Edited by the Countess of ART. X.-1. Dacre, a Novel. 2. Two Old Men's Tales. 2 vols. 8vo., 1834. 'O H! YE, who patiently explore The wreck of Herculanean lore, -So exclaims the purest and greatest of our living poets. But were it ours to summon the libraries of Herculaneum to render up their dead, we could conceive ourselves hesitating for a moment between love for the works of art of the ancients and curiosity as to their common life-and doubting whether to raise up again some record stamped with the universality of genius, or preferably some fugitive scrap, or excerpt from a young lady's correspondence, showing what Lyce had to say to Neæra touching the new chlamys of Varus, or the toga virilis of Telephus, or telling how Septimius had detected Lydia, and pronounced against her the 'Res tuas tibi habeto,' and the Exi ociùs ociùs' with which a Roman flirt was rejected upon the wide world. We should doubt whether not to bring to life, in preference to the precious scroll from the pen of Simonides, a Roman novel, if such there were,—a reflection of the volatile peculiarities of the age, which by setting forth the details of the lives of private men, their social transactions, their relations with each other, their talk, their sports, their feelings, might lighten up for us those ancient modes of existence of which our knowledge is so indistinct, and be as it were a torch carried before us amongst the ruins of Time. We can conjure up something like a picture of the senator, the military commander, or the demagogue; but we stand greatly in need of a sort of knowledge which is gone past redemption, to make us feel that we can conceive anything vividly and with the sense of reality concerning the private gentleman, the commonplace member of society, the average man of antiquity; or concerning what may be called the hero of private life-the De Vere, the Trevelyan, or the Dacre of the days of old. When the present time shall be ancient, will its fashionable novels have wholly perished? Will its newspapers altogether escape the researches of the antiquary? Will the common life of our age be no more distinctly perceived in a remote retrospect than that of older times is by us? The hireling print devoted to the Court' in which Puddingfield read the announcement of the signature of Magna Charta, when messengers were instantly dispatched dispatched to Cardinal Pandulfo, and their Majesties, after partaking of a cold collation, returned to Windsor,' and the extract of a letter from Egham, which Beefington found in the same journal, are, alas! the only things of the kind which remain to us from the middle ages; and though hireling prints and letters from Egham might not be so plentiful in those days as they are at present, yet there must have been an abundance of scattered writings connected with private life, and giving token of the times, of which, so far as the earlier of the middle ages is concerned, hardly a specimen remains. We are apprehensive, therefore, that despite the press and all the efforts which it makes the every-day life that we are now leading will flow on and lose itself in the past, without leaving any much more durable records of what it was, than those which are written in the running stream. If, however, any of these chronicles of fugitive manners and customs were to be built up like a coin or medal at the foundation of some edifice, so to transmit a memorial of our manners to a later time, those manners could not be found in any more vividly or more faithfully pourtrayed than in 'Dacre.' Before we go farther, we have a trifling matter of controversy to adjust with the accomplished person to whom this book is attributed. In an article upon fashionable novels in a former number, we ventured to allege that fashionable life does not present a very interesting aspect of human nature, and that the stronger affections and profounder passions of men are to be found more abundantly in rural retirement; and we quoted Dr. Johnson and the shepherd in Virgil in support of the assertion, that Love is a native of the rocks. We are thus contradicted : 'There have been some who think that love is a native of the rocks; but its birth-place matters little, when once it is called into being, for it can thrive alike wherever it is transplanted. It shrouds itself in an atmosphere of its own creation, and sees the surrounding objects through the medium of its own fanciful halo. The existence of colour depends not more on the rays of the sun, than depends the hue which is lent to all that is external, upon the internal feelings of the mind. The bustling scenes of gaiety may appear ill suited to the indulgence of deep feeling; yet the mind which is preoccupied by one absorbing thought has not only an inward attraction that bids defiance to the intrusions of others, but has even the power of converting into aliment all that should tend to destroy its force. The crowds that pass before the eyes of a lover seem but as a procession of which his mistress is the queen. If he talks to another, it is to listen to the welcome welcome theme of her praise from the voice of partial friendship; and if the actions of others ever attract his attention, it is to observe, with the jealous watchfulness of a lover, the manner and reception of those whom he regards as rivals.'