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every point, the same destiny with Mortimer; for she, too, is in a deep and incurable decline. The most beautiful and affecting part of the tale here begins. By the gently affectionate, and religious persuasives of the admirable Louisa, Eliza's mind is tranquillized, and a material change is gradually wrought in her character. We say gradually, for the novelist is most happy in the delineation of the lingering departure of the convert's more worldly feelings-feelings, even for her betrayer, which lead her, like Eloise," to murmur in her vows." Her last trial is got over when Lady Delville, with singular want of tact, informs her, by letter, of Waldegrave's marriage to her rich friend Miss Brooke.

One beautiful incident is purposely kept to the last by the author; and by it the complete cure of Eliza is affected. She had often reproached herself for her clamorous and selfish grief, when made fully aware of the serenity and resignation of Mortimer's end, and the Christian forbearance with which he checked every word of reproach of her, as well as lamentation for himself: but, even yet, the image of the worthless Waldegrave would occasionally haunt her, till an inadvertent word dropped from Louisa, from which Eliza darted to the conclusion that a deep feeling of attachment to Mortimer had been heroically concealed in the gentle bosom of her friend, and that his love for herself, although fatal to that friend's whole fabric of worldly happiness had, with a refined and disinterested affection known to few, been encouraged by that excellent creature, because it tended to the happiness of two friends so dear to her. This well-managed contrast, of attachment subdued in silence, of love "ne'er told," with unbridled, selfish, noisy passion, is quite admirable, and gives a moral power to the story we have detailed, altogether irresistible.

Eliza's frightful disease advances rapidly, and at last, in a manner, in describing which the author shows considerable power and feeling, she reclines her head on the faithful bosom of her admired friend, and dies.

It would be unjust not to give a few specimens of the descriptions, incidents, and delineations of character in this work. Many of the minor characters are necessarily very ordinary, and such as are to be met with in almost every novel; and although we cannot say that any of the characters, even the heroine's, are perfectly original conceptions, several of them are exceedingly ably outlined as well as filled up, and all perform suitably the parts allotted to them.

There occurs, early in the narrative, a portrait, to the life, of what has been so well termed "a familiar puppy," of a youth little more than just from school, whose self-conceit, ease, and impertinence, are altogether intolerable. This stripling addresses' his seniors, and the large choice of his betters, by their sirnames

-hands off the first lady in the drawing-room to dinner-makes puns upon the company indiscriminately-volunteers his opinion, which is always first in order, sudden, and dogmatical-seats himself where he is sure to be an intrusion, and commits many other excesses, like to those of a similar newly ex-scholiated personage, in a company of which the inimitable Parson Adams was one, where the old corrective habit of the Doctor drew from him the exclamation, "Oh! that I had thee on another lad's back!" and half raised him, with a pedagogue's impulse, to realize the threat on the spot, in the urgency of the occasion.

"Sir George walked off with her empty tea-cup, when young Bartley, who had been silent for about the space of three minutes and a half, now loitered up to her, and throwing himself into the chair which the baronet had just vacated, asked her, "if she did not think Melmoth a pleasant' good humoured fellow? That happy faculty which, as we have observed, my Lord Bacon so commends, removed from Mr. William at all times any unpleasant apprehension of approaching too nearly to familiarity in his discourse; therefore, though he could see, as in fact it was impossible not to see, the haughty air with which Eliza asked him if it were Sir George Melmoth he was speaking of?' he read in it no transient disgust at the freedom of his manner, but very naturally attribuited it to her being provoked at his interrupting their tête-àtête."

Miss Brooke, although a lady of fashion, with claims to origi nality unquestioned in the country, by the four Miss Bartleys, and the three Miss Johnsons, and Miss Maria Sidney, and even by Miss Rivers herself,-Louisa and Mortimer alone starting a heretical doubt on this important head—is really, as it turns out, the mere copier of a greater original in town; that original herself being, alas! but a copier from a yet higher copier, in the curiously graduated scale of fashion, where real originality, such as it is, "is set at a dizzy height" indeed. This astonishing personage, Miss Brooke's immediate prototype, bursts upon the senses of the unpractised Eliza in the form of the brusque, bold, perfectly fashionable, and therefore truly vulgar Miss Ormond. This lady comes accompanied by the most unqualified dandy ever consigned by the grinning bystanders to the appropriate neuter gender.

"Miss Ormond was accompanied by a dandy-like looking young man, whom she introduced as Mr. Newcome, if an introduction it could be called, that consisted in, Well, Lady Delville, I have brought you the man I promised you for the opera, but you have got a better I see ;-ah! Waldegrave, how did you get here?"

