Year 1830. Here the manners of gay life-balls, dinners, and fêtes-with clever sketches of character and amusing dialogues, make up the customary three volumes. The same year we find Mrs Gore compiling a series of narratives for youth, entitled The Historical Traveller. In 1832 she came forward with The Fair of May Fair, a series of fashionable tales, that were not so well received. The critics hinted that Mrs Gore had exhausted her stock of observation; and we believe she went to reside in France, where she continued some years. Her next tale was entitled Mrs Armytage, which appeared in 1836; and in the following year came out Mary Raymond and Memoirs of a Peeress. In 1838, The Diary of a Désennuyée, The Woman of the World, The Heir of Selwood, and The Book of Roses, or Rose-fancier's Manual, a delightful little work on the history of the rose, its propagation and culture. France is celebrated for its rich varieties of the queen of flowers, and Mrs Gore availed herself of the taste and experience of the French floriculturists. Mrs Gore long continued to furnish one or two novels a year. She had seen much of the world both at home and abroad, and was never at a loss for character or incident. The worst of her works must be pronounced clever. Their chief value consists in their lively caustic pictures of fashionable and high society. Besides her long array of regular novels, Mrs Gore contributed short tales and sketches to the periodicals, and was perhaps unparalleled for fertility. All her works were welcome to the circulating libraries. They are mostly of the same class-all pictures of existing life and manners; but the want of genuine feeling, of passion and simplicity, in her living models, and the endless frivolities of their occupations and pursuits, make us sometimes take leave of Mrs Gore's fashionable triflers in the temper with which Goldsmith parted from Beau Tibbs-The company of fools may at first make us smile, but at last never fails of rendering us melancholy.'

Mrs Gore was a native of East Retford, Nottinghamshire, daughter of Mr Moody, a wine-merchant of that town. In 1823 she was married to Captain C. A. Gore, by whom she had two children, a son and daughter; the latter married, in 1853, to Lord Edward Thynne.

Character of a Prudent Worldly Lady.

From Women as they Are.

Lady Lilfield was a thoroughly worldly woman—a worthy scion of the Mordaunt stock. She had professedly accepted the hand of Sir Robert because a connection with him was the best that happened to present itself in the first year of her début-the 'best match' to be had at a season's warning! She knew that she had been brought out with the view to dancing at a certain number of balls, refusing a certain number of good offers, and accepting a better one, somewhere between the months of January and June; and she regarded it as a propitious dispensation of Providence to her parents and to herself, that the comparative proved a superlative-even a high-sheriff of the county, a baronet of respectable date, with ten thousand a year! She felt that her duty towards herself necessitated an immediate acceptance of the dullest 'good sort of man' extant throughout the three kingdoms; and the whole routine of her after-life was regulated by the same rigid code of moral selfishness. She was penetrated with a most exact sense of what was due to her position in the world;

but she was equally precise in her appreciation of all that, in her turn, she owed to society; nor, from her youth upwards—

Content to dwell in decencies for ever

had she been detected in the slightest infraction of these minor social duties. She knew with the utmost accuracy of domestic arithmetic-to the fraction of a course or an entrée-the number of dinners which Beech Park was indebted to its neighbourhood-the complement of laundry-maids indispensable to the maintenance of its county dignity-the aggregate of pines by which it must retain its horticultural precedence. She had never retarded by a day or an hour the arrival of the familycoach in Grosvenor Square at the exact moment creditable to Sir Robert's senatorial punctuality; nor procrastinated by half a second the simultaneous bobs of her ostentatious Sunday school, as she sailed majestically along the aisle towards her tall, stately, pharisaical, squire-archical pew. True to the execution of her tasks and her whole life was but one laborious task-true and exact as the great bell of the Beech Park turret-clock, she was enchanted with the monotonous music of her own cold iron tongue; proclaiming herself the best of wives and mothers, because Sir Robert's rent-roll could afford to command the services of a first-rate steward, and butler, and housekeeper, and thus insure a well-ordered household; and because her seven substantial children were duly drilled through a daily portion of rice-pudding and spelling-book, and an annual distribution of mumps and measles! All went well at Beech Park; for Lady Lilfield was 'the excellent wife,' of 'a good sort of

man!'