-Dacre, vol. i. pp. 120-1. And elsewhere we are informed, that under the smooth varnish of social politeness, and in the unromantic scenes of gay frivolity which the nineteenth century yearly exhibits in a luxurious and civilized metropolis, every variety of human passion is to be found in the same force as in the age of chivalry itself; for though that age is past,' says the authoress, the age of nature and of feeling remains.' From the time when we first took a pen in our hands, we have never felt a pleasure in being contradicted; and now that we have grown old and rigid in our ways of thinking, we cannot get over these passages. When we said that other times and places were more favourable for the growth of the feelings than a fashionable drawing-room of our days, we spoke expressly of the more fixed affections and the profounder passions. Now it is not to the maxim which affirms the perennial character of nature and feeling that we will yield this opinion. We do not deny-never meant to deny that there may be animating hopes, sentimental sorrows, outbreaks of passion, smiles, tears, hysterics, in as large a proportion amongst sofas and ottomans, as in any antre vast or desert wild' that ever existed. Moreover, they may be as lively and passionate while they last-but it is not in the nature of things that they should be as fixed and profound. A rapid presentation of new objects will of necessity accelerate the succession of the feelings. It is impossible that, under such circumstances, the character should acquire the strength which is imparted to it by uninterrupted, undivided, habitual and rooted affections. It is impossible that the affections should acquire the stability which strength of character can alone impart. The despair of May 1834, suffered by Lady Emmeline Errant of Curzon Street, because Lord Thistledown left her off, may be as great perhaps as that of Mistress Milicent Mowbray, whose lover was killed in a tournament of 1434;-but Mistress Milicent's would be an affair of two or three years, whereas in Lady Emmeline's case, sal volatile and a new object would usher her into the 'genial month of June' in a genial frame of mind, bearing no marks of the casualty. Human nature, it is commonly said, is the same in all ages and places. In these current sayings there is generally much truth involved, and but little discrimination. It might be said with as much of truth (both dogmata being partially true), that human nature is different in all ages and places • Once 'Once in the flight of ages past There lived a man: and who was he? That man resembled thee.' That is, the universal elements of humanity (so exquisitely touched and summed up in the beautiful poem from which we quote) did as certainly exist in that man as in any. 'Unknown the region of his birth, The land in which he died unknown: "That joy and grief, and hope and fear, The bounding pulse, the languid limb, 'He suffered—but his pangs are o'er; 'He loved-but whom he loved, the grave 'He saw whatever thou hast seen; 'The rolling seasons, day and night, Sun, moon, and stars, the earth and main, To him exist in vain. 'The clouds and sunbeams, o'er his eye That once their shades and glory threw, No vestige where they flew. 'The annals of the human race, Of HIM afford no other trace Their ruins, since the world began, Than this-THERE LIVED A MAN!'* These * The Common Lot,' by the poet Montgomery. We mean, of course, the indi These stanzas, which, with some little allowance for poetical license in the seventh, are as true as they are beautiful, go far to exhaust the generic attributes of man. But when we pass to the different species and classes, though in none is any elementary quality absolutely extinct, yet do we assuredly find some, even of the most elementary qualities, sensibly modified and subdued. The human nature of Mayfair is still human nature no doubt, and passions will come of it as the sparks fly upward; but the form which is there given to the element is more that of the fireworks than of the furnace. The authoress of Dacre' deals with humanity under these forms-imparting, however, to the lovers of her creation, the constancy and ardour, which she insists upon extending to fashionable life. Though we dissent from the general opinion, we do not object, of course, to individuals in the class being supposed to be exceptions, or to the endowment of those individuals, in order to make heroes and heroines of them, with qualities which, though not characteristic of their class, are not certainly absolutely incompatible with such a situation in life. The hero and heroine of this novel-along with their ardour and constancy, and their other virtues-have each a conspicuous failing; and the masculine and feminine fault alternately operate to the creation of the perplexities with which the course of their true love is troubled. Dacre is proud; Lady Emily Somers carries the principle of filial duty to a weak excess. be The pride which shrinks from pressing a suit or declaring a passion, lest a refusal should follow, is very properly represented as belonging to the character of a man who has been brought up in fashionable society, and continues to move in it. Love and self-love are pretty fairly matched in such men, and the most amorous of them are, perhaps, less vulnerable through their affections than through their vanity. In every class of life it may expected that a man who is in love and in doubt will be slow to bring his case to an open issue, so long as he conceives that he may steal a march upon his object by delay. It may also be expected that the fear of a wound to his affections may make a timid man slow; and if he were generously in love, he might be of the same mind with the unfortunate lover of Fair Helen of Kirconnel, and think the time was 'a' weel spent,' whatever the issue might be; but when no further progress can be made in a woman's good graces, and when the lover is sufficiently assured that further time must be spent to no purpose, the reasonable course vidual properly designated Montgomery, and, properly also, designated a poet; not the Mr. Gomery who assumed the affix of Mont,' and, through the aid of certain newspapers, has coupled his name with divers other additions not less factitious. would |