"Whilst Mr. Waldegrave was explaining, Lady Delville was making as low a curtsey to this unknown opera-man as the spherical nature of her figure admitted of; which Miss Ormond observing, she exclaimed,

:

"Oh don't use any ceremony with him. It will be quite thrown away, I assure you he is monstrous good-natured, but horrid silly; and a finished dandy, and high fashion, and his name's Newcome, and that's all I have to say about him.'

"Far from evincing any pique or confusion at being styled horrid silly,' Mr. Newcome did nothing but smile and looked pleased as Miss Ormond proceeded in her rhodomontade. To be a dandy and high fashion,' as it was the end, constituted also the solace and enjoyment of his existence.'

VOL. II. No. 3

32

"I never knew he had either taste or fancy," said Miss Ormond' « except for stiff stays and starched neckcloths."

"Excepting always that inimitable great coat," said Mr. Waldegrave. "Oh yes, the coat! do, for pity's sake walk to the window, Newcome, and show that coat. Its beauties are absolutely lost in that retired corner." "To Eliza's utter astonishment, Mr, Newcome prepared to obey this command without hesitation; only repeating, "Pon my soul, Miss Ormond, you are so arbitrary; 'pon my soul!'

"And that coat really is the right thing, is it, Newcome?" said Mr. Waldegrave.

"Oh decidedly! decidedly the right thing," replied he, with a tone of solemnity.

"Amusing rather, don't you think he is?" said Miss Ormond to Lady Delville. "Do you think you can tolerate him? because you may have him at any time. And its rather the proper thing to be seen with him at the opera, Don't you think it is, upon the whole, Waldegrave ?"

"How love can trifle with itself," as Shakspeare well knew, -how much" an enraged affection," as he somewhere else calls it, will make a fool of a poor young woman who has the misfortune to be possessed with it,-how far the pettishness of a spoiled child, whose vanity and pride are unused to restraint or mortification, will fill with self the whole of the creature's world of consciousness, to the utter exclusion of every other human being or human feeling,-are finely illustrated in the following highly wrought scene. Eliza goes with Lady Delville, Miss Brooke, and Waldegrave, to a musical party at Miss Ormond's; and from mere caprice gives notice-timely enough no doubt, for it is before they set out-that she does not intend to sing. Miss Ormond's voice, it seems, does not please her, "and she would "not degrade herself by taking any part in such intolerable "singing."

"She was now in the full exercise of the unhappy faculty she possessed, of converting the shadows of discontent into real and substantial evils.

"Never for a moment abstracted from that intense consciousness of self, which alternately formed the bane and the bliss of her existence, she was the very slave of circumstances. With the ardour of her nature, she identified every thing with the one feeling that absorbed her; and the universe, and all that it contained, presented nothing to her, but Waldegrave's love."

Miss Ormond's performance is much applauded, notwithstanding the contempt with which it is treated by Miss Rivers, whose impatient spirit writhes with self-inflicted torture, because Waldegrave prefers attending the piano forte to giving her, what she much desires, an opportunity to reproach and insult him. This mood is not mended by the approach of Newcome, to seat himself in the empty chair beside her. Some raillery from Miss Ormond and Miss Brooke renders these two ladies, very suddenly, objects of utter detestation, of course. Newcome not attended to, gives an astonished stare, and abdicates; his seat is immediately filled by old Mr. Ormond, who most unseasonably commences a prosing discourse on vocal and instrumental music, and especially on the ineffable sum which his daughter's musical education has cost him. But even Mr. Ormond leaves his ill-chosen auditor, and

"Eliza looked towards his vacant chair, and her heart fluttered with the hope that it would soon be taken by Mr. Waldegrave. Scarcely could she refrain from telling every wandering man that approached and regarded it with a desiring eye, that it belonged to a gentleman.' Her eyes sedulously guarded it for him, whom alone, in the numerous assembly, she beheld.

"Atlength he leaves the orchestra. He is coming in the direction of her seat. Oh! Miss Ormond stops him! She is making room for him between her and Sophia. Will heah, yes!-he does remain with them. He for sakes her he is indifferent to her he cares nothing at all about her-oh why, why can she not, in an instant, annihilate the room, the lights, the whole assembly, and be in darkness, and be in solitude, and at liberty to give way to the burst of wretchedness that is labouring in her breast!

"There was now no hope of his being near her, for Mr. Stanhope had taken Mr. Ormond's place."

Miss Eliza Rivers, of course, refuses the entreaties of the whole company collectively and individually, and perseveres in her becoming resolution not to sing, till the total indifference, usual in such cases, piques her most of all; and, in imminent danger of being of no consequence, instead of the greatest, even to Waldegrave, she unexpectedly allows herself to be handed to the instrument by Mr. Stanhope, where she resolves to astonish Waldegrave-for to him alone she performed—with her most brilliant exertions.

