of seclusion under the lonely skies of Brittany. Mme. de la Fayette left the world of the salons early, to find her literary inspiration in the solitude of ill health and the stimulating friendship of La Rochefoucauld. Mme. du Châtelet, whose talent was of another color, wrote on philosophy and translated Newton, not in the breezy air of the salons, but in the tranquil shades of Cirey and the less tranquil society of Voltaire. There were other women who wrote, though they usually chose to hide a light which was not a very brilliant one, and to shine in other ways. It may be that it was the salon which made these women possible, as it created an intellectual atmosphere in which thought blossomed into intense and vivid life; but its direct tendency was to foster in women talents of a quite different sort from creative ones. It developed to a high degree, however, the fine discrimination and critical sense which led Rousseau to say that “a point of morals would not be better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty woman of Paris.” The clubs have hardly lived long enough to justify a final judgment as to their outcome; but the best writers of our own time have not been, as a rule, actively identified with them, though a few, whose minds were already formed in another school, have had much to do in founding and leading them. The many able women who have given their time and talents to the clubs have oftener merged their literary gifts, if they had them, into work of another sort, not less valuable in its way, but less tangible and less individual. It is the work of the general, who plans, organizes, sifts values, adapts means to definite ends, but who lives too much in the swift current of affairs to give heed to the voice of the imagination, or to master the art of literary form which alone makes for thought a permanent abiding-place. But if the clubs do not produce great creative writers,--who, after all, are born, not made,--they furnish a multitude of ready ones, and an army of readers who are likely to have a dominant voice in the taste of the next generation. The result is certain to be--indeed, is already--a voluminous literature. The quantity of a thing, however, does not insure its fine quality; oftener the reverse. Naturally, the question of standards becomes one of grave importance, unless we are ready to accept the rule of the average, which more than offsets the rise of the lowest by the fall of the highest, with an ultimate tendency downward. We grow in the direction of our ideals, and these are measured by the height of our standards. That many of the clubs have exalted ideals, and are doing a great deal of valuable work, is not a matter of doubt. It is equally certain that some of them work with a zeal that is not according to knowledge, through lack of capable leaders, and through a fallacy, nowhere so fatal as in art and letters, that the wish to do a thing is equivalent to a talent for doing it.