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tional force of life in its less specialized aspects. The absence of any one social power is the safety-valve of American life; and any person who has been so unfortunate as to have lived, moved, and had his social being in only one set becomes thoroughly provincial.

The power of society as a unit reached its fullest exemplification in the days of the early French salons. The salon was to Paris what the newspapers and monthlies now are to us. Then the salon made public opinion, and literary criticism was a matter of experience and reflection. Even now the French critic imbibes the mental atmosphere of his equals, and thinks and weighs before he writes; whilst many of our critics go tired from the theatre, lecture, or concert to the newspaper office, to have put in type their fresh opinions, — perhaps slightly tinged by the headache or their somnolent condition, — which the public next morning adopt as the general way of right thinking; forgetting that a critic is