wise than by thrashing superannuated watchmen-a man, in short, who will survive for posterity as Charlemagne of the great empire of Clubs. It would never surprise me to find the ashes of the great ex-dandy fetched home from Caen, as those of Napoleon have been from St Helena, to be interred at the foot of the Duke of York's column; on the identical spot where he initiated the Prince into the mysteries of Roman punch; the Sully of that modern Henri whose good-nature probably wished that all his subjects might have "un turbot au pot." No doubt that, like the great man of antiquity, George Brummell often threatened his ungrateful country that it "should not even possess his bones!" But flesh and blood are more susceptible in their generation than the disembodied and enlightened ghost.'

After all, the most unanswerable evidence of his influence is afforded by Lord Byron, who gravely sets down in one of his journals, that three great men fell in the same year-(1815)Napoleon, Brummell, and himself; and according to Captain Medwyn, or some other reporter of his conversations, he used to boast of the attention paid him by the dandy chief, as a proof of his own position as a man of fashion. Whenever, therefore, a philosophical dissertation on the progress of English society in the nineteenth century shall be written, it is clear that the Brummell dynasty must fill a chapter in it.

We are reluctant to conclude without a word of caution as to the occasional inaccuracies by which the value of the statements regarding manners is impaired. Take, for example, such a passage as the following :—

At the period of my debut, I swear there was occasionally seen a glimpse of blue sky over Hyde Park !-Our recent ambassador, M. le Doctrinaire Guizot, who, during his first fortnight in London, was continually passing his hand before his eyes, convinced by the mistiness of his vision that cataract was impending, might have seen his way clearly then to the affaires étrangères, in a physical as well as in a moral sense.

I enlarge on all this, lest the dandies of to-day may find it difficult to account for my boasted enjoyment of good health and spirits. As regards the former, there was less quackery in the world-no homœopathy, no dephlogistication; as regards the latter, less smother in the air. People in general were more agreeable. Knowledge did not pretend to be useful. Society, now so blue, was couleur de rose. There were almost as many courteous readers as there are now writers; and authors were a sort of people who dined with a great man on a Sunday in their best clothes, when, indeed, they had a coat to boast of. Like mothers, they have since risen amazingly in the market. They owe that to Scott and Byron. Sir Walter was the first who wrote up authorship; and, to quote the words of his lordly contemporary, "it was not the least conquest of his fertilizing and mighty genius."

There is hardly a sentence in this passage to be depended upon, except the first. In particular, the change in the position

of authors is post-dated by more than half a century; and to say that Scott and Byron gave them their first brevet of respectability, is preposterous.

This Journal was established so long ago as 1802; but on glancing over the names of the authors reviewed in the early Numbers, we find few qualified to plead to our jurisdiction. in formâ pauperis; and we can confidently state that all our own literary associates had coats'-some of them coronets. We will also take it upon ourselves to say, that, during the first quarter of the present century, society was much bluer than it is at present. We well remember the time when the first question a young gentleman put to his partner at a ball regarded the last of the Waverley novels or the last new poem, and when an early copy of the forthcoming Review was a diploma of distinction for the week. Sir Walter Scott, in illustration of the ardour with which the Diable Boiteux was received at its first appearance, relates that two young men, entering the same bookseller's shop in which there chanced to be only one copy of the work, contested the possession of it by fighting upon the spot; and the victor, having wounded his antagonist, carried off the volume as the prize of the field.* We appeal to our sexagenarian readers whether, during some years both before and after the date of Cecil Danby's debut, any of the authors in Vogue were not just as likely to be fought for à l'outrance; nay, whether we ourselves, or our great southern rival, have not most probably the life of some over-ardent subscriber to answer for? The truth is, literature had then the stamp of fashion. It has now lost this advantage or disadvantage; for when a good thing has once gained attention enough to be appreciated, it thrives best without factitious aids of any kind. It is quite true that there are at present a great many more writers moving in the best circles; but then they are no longer lionized, and are found blending unostentatiously with the mass; partly because their number prevents their being regarded as rarities, partly because a large proportion of them have other and independent titles (rank, fortune, political, or professional eminence) to be there.

Errors of this kind may assist us in the solution of a question which has been discussed with more than ordinary animation in the metropolis-who is the author of this book? Fine gentlemen and ladies who write, never sneer at writers; and these volumes are crowded with depreciating allusions. This gets rid at once of a large class of candidates. Again, the author was not at Eton, or he would hardly complain of being called Danby junior: he

*Life of Le Sage.

was never a member of the House of Commons, or he must know that it would be quite impossible for a stranger to take his place behind the treasury bench and join in the cheers: he was not one of the Brummell set, or he would scarcely attribute the origin of Melton to their sportsmanship, or describe a loo-party as the party of the night in their time. The acquaintance with Lord Byron's habits and peculiarities, is no more than might be collected from his journals; and, though Cecil is attached to George the Fourth's household, it is remarkable that he has not preserved one individual trait of his royal master or his friends. We are willing to set down a mistake regarding Shakspeare as the effect of haste; but, when an author confounds one commandment with another, common charity requires us to presume that he is not a clergyman. The French scenes betoken a residence of some length, if not complete domestication, at Paris; but this advantage is more than counterbalanced by the erroneous notions regarding England, inevitably contracted by an absentee. The pretension, the superciliousness, the forced vivacity, the slang (for much of their conversation deserves no better name) of Cecil's associates, belong only to a few silly men and women of the demirep genus; ease, grace, urbanity, reserve, and (above all) reof manner, are the true characteristics of the highest order of our aristocracy. Putting all these things together, we infer that the work is not by Lord H., or Lord W., or Mr S. D., or Mr M., or the Rev. or any other of the many accomplished persons to whom it has been confidently attributed; but that it is from the pen of one of the liveliest, cleverest, wittiest, and most prolific of our female writers, with the aid of a learned friend to supply the quotations, and, perhaps, some scraps of a posthumous diary or journal to work upon. Aut diabolus aut Mrs G

