Quartettes of Mozart and Beethoven were played. The admiration aroused by these _chef-d'oeuvres_ naturally lifted the mind above the level of those common preoccupations that find their echo in society. Conversation felt the influence; every one was delighted, and brought away something from these _soirées_, where the sense of beauty, while reasserting itself, awoke good thoughts and strengthened noble sentiments.