transactions, &c., they will be found, with a reasonable allowance of artistic colouring, to reflect accurately enough the notions current among the upper classes respecting religion, politics, domestic morals, the social affections, and that coarse aggregate of dealing with our neighbours which is embraced by the term common honesty.'* Besides her long array of regular novels, Mrs Gore has contributed short tales and sketches to the periodicals, and is perhaps unparalleled for fertility. Her works must exceed a hundred volumes, and all are 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 is a widow, with 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.]

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. A few months afterwards came out The Heir of Selwood, or Three Epochs of a Life, a novel in which were exhibited sketches of Parisian as well as English society, and an interesting though somewhat confused plot. The year 1839 witnessed three more works of fiction from this indefatigable lady-The Cabinet Minister, the scene of which is laid during the regency of George IV., and includes among its characters the great name of Sheridan; Preferment, or My Uncle Lady Lilfield was a thoroughly worldly woman-a the Earl, containing some good sketches of drawing-worthy scion of the Mordaunt stock. She had proroom society, but no plot; and The Courtier of the fessedly accepted the hand of Sir Robert because a Days of Charles II., and other Tales. Next year we connection with him was the best that happened to have The Dowager, or the New School for Scandal; present itself in the first year of her début the 'best and in 1841, Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb, a match' to be had at a season's warning! She knew that brilliant novel, containing pictures of club life, she had been brought out with the view to dancing at a which Mr Beckford, the author of Vathek, is said to certain number of balls, refusing a certain number of have furnished to the authoress; also Greville, or a good offers, and accepting a better one, somewhere Season in Paris; Dacre of the South, or the Olden between the months of January and June; and she Time, a drama; and The Lover and Her Husband, regarded it as a propitious dispensation of Providence &c., the latter a free translation of M. Bertrand's to her parents and to herself, that the comparative Gerfaut. In 1842, Mrs Gore published Fascination, proved a superlative-even a high sheriff of the county, and The Ambassador's Wife. In 1843 (with other a baronet of respectable date, with ten thousand a year! tales), The Banker's Wife, or Court and City, in which She felt that her duty towards herself necessitated an the efforts of a family in the middle rank to out- immediate acceptance of the dullest 'good sort of man' shine a nobleman, and the consequences resulting extant throughout the three kingdoms; and the whole from this silly vanity and ambition, are truly and routine of her after-life was regulated by the same powerfully painted. Mrs Gore has continued to rigid code of moral selfishness. She was penetrated furnish one or two novels a year up to the present with a most exact sense of what was due to her position time, her powers of invention, combination, and in the world; but she was equally precise in her appreapplication being apparently inexhaustible. She ciation of all that, in her turn, she owed to society; nor, has seen much of the world both at home and abroad, from her youth upwardsand is 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 had she been detected in the slightest infraction of pictures of fashionable and high society. The more these minor social duties. She knew with the utmost respectable of her personages are affecters of an accuracy of domestic arithmetic-to the fraction of a excessive prudery concerning the decencies of life-course or an entrée-the number of dinners which nay, occasionally of an exalted and mystical religious feeling. The business of their existence is to avoid the slightest breach of conventional decorum. Whatever, therefore, they do, is a fair and absolute measure of the prevailing opinions of the class, and may be regarded as not derogatory to their position in the eyes of their equals. But the low average standard of morality thus depicted, with its conventional distinctions, cannot be invented. It forms the atmosphere in which the parties live; and were it a compound fabricated at the author's pleasure, the beings who breathe it could not but be universally acknowledged as fantastical and as mere monstrosities; they would indeed be incapable of acting in harmony and consistence with the known laws and usages of civil life. Such as a series of parliamentary reports, county meetings, race-horse

Content to dwell in decencies for ever

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 family-coach in Grosvenor senatorial punctuality; nor procrastinated by half a Square at the exact moment creditable to Sir Robert's second the simultaneous bobs of her ostentatious aisle towards her tall, stately, pharisaical, squireSunday school, as she sailed majestically along the archical pew. True to the execution of her tasks— and her whole life was but one laborious task-true

*Athenæum, 1839. Nineteen years afterwards, we find the same critic, in reviewing Mrs Gore's novel of Heckington, characterising the voluminous authoress as 'always shrewd and sensible."

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

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-pleasure.
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 stores of gossiping, she contrived to prose, in undetected tautology, to successive detachments of an extensive 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 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 dinnergiving 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.]

MRS TROLLOPE-ADOLPHUS AND ANTHONY

TROLLOPE.

Another keen observer and caustic delineator of modern manners we have in MRS FRANCES TROLLOPE, the authoress of a long series of fictions. This lady entered on that literary career which has proved so had nearly reached her fiftieth year before she 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 foibles-of their want of delicacy, their affectations, drinking, coarse selfishness, and ridiculous peculiarities-that the whole nation was incensed at their English satirist. There

Mrs Trollope.