So bright an example of domestic merit-and what country neighbourhood cannot boast of its duplicate?— was naturally superior to seeking its pleasures in the vapid and varying novelties of modern fashion. The habits of Beech Park still affected the dignified and primeval purity of the departed century. Lady Lilfield remained true to her annual eight rural months of the county of Durham; against whose claims Kemp Town pleaded, and Spa and Baden bubbled in vain. During her pastoral seclusion, by a careful distribution of her tautology, to successive detachments of an extensive stores of gossiping, she contrived to prose, in undetected neighbourhood, concerning her London importance-her court dress-her dinner-parties-and her refusal to visit the Duchess of ; while, during the reign of her London importance, she made it equally her duty to bore her select visiting list with the history of the new Beech Park school-house-of the Beech Park double dahlias-and of the Beech Park privilege of uniting, in an aristocratic dinner-party, the abhorrent heads of the rival political factions-the Bianchi e Neri-the houses of Montague and Capulet of the county palatine of Durham. By such minute sections of the wide chapter of colloquial boredom, Lady Lilfield acquired the character of being a very charming woman throughout her respectable clan of dinner-giving baronets and their wives; but the reputation of a very miracle of prosiness among those

Men of the world who know the world like men. She was but a weed in the nobler field of society.

Exclusive London Life.

A squirrel in a cage, which pursues its monotonous round from summer to summer, as though it had forgotten the gay green-wood and glorious air of liberty, is not condemned to a more monotonous existence than the fashionable world in the unvarying routine of its amusements; and when a London beauty expands into ecstasies concerning the delights of London to some country neighbour on a foggy autumn day, vaguely alluding to the countless' pleasures and 'diversified' amusements of London, the country neighbour may be

assured that the truth is not in her. Nothing can be more minutely monotonous than the recreations of the really fashionable; monotony being, in fact, essential to that distinction. Tigers may amuse themselves in a thousand irregular diverting ways; but the career of a genuine exclusive is one to which a mill-horse would scarcely look for relief. London houses, London establishments, are formed after the same unvarying model. At the fifty or sixty balls to which she is to be indebted for the excitement of her season, the fine lady listens to the same band, is refreshed from a buffet prepared by the same skill, looks at the same diamonds, hears the same trivial observations; and but for an incident or two, the growth of her own follies, might find it difficult to point out the slightest difference between the fête of the countess on the first of June and that of the marquis on the first of July. But though twenty seasons' experience of these desolating facts might be expected to damp the ardour of certain dowagers and dandies who are to be found hurrying along the golden railroad year after year, it is not wonderful that the young girls their daughters should be easily allured from their dull school-rooms by fallacious promises of pleasure.

MRS FRANCES TROLLOPE.

Another keen observer and caustic delineator of modern manners, MRS FRANCES TROLLOPE, was the authoress of a long series of fictions. This lady had nearly reached her fiftieth year before she entered on that literary career which proved so prolific and distinguished. She first came before the public in 1832, when her Domestic Manners of the Americans appeared, and excited great attention. The work was the result of three years' residence and travels in the United States, commencing in 1829. Previous to this period, Mrs Trollope had resided at Harrow. She drew so severe a picture of American faults and foiblesof their want of delicacy, their affectations, drinking, coarse selfishness, and ridiculous peculiarities -that the whole nation was incensed at their English satirist. There is much exaggeration in Mrs Trollope's sketches; but having truth for their foundation, her book is supposed to have had some effect in reforming the minor morals' and social habits of the Americans. The same year our authoress continued her satiric portraits, in a novel entitled The Refugee in America, marked by the same traits as her former work, but exhibiting little art or talent in the construction of a fable. Mrs Trollope now tried new ground. In 1833, she published The Abbess, a novel; and in the following year, Belgium and Western Germany in 1833, countries where she found much more to gratify and interest her than in America, and where she travelled in generally good-humour. The only serious evil which Mrs Trollope seems to have encountered in Germany was the tobacco-smoke, which she vituperates with unwearied perseverance. In 1836 she renewed her war with the Americans in The Adventures of Jonathan Fefferson Whitlaw, a tale in which she powerfully depicts the miseries of the black and coloured population of the Southern States. In this year, also, she published Paris and the Parisians in 1835. In 1837 appeared The Vicar of Wrexhill, her best novel, an able and interesting work, full of prejudices, but containing some excellent painting of manners and eccentricities. In 1838 our authoress appeared again as a traveller: Vienna and the Austrians was of the same cast as Belgium and

Germany, but more deformed by prejudice. Between 1838 and 1843, Mrs Trollope threw off seven or eight novels, and an account of a Visit to Italy. The smart caustic style of our authoress was not so well adapted to the classic scenes, manners, and antiquities of Italy, as to the broader features of American life and character, and this work was not so successful as her previous publications. Returning to fiction, we find Mrs Trollope, as usual, abounding. Three novels, of three volumes each, were the produce of 1843— Hargrave, Jessie Phillips, and The Laurringtons. The first is a sketch of a man of fashion; the second, an attack on the new English poor-law; and the third, a lively satire on 'superior people,' the bustling Botherbys' of society. Other novels followed; but these later works of Mrs Trollope are much inferior to her early novels: the old characters are reproduced, and coarseness is too often substituted for strength. The indefatigable novelist died at Florence (where she had for several years resided) October 6, 1863, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.

