Passing over to France, we encounter the reputation of Madame de Sablé; a woman, let me remark, for the benefit of those who are afraid that the march of education will deprive them of their dinners, as celebrated for her exquisite cooking and delicate confections as she was for her literary ability. In speaking of her, Cousin says: "All the literature of maxims and thoughts, including those of La Rochefoucauld, grew up in the _salon_ of a lovely woman withdrawn into a convent. Having no earthly pleasure but that of reliving her life, she knew how to impart her own taste to society, in which she met by chance an accomplished wit, whom she contrived to turn into a great writer." He is speaking of the early part of the seventeenth century; and, in spite of the notorious dissipation of the period, many gifted and many virtuous women crowded her _salon_,--the Princess Palatine, the Princesses of Condé, de Conti, de Longueville, and Schomberg, Anna de Rohan, and Mademoiselle herself. There the gentlemen carried the pages they wrote at home, and not only bore with, but accepted, the criticisms of the women. They had no compensation but their praises, unless, like La Rochefoucauld, they were cunning enough to demand a carrot pottage or some preserved plums in exchange for a page of literature. In England, it is not necessary to avail ourselves of an exceptional education, like that of Lady Jane Grey. Remembering the noble culture of Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, of the sturdy women of the Commonwealth, we might surely expect a greater progress in the national idea. But, if its average could be found, neither the wife of John Hampden nor Lady Russell would accept it. It would seem that our standard advances, if at all, by a series of Hugh Miller's parabolic curves. What we find, depends upon the point at which we happen to test the eccentric arc; and, when we enter the nineteenth century, we are forced to take refuge in analogy, and ask, "If the ancient Egyptians _ever_ mastered the Copernican idea, why should Galileo be imprisoned to-day for insisting that the sun does not move round the earth?" The stimulating examples of noble and educated women, which now present themselves, do not cheer us as they should, while they remain exceptions. In making what Dickens would call an "indiscriminate and incontinent" excursion, into the regions of female thought and literature, we find its atmosphere in a somewhat unventilated condition, and are reminded of an opinion of the Druses which does not seem to have been wholly impertinent, that "literature is a mean and contemptible occupation, _fit only for women_." Twenty years ago, when ties of an almost filial tenderness linked us to the household of the late Judge Cranch, we have often followed him, unrecognized, of a Saturday afternoon, when, returning from the bench, he climbed Capitol Hill, one hand grasping the handle of some colored washerwoman's basket,