"The buzz and commotion of the room had not quite subsided into attention, when she cast a sidelong glance, ere she began, towards Mr. Walde grave. He was still talking with Sophia. Never surely was there such an unparalleled affront. What! not pay to her performance the poor compli ment of silence? Under the impulse of extreme irritation, she half roseshe half closed her book.

"Mr. Stanhope plainly discovered that something was wrong; but not at all comprehending how, or in what way, inquired in a voice of alarm, "What was the matter? was her seat too high or too low? or in what way could he be useful?" But now Mr. Waldegrave, who, though silent, had been an attentive observer of all that had passed, alarmed and agitated by her behaviour, and dreading what it might lead to next, hastily, and with a hurried manner approached her, and whilst he bent over her, chiefly to hide her distracted countenance, he merely affected to be inquiring what she was going to perform?

660

Oh, Waldegrave ! nothing-nothing! My very heart is sick; take me away,' she whispered.

"My dear Eliza! for God's sake be calm-be composed: I beg I be seech of you.'

"But the winds and waves would as soon have respected such a command. She had wrought herself up to a pitch of frantic emotion, that governed her as it would an infant; and whilst the room receded from her sight, and all its inhabitants, and nothing was present to her but her lover, and herself, she clasped her hands upon his arm, and hiding her face upon them, she burst into a flood of tears.

"Never was any confusion equal to that of Mr. Waldegrave! Well he knew that an assembly of Roman stoics were not more likely to have smiled at such a burst of natural weakness, than were the votaries of fashion then assembled round them.

"He hurried her precipitately from the orchestra into an adjoining drawing-room, the door of which he impatiently closed after him; and whilst Eliza sunk down upon a sofa, and sobbed with hysteric violence, he silently walked up and down the room, evidently agitated with a much stronger feeling of shame and vexation at their mutual exposure, than by tenderness or pity for her sufferings."

The description of Waldegrave's fashionable hardness of heart, and calmness of demeanour, is not less just. He is at breakfast with Sir George Melmoth the morning after his last interview with Miss Rivers, when the following feeling dialogue takes place between them :

"She is a charming woman!' said Mr. Waldegrave, with something of a sigh; but I wish, with all my soul, that I had never known her!',

6

"What you begin to feel queer at the thoughts of the noose! No wonder, with the horror that you have always testified for it!'

"No; it is not that which disturbs me-that question is, by mutual consent, at rest between us for ever!'

"Ah-indeed! How did you manage that? for it is rather a material point, I should think, in the present case.'

"Yes, of course. But I proved to her that it was imprudent, and little less than impossible, in my present circumstances (as you yourself must suppose, after what I have said to you upon that point;) and this morning I have received an intimation from her that she entirely coincides with my opinionand-'

"And is your most obedient humble servant, I suppose. Well, I see nothing very melancholy in that; particularly as, I imagine, it was rather as a matter of propriety than choice, that you proposed to her at all.'

"I certainly never intended to fall so deeply in love as I did. And as to matrimony, I never gave it a thought, till I found I had been talking about it for above an hour.'

"Sir George laughed most immoderately.-Egad, Waldegrave, I did not think you had been such a flat. If this had happened to you ten years ago, when you first set about making love, it would all have been natural and likely enough.'

"It seems that we are never wise upon these points,'

"No; nor never safe, I think. Upon my word, after your accident, I shall be upon my guard, in case I should take to falling in love; for being a more heedless person than you, it is possible I may go a step further, and find myself actually married before I know any thing about it.'

"There is no great hazard: of that. You have, fortunately, no turn for affairs of this kind."

"None in the world. I have fallen in love two or three times, as a matter of course, but I found it a foolish, troublesome business; so I gave it up at once. It always leads to something disagreeable—just as children begin to play, very lovingly, and end in quarrelling and fighting. In short, these matters always conclude badly, let them conclude which way they will-for if you marry it's a humdrum affair; neither more nor less than taking out a license to grow very tired of one another; and if you do not, it's a chance if you don't behave very ill indeed, and deserve to be horse-whipped--and, I suppose, it is some such idea of your merits, that, at this very instant, makes you, Waldegrave, look so forlorn?'

"I am afraid I am not quite exempt from self-reproach: at least Eliza feels these things so differently from the generality of women, that what would be a slight injustice, perhaps nothing at all to them, is a very serious injury to her.'

"Poor girl! she feels it a great deal, then, does she?'

"I am afraid so."

"Poor thing! I am sorry for that.'

"And so am I, God knows! I wish from my soul that I had never seen her.' "But that will do no good now you know. The affair is entirely ended, and you can't possibly marry her; so the only thing now is to hope and trust that she will make herself happy in trying to hate you more and more every day of her life.'

"I rather suppose that will be the sequel of the story; for I trust a great deal to a tolerable share of pride and haughtiness which she calls her own.'

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