Mrs Trollope was born at Stapleton, near Bristol, daughter of the Rev. William Milton. She was married in 1809 to Thomas Anthony Trollope, a barrister, by whom she had six children. The wife of a barrister who had not been fortunate,' says the Athenæum (1863), 'Frances Trollope found herself, after an unsuccessful attempt to establish a home in America, here in England, with the world to begin again, a husband too ill to aid her, and children who needed aid and could as yet give none. Many men in like circumstances would have appealed to public charity, but the true woman's heart did not fail her. She wrote for bread, and reaped that and honour.' She has been honoured too in her surviving sons, Anthony and Thomas Adolphus Trollope.

MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.

This lady, long known in the world of fashion and light literature, was born at Knockbrit, near Clonmel, September 1, 1790. Her father, Edmund Power, was a small proprietor in Ireland—a squireen-who is said to have forced his daughter, when only fifteen, into a marriage with a Captain Farmer. The marriage was unhappy; Marguerite left her husband, and Captain Farmer was accidentally killed. This was in 1817. In a few months afterwards, Marguerite was united to an Irish peer, Charles Gardiner, Earl of Blessington. Her rank, her beauty, and literary tastes now rendered her the centre of a brilliant circle, and the doting husband revelled in every species of extravagant display. In 1822 they set out on a continental tour. They visited Byron in Genoa; and Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron (published after the death of the poet) present a faithful and interesting-though of course incomplete-picture of the noble bard. In May 1829, Lady Blessington was again left a widow, but with a jointure of about £2000 a year. A daughter of the deceased earl, by a former marriage, became the wife of Count Alfred D'Orsay, son of a French general officer, and remarkable for his handsome appearance and varied accomplishments. This marriage also proved unfortunate; the parties separated, and while the lady remained in Paris, the count accompanied Lady

Blessington to England. This connection was only broken by death. It gave rise to scandalous rumours, yet the countess and her friend maintained a conspicuous place in society. Count D'Orsay was the acknowledged leader of fashion, besides being an accomplished artist in both painting and sculpture. A career of gaiety and splendour soon involved the countess in debt. She then applied herself to literature, and produced several light sketchy works, now forgotten. Latterly, the popularity of the countess greatly declined. She was forced to break up her establishment in Gore House, Kensington; all was sold off, and Lady Blessington and D'Orsay repaired to Paris. She died June 4, 1849. The count survived her just three years. The most favourable-perhaps the truest-view of this once popular lady is thus given in the epitaph written for her tomb by Mr Procter (Barry Cornwall): 'In her lifetime she was loved and admired for her many graceful writings, her gentle manners, her kind and generous heart. Men, famous for art and science, in distant lands sought her friend- | ship; and the historians and scholars, the poets, and wits, and painters of her own country found an unfailing welcome in her ever-hospitable home. She gave cheerfully, to all who were in need, help and sympathy, and useful counsel; and she died lamented by many friends. Those who loved her best in life, and now lament her most, have reared this tributary marble over the place of her rest.'

MRS S. C. HALL.

MRS S. C. HALL, authoress of Lights and Shadows of Irish Life, and various other works, 'is a native of Wexford, though by her mother's side she is of Swiss descent. Her maiden name was Fielding, by which, however, she was unknown in the literary world, as her first work was not published till after her marriage to Samuel Carter Hall in 1824. She first quitted Ireland at the early age of fifteen, to reside with her mother in England, and it was some time before she revisited her native country; but the scenes which were familiar to her as a child have made such a vivid and lasting impression on her mind, and all her sketches evince so much freshness and vigour, that her readers might easily imagine she had spent her life among the scenes she describes. To her early absence from her native country is probably to be traced one strong characteristic of all her writings-the total absence of party feeling on subjects connected with politics or religion.'* Mrs Hall's first work appeared in 1829, and was entitled Sketches of Irish Character. These bear a closer resemblance to the tales of Miss Mitford than to the Irish stories of Banim or Griffin, and the works of Miss Edgeworth probably directed Mrs Hall to the peculiarities of Irish character. They contain some fine rural description, and are animated by a healthy tone of moral feeling and a vein of delicate humour. The coquetry of her Irish girls-very different from that in high life is admirably depicted. In 1831 she issued a second series of Sketches of Irish Character, fully equal to the first, and which was well received. The Rapparce is an excellent story, and some of the satirical delineations are hit off with great truth

