In our judgment, there is but little in the improved modes of farming, in scientific discoveries, and new mechanical appliances, to be relied upon for the elevation of New England agriculture and the emancipation of New England farming life. The farmer needs new ideas more than he needs new implements. The process of regeneration must begin in the mind, and not in the soil. The proprietor of that soil should be the true New England gentleman. His house should be the home of hospitality, the embodiment of solid comfort and liberal taste, the theatre of an exalted family-life which shall be the master and not the servant of labor, and the central sun of a bright and happy social atmosphere. When this standard shall be reached, there will be no fear for New England agriculture. The noblest race of men and women the sun ever shone upon will cultivate these valleys and build their dwellings upon these hills; and they will cling to a life which blesses them with health, plenty, individual development, and social progress and happiness. This is what the farmer's life may be and should be; and if it ever rise to this in New England, neither prairie nor savanna can entice her children away; and waste land will become as scarce, at last, as vacant lots in Paradise.
The title is an ambitious one, for the _salons_ of Paris are Paris itself; and, from the days of the Fronde and of the Hôtel Rambouillet down to our own, you may judge pretty accurately of what is going on upon the great political stage of France by what is observable in those green-rooms and _coulisses_ called the Parisian drawing-rooms, and where, more or less, the actors of all parties may be seen, either rehearsing their parts before the performance, or seeking, after the performance is over, the several private echoes of the general public sentiment that has burst forth before the light of the foot-lamps. Shakspeare's declaration, that "all the world's a stage," is nowhere so true as in the capital of Gaul. There, most truly may it be said, are
----"All the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts."
Therefore might a profound and comprehensive study of the drawing-rooms of Paris be in a manner a history of France in our own times.