It is a remarkable instance of the way in which the widest and deepest social movements are veiled to the eyes of those who see them, precisely because of their width and depth.

Foreigners, especially Englishmen, visited Paris in the latter half of the eighteenth century and reported variously of their experience and impressions.

Some, like Hume and Sterne, are delighted; some, like Gibbon, are quietly, but thoroughly pleased; some, like Walpole--though he perhaps is a class by himself--are half pleased and half disgusted.

They all feel that there is something peculiar in what they witness, but never seem to suspect that nothing like it was ever seen before in the world.

One is tempted to wish that they could have seen with our eyes, or, much more, that we could have had the privilege of enjoying their experience, of spending a few months in that singular epoch when "society," properly so called, the assembling of men and women in drawing-rooms for the purpose of conversation, was the most serious as well as the most delightful business of life.