Richardson's biographers have preserved an anecdote of an old lady, who, being obliged to have books read to her on account of a weakness in her eyes, said she preferred Sir Charles Grandison for that purpose; because, when she indulged in a fit of drowsiness, she ran no risk of losing any part of the story, but was sure to find the characters where she left them, conversing in the cedar parlour. De Clifford possesses the same recommendation. Open it where you will, you are sure to find some one lecturing the hero; and the main action is little more than sufficient to carry him from one set of advisers to another. The story, therefore, may be summarily disposed of.

De Clifford is a lineal descendant of the Cliffords and Bardolfes of the olden time; but the family property has gradually melted away, and his father has sunk to the level of the higher

order of yeomanry, though his title to rank with the gentry of his county is still partially recognised, by his being occasionally summoned to serve on the grand jury. The son forms an acquaintance, at a provincial school, with the eldest son of Mr Hastings, a country gentleman of large fortune, who claims to be descended from the Plantagenets, and is connected by marriage with one of the reigning houses of Germany. Bertha, his daughter, is a personification of all that is soft, sweet, and lovely in womanhood, or rather girlhood; for she is still in her teens when De Clifford becomes devotedly attached to her. But far from telling his love, he seems content to regard it as the highest act of presumption on his part to think of the daughter of the lord of Foljambe Park as one who could ever condescend to become his wife; and the altered character of his schoolfellow, Charles Hastings, soon repels him to a still more hopeless distance. When they met at Oxford, De Clifford is made to feel in the most painful manner the difference between a gentleman commoner of Christchurch and an exhibitioner from Queen's; a friend is fortunately at hand to point the moral; he braces up his mind for a strong effort, shakes off his daydreamng and despondency, and wins a scholarship. This is almost all he does for himself from one end to the other of the book; for Mr Ward's views are diametrically the reverse of Miss Edgeworth's, as developed in tronage.' No sooner has this one step towards university distinction been obtained, than, like another Sterne or Goldsmith, he sets off on a walking expedition, in the course of which, after encountering sundry adventures all ending in a talk, he falls in with a distant relation, one Mr Manners, who gives him an infinity of good advice and an introduction to the prime minister, Lord Castleton. He is at once made private secretary to his lordship, and, being now on the high-foad of promotion, is not long in getting a sinecure of two thousand a-year and a seat in parliament. Whilst fortune has been favouring him, she has been singularly unkind to the Hastings family. The son is killed in a duel; the father is half ruined by a hurricane; so that, when the prosperous De Clifford reappears as a suitor, there is no longer any material obstacle beyond that which is created by his own unaccountable blindness and irresolution. At length, however, he finds out, what had long been clear to every one else that the match will be acceptable to all parties, and his constancy is rewarded by the hand of Bertha, who had reciprocated his feelings from the first.

Pa

The great charm of this book will be found in the love-scenes; which are uniformly remarkable for grace, delicacy, and truth. We would particularly instance the scene in the little valley near

York, where the authorship of the verses is discussed. The lover's undue diffidence, when the consummation of his hopes is so evidently at hand, is exceedingly provoking; but this is a fault on the right side, and we are too strongly imbued with oldfashioned notions regarding the respect due to the sex, to dwell upon it.

We also bear willing testimony to the general good sense, good feeling, and gentlemanly turn of the disquisitions on books and men, life and manners, which occupy three-fourths of the publication. But Mr Ward has fallen into a few errors, which we cannot allow to circulate, under the high authority of his name, without a protest. In the first place, a most undue importance is attributed to rank and wealth. It is absurd to suppose that the undoubted scion of two noble houses could ever have been regarded in the light of an humble follower, or poor dependent, by the Hastings' family; and it is by no means creditable to Mr Hastings to be represented as undergoing a complete change of sentiment when his own fortunes are in the wane and De Clifford's in the ascendant. The reflection that their ancestors fought on the same side, might surely have suggested itself at an earlier period of their acquaintance. A still more serious ground of complaint, is the manner in which writers for the periodical press are treated; and the discredit thrown upon the whole body by the introduction of Mr John Paragraph as their representative :—

Yet every body had heard of the eminent critic, Mr John Paragraph, although nobody knew what he had been, until he blazed forth as one of the directors of the public taste, which he condescended to guide in a periodical publication. Perhaps he had been, like myself, a decayed gentleman, though, unlike myself, he had been ten years on the town. Hence, on the strength of a considerable portion of verjuice in his composition, and impenetrable impudence in scattering it, whether in print or conversation, he became a first-rate character in the walk he had chosen.

Mr Paragraph was eminent for a natural slang, which passed with vulgar people for wit, and with the weak and timid for. overpowering ability. "Yet I have long," said Granville, who gave me this account, "taken measure of his understanding and acquirements, and even as, what he pretends to be, a critic, have found him below mediocrity; but as a man who has either the mind, manners, or literature of a gentleman, he is not to be named. For the fellow has not a feeling of liberality in his whole carcass; not a sentiment of poetry, or spark of imagination, or the commonest knowledge of history, still less, of the nature of man.'

Here an obvious enquiry suggests itself: