the sins of a young spendthrift on some pious old peer's back, and relate divisions between couples who are known to live like avadavats on the same perch.'

We hope these civilities will not be lost on the devourers of ' novels of fashionable life'!-Mrs. Trenchard,

'Having gradually travelled through these two stages of knownothingness, was quite aware of the blessing it must prove to her to know precisely how much Lord E lost at Newmarket,-to see, with her own eyes, from beneath a scarlet berêt (shadowed with two heron plumes, and lighted with diamonds of unequalled size and lustre) how often Lord B danced with Lady Julia M——.'

The affair of Lord Frederick getting rather too bad-that is to say, being considered in this view by poor Lord Sedley's sharp and domineering sister, Olinda is visited with the severe and merited indignation of her husband-she is ordered to have a bad cold,' and relegated to the villa at Fulham, while his lordship enters into a negotiation with his Majesty's ministers, the result of which is his appointment to one of those embassies or governments, which at present reward the talents and accomplishments of so many aspirants of his class. The desolation of the heroine is ex

treme :

'Lord Sedley spent that day at Fulham, and, in spite of his indignation, sang several duets with his wife, and the next morning returned

to town

'Behold Lady Sedley alone in that villa where she had beheld as many visiters as flowers! had seen two hundred nymphs dance in hats fashioned by Herbault and Maradan-two hundred swains, whose evenings usually closed at Crockford's, who would have "stopped the nose at banks of violets," and scorned the heavy perfume of the magnolias, and the light shade of the acacias, but were willing to drink Champagne and Sauterne beneath the pink and white calico tents which Gunter provides for the rurally disposed Londoners. Here she had also seen a hundred and fifty chaperons-cold in spite of shawls, pale in spite of rouge, sleeping in spite of noise-as they stood or sat round the last quadrille or gallopade at midnight, after a breakfast!

Now, for the first time, she beheld her villa without beaux, belles, chaperons without tents, Gunter's men, Champagne, and plovers' eggs a gay desert-a green wilderness! Though the geraniums presented the greatest contrast with the past, yet Nature had made them look gay; green rails and china roses (which a great lady once pronounced as constituting the only beauty of English landscape) had lent their aid to decorate the grounds; but the house, though splendidly furnished, had that peculiarly formal and forlorn appearance which belongs to every house which is not constantly inhabited, and that by females: the very chairs and tables seem sleepy and immoveable; the pictures look prim; the books stick to each other; there are two or

three

three tall china drawers filled with pot pourri, but none of the brightlooking pink, blue, and yellow odds and ends with which the softer sex cover their tables.

'The drawing-room looked so large!-and it is very melancholy to see the cues lying on the billiard-table, the balls in the pockets, and nobody playing.'-vol. ii. pp. 6-8.

Fulham, when one must be not at home,' is bad enough; but there is worse behind. During Lord Sedley's residence abroad, Olinda-who has, just on the eve of his departure, figured in a scene of scandalous mark-is banished from Fulham to a large dreary pile of red brick, styled Treganna, on the coast of Cornwall-where, it seems, there is a great scarcity of stone; and here this irreclaimable coquette, having only one gentleman within her reach, namely the curate of the parish, makes it the object of her anxious endeavours to turn his head-which, the curate being a man of lively passions, and, although an eloquent preacher, an infidel at bottom, and long since tired of his own pretty silly nobody of a wife, the right honourable flirt has the satisfaction to accomplish. They spend their mornings in long rambles on the shore-they sigh together over the Irish melodies-Olinda weaves him a blue silk purse-&c. &c. &c. The enamoured young clergyman suddenly and unexpectedly becomes master of a good estate in Yorkshire, and proposes to the deserted peeress to elope with him, with the view to divorce, and a real love-wedding thereafter. Lady Sedley, however, has no disposition to carry her tenderness to such lengths as these. She pens a three-cornered note to the Rev. Paul Scudamore, informing him that she had always entertained a fervent respect for his talents, and been delighted with his society, but that love was out of the question-' pleasant, but wrong.' The apostolic Paul commits suicide; and this tragical incident does at last cure Olinda of her habit of flirtation. remorse is fearful-indeed it survives Lord Sedley's return from his Barataria. From that time

Her

She paid so much attention to his interests, so much complaisance to his will, that he was often heard to declare, that she was an excellent woman, though rather dull and grave. He proved a civil though inconstant husband; and Olinda's conscience was too just, her remorse too profound, to require more than good humour and forbearance. She lived as much in retirement as she could do, consistently with the duties of her situation as Lord Sedley's wife.'-p. 201.

Her remorse was so profound, as to require only good-humour! We presume she now, when in town, gave only dinners and assemblies-never ventured on a dancing breakfast; and, when in the country, abstained from archery meetings-except, indeed, when Lord Sedley's electioneering concerns required her to do violence to her rueful feelings. Nor is this all

• When

When Lord Sedley repairs to the North in the shooting season, Olinda spends two months at Treganna-a penance in memory of her fault !-p. 103.

Her fault!-The quiet sarcasm of this conclusion appears to us perfect. We are not surprised to hear that the ladies in general abuse Aims and Ends.' Which of them (as Lord Byron asks) ever liked De Grammont ? '

The tale of Oonagh Lynch,' which occupies the third of Mrs. Sheridan's volumes, is much less to our taste. Indeed, we do not understand what it is meant to illustrate. The scene is laid alternately in a dismal castle on the shore of Connaught, and in the as dismal court of James II. at St. Germain-en-l'aye. There is enough of dark priests-Italian spies-concealments, disguises, a German of the Dousterswivel race-in short, all the materies of the Minerva-press; but so little either of intelligible character, or of probable incident, that we suspect Mrs. Sheridan has had little more to do with Oonagh Lynch,' than Mrs. Sullivan with 'Warrene.' What interest there is, depends on the heroine's losing her father's estate, in consequence of his jacobite intrigues; which, as he died before trial, could have had no such effect. A lady should consult her solicitor before she makes her novel turn on a point of law.

There occur, however, some very beautiful passages on the devotion of the Jacobite exiles to their unhappy master; and we shall conclude with quoting a paragraph on James II., which deserves equal praise :

، It is strange that James, whose errors, though great, were only those of opinion, (for none can question the sincerity of one who proved it by such signal sacrifices,) of all monarchs, seems to obtain the least sympathy from those who read the details of his history; while many more faulty characters are eulogized and bewailed. Yet he possessed many good qualities. Turenne rated his valour so high, as to observe, "If ever man was born without fear it is the Duke of York;" and the most remarkable proof of the constant and effectual operation of his religious belief was, that his naturally harsh and severe disposition became entirely changed in the latter years of his life, to a mildness wholly unusual at an age, and in a situation, so much more likely to irritate and embitter it. He sacrificed his all (and the stake was not mean) to bring his people to the faith he considered necessary to salvation: if he failed, we may blame his judgment, but we must respect his intention,—a homage due to all, whatever their conduct may be, who are not guided in it by any selfish consideration, or hope of personal advantage.

، While the lute, the poetry, the grace and loveliness of the beauteous Mary of Scotland, are accepted as claims for forgiveness for her violent and changeful passions, thirst of vengeance, and entire absence

of

of principle, even by those generations who never could hear her gracious greeting, and on whom her matchless face has only faintly smiled in fading canvass; the harsh reserve, unbending determination, and ungraceful coldness of James the Second, have failed to obtain a pardon for his licentious youth, his bigoted maturity, and even for his devoted and truly religious age. Perhaps there never were produced two more striking examples of the impression derived from personal qualities, having so long survived their possessors !'-vol. iii. pp. 128-9.