* Dublin University Magazine for 1840.

and liveliness. In 1832 she ventured on a larger and more difficult work-an historical romance in three volumes, entitled The Buccaneer. The scene of this tale is laid in England at the time of the Protectorate, and Oliver himself is among the characters. The plot of The Buccaneer is well managed, and some of the characters as that of Barbara Iverk, the Puritan-are skilfully delineated; but the work is too feminine, and has too little of energetic passion for the stormy times in which it is cast. In 1834 Mrs Hall published Tales of Woman's Trials, short stories of decidedly moral tendency, written in the happiest style of the authoress. In 1835 appeared Uncle Horace, a novel; and in 1838, Lights and Shadows of Irish Life, three volumes. The latter had been previously published in the New Monthly Magazine, and enjoyed great popularity. The principal tale in the collection, The Groves of Blarney, was dramatised at one of the theatres with distinguished success. In 1840 Mrs Hall issued Marian, or a Young Maid's Fortunes, in which her knowledge of Irish character is again displayed. Katey Macane, an Irish cook, who adopts Marian, a foundling, and watches over her with untiring affection, is equal to any of the Irish portraitures since those of Miss Edgeworth. The next work of our authoress was a series of Stories of the Irish Peasantry, contributed to Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, and afterwards published in a collected form. In 1840, Mrs Hall aided her husband in a work chiefly composed by him, and which reflects credit upon his talents and industry -Ireland, its Scenery, Character, &c. Topographical and statistical information is here blended with the poetical and romantic features of the country-the legends of the peasantry-scenes and characters of humour or pathos-and all that could be gathered in five separate tours through Ireland, added to early acquaintance and recollection of the country. The work was highly embellished by British artists, and extended to three large volumes. In 1845, Mrs Hall published what is considered by many her best novel, The Whiteboy-a striking Irish story-and a fairy tale, Midsummer Eve; in 1857, A Woman's Story; in 1862, Can Wrong be Right? in 1868-9, The Fight of Faith. To the Art Journal, conducted by her husband, Mrs Hall has contributed many pleasant and picturesque sketches, some of which have been collected and re-issued under the title of Pilgrimages to English Shrines, The Book of the Thames, &c. Mrs Hall has also produced some pleasing children's books. In tasteful description of natural objects, and pictures of everyday life, Mrs Hall has few superiors. Her humour is not so broad or racy as that of Lady Morgan, nor her observations so exact and extensive as Miss Edgeworth's: her writings are also unequal, but in general they constitute easy delightful reading, and possess a simple truth and purity of

sentiment.

Depending upon Others.

From Sketches of Irish Character.

'Independence!'-it is the word, of all others, that Irish-men, women, and children-least understand; and the calmness, or rather indifference, with which they submit to dependence, bitter and miserable as it is, must be a source of deep regret to all who 'love the land,' or who feel anxious to uphold the dignity of

tune. He was born in May 1805, the youngest son of General Bulwer of Haydon Hall and WoodDalling, in the county of Norfolk. His mother, an amiable and accomplished woman, was of the ancient family of Lytton of Knebworth, in Hertfordshire; and on her death in 1843, the novelist succeeded to her valuable estate, and took the name of Lytton.* General Bulwer died in 1807, and the charge of his three sons fell to his widow, whose care and tenderness have been commemorated by the youngest and most distinguished of her children. From your graceful and accomplished taste,' says the novelist, in the dedication of his works to his mother, ‘I early learned that affection for literature which has exercised so large an influence over the pursuits of my life; and you who were my first guide were my earliest critic.' He is said to have written verses when he was only five or six years old. In June 1820, appeared his first volume, Ismael, an Oriental Tale, with other Poems, written between the Age of Thirteen and Fifteen. The boyish rhymes are, of course, merely imitative. His next public appearance was as the successful candidate for the prize poem in Cambridge University; he was then a fellow-commoner of Trinity Hall; and in 1825 he carried off the Chancellor's gold medal for the best English poem. The subject selected by Bulwer was Sculpture, and his verses are above the average of prize poems. The long vacation in his college terms was spent by our author in rambles over England and Scotland and France. In 1826 he published a volume of miscellaneous verse, entitled Weeds and Wild Flowers; and in 1827, a poetical narrative, called O'Neill, or the Rebel. The latter was in the style of Byron's Corsair, echoing the false sentiment and morbid feeling of the noble poet, but wanting the poetic ardour, condensed energy of expression, and graceful picturesqueness which gild, if they do not redeem, the errors of Byron's style. A love of poetry, however intense, even when combined with general literary talent and devoted study of the art 'unteachable, untaught,' will never make a poet; and of this truism Lytton Bulwer was a striking illustration. He returned again and again to his first love and early ambition, and at times seemed to be on the brink of complete success; yet, with all his toil and repeated efforts, he never was able to reach the summit of the sacred mount. The following is a favourable specimen of these poetic aspirations:

Eternal air-and thou, my mother earth, Hallowed by shade and silence--and the birth Of the young moon (now watching o'er the sleep Of the dim mountains and the dreaming deep);

* His full name, like that of his brother-novelist, Mr James, might serve in point of length for a Spanish hidalgo. It was Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer Lytton. His brother, Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer (in 1871 raised to the peerage as Lord Dalling and Bulwer, and who died in 1872), was a well-known diplomatist, and author of several works-An Autumn in Greece: France, Social and Literary: The Monarchy of the Middle Classes; a Life of Lord Byron, prefixed to a Paris edition of the poet's works; Historical Characters, Life of Lord Palmerston, &c. Lord Dalling was described as the prop and pillar of the Palmerstonian policy in the East.' In 1827 Lord Lytton was married to Rosina, daughter of Francis Wheeler, Esq. of Lizzard Connel, County of Limerick-an unhappy connection which was soon dissolved. The lady wrote several novels not deficient in talent, but wild and extravagant. The issue of this marriage was a son and daughter. The latter died in 1848; the former, Edward Robert, now Lord Lytton, has already been noticed as a poet.

And by yon star, Heaven's eldest born-whose light
Calls the first smile upon the cheek of Night;
And beams and bodes, like faith beyond the tomb,
Life through the calm, and glory through the gloom;
My mother earth-and ye, her loftier race,
Midst whom my soul hath held its dwelling-place;
Rivers, and rocks, and valleys, and ye shades
Which sleep at noonday o'er the haunted glades
Made musical by waters and the breeze,
All idly dallying with the glowing trees;
And songs of birds which, ever as they fly,
Breathe soul and gladness to the summer sky;
Ye courts of Nature, where aloof and lone
She sits and reigns with darkness for her throne;
Mysterious temples of the breathing God,
If 'mid your might my earliest steps have trod ;
If in mine inmost spirit still are stored
The wild deep memories childhood most adored
If still amid the drought and waste of years,
Ye hold the source of smiles and pangless tears :
Will ye not yet inspire me ?-for my heart
Beats low and languid—and this idle art,
Which I have summoned for an idle end,
Forsakes and flies me like a faithless friend.
Are all your voices silent? I have made
My home as erst amid your thickest shade:
And even now your soft air from above
Breathes on my temples like a sister's love.
Ah! could it bring the freshness of the day
When first my young heart lingered o'er its lay,
Fain would this wintry soul and frozen string
Recall one wind-one whisper from the spring!

;

In the same year, 1827, Bulwer published his first novel, Falkland, a highly coloured tale of love and passion, calculated to excite and inflame, and evidently based on admiration of the peculiar genius and seductive errors of Byron. Taking up the style of the fashionable novels-rendered popular by Theodore Hook, but then on the wane

-Bulwer next came forward with Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman, 1828. This is a novel full of brilliant and witty writing, sarcastic levity, representations of the manners of the great, piquant remark, and scenes of intrigue and passion. There was a want of skill in the construction of the story, for the tragic and satirical parts were not well adjusted; but the picture of a man of fashion-a Charles Surface of the nineteenth century-was attractive, and a second edition of Pelham was called for in a few months. Towards the close of the same year, Bulwer issued another novel, The Disowned, intended by the author to contain scenes of more exciting interest and vivid colouring, thoughts less superficially expressed, passions more energetically called forth, and a more sensible and pervading moral tendency.' This was aiming at a high mark; but the labour was too apparent. The scene of the novel was laid in the last century-the days of Chesterfield, George Selwyn, and Horace Walpole; but it had no peculiar character or appropriate illustration, and consequently did not attain to the popularity of Pelham. Devereux, a Novel, 1829, was a more finished performance. "The lighter portion,' said one of the critics in the Edinburgh Review, does not dispute the field with the deeper and more sombre, but follows gracefully by its side, relieving and heightening it. We move, indeed, among the great, but it is the great of other times -names familiar in our mouths-Bolingbroke, Louis, Orleans; amidst manners perhaps as frivolous as those of the day, but which the gentle

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