The passages which we have extracted will, we hope, form our best apology for again returning, at such length, to the Novels of Fashionable Life. In our opinion Mrs. Sullivan has produced two really brilliant tales, full of proofs that she inherits much of the dramatic talent of her richly gifted mother, and affording every promise of her ultimately obtaining a classical reputation-either as a writer of novels, or of comedies, according to her choice--or of both. Nor can we doubt that if Mrs. Sheridan should combine in one romance, both her tragic passion, and the caustic of her satire, she also might assume a high and permanent rank in this department of the English Library. Miss Austen is gone-Miss Edgeworth appears to be determined on silence--and Miss Ferrier wisely adheres to Scotland: the press groans under the burthen of weak, and clumsy, and fantastic trash;—it is therefore no trifle to have to announce the appearance of two new female novelists, really capable of tracing with taste and discrimination the more delicate features of English manners.

portion

ART. XIII.—Piozziana; or, Recollections of the late Mrs. Piozzi. With Remarks. By a Friend. 8vo. London. 1833. HIS little work has disappointed us. It is known that Mrs. Piozzi kept a diary of the greater portion of her life; and of her early and better days, when, as Mrs. Thrale, she lived in the society of Murphy, Cumberland, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Johnson, and Burke, such a record might be entertaining and interesting: -when we saw Piozziana announced, we hoped it might be this diary-but 'tis no such thing. The volume consists chiefly of extracts from a couple of dozen of letters written during her last residence in Bath, between the years 1817 and 1820, to the editor, who, at the conclusion of each extract, has added a kind of commentary on the several topics alluded to by his correspondent -the topics being in general temporary and trifling, but the commentary still more so. As the lady was seventy-six or seventyseven when this correspondence commenced, and was living the trivial routine of a Bath life, we have no right to complain that her notes to a neighbour are very unimportant, but we are really

not

not a little surprised that the neighbour should have thought such chit-chat worth publication, and it would be very unjust to Mrs. Piozzi's memory to visit upon her the absurdities of her friend. We do not hesitate to say, that a tolerably judicious selection from the Morning Post, for the period in question, would have been not only more amusing, but of greater value; and the editor's commentary would have been quite as usefully bestowed on such a collection. We select a few specimens. Mrs. Piozzi complains that her correspondent had not said.

a word concerning the Liverpool lady, who reads printed books by the tips of her fingers-Miss M'Evoy; and discerns colours, though stone blind, and although a glass is put between her and them! I never heard such wonders: and well attested (as Autolycus's ballad of the fish-forty thousand fathoms above water) by seven justices, and a Doctor Bostock! Why Carraboo was nobody to this Miss Mc. Ivor, or Mc. Evoy.'-p. 57.

Then follows the commentary, in which the editor confesses that he knows nothing about the principal person in question, but, en revanche, he treats us with extracts from an old newspaper, about the other impostor.

'Miss Mc. Evoy was, it is presumed, one of those common cheats, who succeed with the common world, because no-body could suppose that any-body could be so astonishingly impudent, &c.! We help to delude ourselves; and that was the case in the affair of the female rogue, Carraboo, to whom she alludes. An almost incredible instance of knavery on one part, and dupism on the other. The pitiful jade who performed the character of "Carraboo, princess of Javasu," was an infamous female of low condition, who passed herself on the Bath and Bristol public for an Indian princess, &c., and when detected, which she speedily was, proved to be a certain Mary Baker, who had been in jail, and suffered whipping for theft. Among the victims of the deceit she practised was (but for a day or two only) a Bath physician, &c. &c. p. 58.

Again, Mrs. Piozzi writes:

'Poor, old Mr. L. Doctor G. attends them, I know; but what can even dear Doctor G. do, when a man's hand is turned black with mortification, I suppose; or with palsy, which immediately precedes it? They can only try to keep him ignorant of his own danger, in which attempt I see neither friendship nor good sense; and beg earnestly that you, dear Mr. will never practise such deception

on your H. L. P.'—pp. 147, 148.

On this the editor gravely remarks:-

'Mrs. Piozzi's opinion as to the cruelty of keeping the sick in ignorance of their danger may be disputed. For my part, I should say that, generally speaking, it is the bounden duty of a discreet and tender friend to encourage the invalid to the final moment; and to leave him,

if