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 is much exaggeration in Mrs Trollope's sketches; alluding to the countless' pleasures and diversified but having truth for their foundation, her book is amusements of London, the country neighbour may be assured that the truth is not in her. Nothing can be supposed to have had some effect in reforming the more minutely monotonous than the recreations of the minor morals' and social habits of the Americans. really fashionable; monotony being, in fact, essential to The same year our authoress continued her satiric that distinction. Tigers may amuse themselves in a portraits, in a novel entitled The Refugee in America, thousand irregular diverting ways; but the career of a marked by the same traits as her former work, but genuine exclusive is one to which a mill-horse would exhibiting little art or talent in the construction of scarcely look for relief. London houses, London estab-a fable. Mrs Trollope now tried new ground. In lishments, 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

630

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 Jefferson 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

novels. Living in Ireland-as one of the surveyors of the General Post-office-Mr Trollope's two first novels are on Irish subjects-The Macdermots of Ballycloran (1847), and The Kellys and the O'Kellys (1848). In 1850 he produced a historical romance, La Vendée; in 1855, The Warden; and since that period, The Three Clerks; Barchester Towers; Doctor Thorne, 1858; and The Bertrams, 1859. There is a degree of reality, vigour, and genuine fresh English feeling about Mr Trollope's novels, which render him remarkable among his contemporaries. Each of his works, too, seems an improvement on its immediate predecessor-the treatment more artistic, and the lights and shades better managed. 'He has powers,' says one of Mr Trollope's most discriminating critics-in the National Review

which, if used with due painstaking conscientiousness, may make him one of the most successful novelists of the day, as they always render him readable and entertaining. But above all, he has the gift of finishing his work to the most minute detail, without becoming for an instant tedious or trivial; and this is a gift so rare that it should never be neglected.'

MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.

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. This journey also afforded Mrs Trollope materials for a novel, which she entitled A Romance of Vienna. To this year, also, belongs Tremordyn Cliff, a novel. Three more works of fiction, in three volumes each, were the fruit of 1839-namely, The Widow Barnaby, a highly amusing story, particularly the delineation of the bustling, scheming, unprincipled, husband-hunting widow; Michael Armstrong, or the Factory Boy, a caricature of the evils attendant on the English manufacturing system; and One Fault, a domestic story, illustrating with uncommon vigour and effect the dismal consequences of that species of bad temper which proceeds from pride and over-sensitiveness. In 1840, we had The Widow Married; and in 1841, The Blue Belles of England, and Charles Chesterfield. The latter relates the history of a youth of genius, and contains a satirical picture of the state of literature in England, branding authors, editors, and publishers with unprincipled profligacy, selfishness, and corruption. In 1842 Mrs Trollope, besides throwing off another This lady, long known in the world of fashion clever novel-The Ward of Thorpe Combe-gave the and light literature, was born at Knockbrit, near public the result of a second visit to Belgium, Clonmel, September 1, 1790. Her father, Edmund describing the changes that had been effected since Power, was a small proprietor in Ireland-a squireen 1833, and also A Visit to Italy. The smart caustic-who is said to have forced his daughter, when style of our authoress was not so well adapted to only fifteen, into a marriage with a Captain Farmer. the classic scenes, manners, and antiquities of Italy, The marriage was unhappy; Marguerite left her as to the broader features of American life and husband, and Captain Farmer was accidentally character, and this work was not so successful as killed. This was in 1817. In a few months afterher previous publications. Returning to fiction, we wards, Marguerite was united to an Irish peer, find Mrs Trollope, as usual, abounding. Three Charles Gardiner, Earl of Blessington. Her rank, novels, of three volumes each, were the produce of her beauty, and literary tastes now rendered her 1843-Hargrave, Jessie Phillips, and The Laurring-the centre of a brilliant circle, and the doting tons. The first is a sketch of a man of fashion; the husband revelled in every species of extravagant second, an attack on the new English poor-law; display. In 1822 they set out on a continental and the third, a lively satire on 'superior people,' tour. They visited Byron in Genoa, and Lady the 'bustling Botherbys' of society. In 1844 Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron (pubappeared Young Love, a theme not well adapted to lished after the death of the poet) present a faithful the hard sarcastic style of Mrs Trollope, and, after and interesting-though of course incompletea considerable interval, she produced Petticoat picture of the noble bard. In May 1829, Lady Government, Father Eustace, Uncle Walter (1852), Blessington was again left a widow, but with a and The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman jointure of about £2000 a year. A daughter of the (1854). These later works of Mrs Trollope are much deceased earl, by a former marriage, became the inferior to her early novels: the old characters are wife of Count Alfred D'Orsay, son of a French reproduced, and coarseness is too often substituted general officer, and remarkable for his handsome for strength. Reviewing the aggregate labours of appearance and varied accomplishments. This this industrious authoress, we cannot say that she marriage also proved unfortunate; the parties has done good proportioned to her talents. Her separated, and while the lady remained in Paris, own sex suffers the most by her satire, but her efforts the count accompanied Lady Blessington to appear directed only against the superficialities of England. This connection was only broken by life, and are not calculated to check vice or encourage death. It gave rise to scandalous rumours, yet virtue. She has scattered amusement among novel the countess and her friend maintained a conspireaders by some of her delineations; but in all her cuous place in society. The lady's drawing-rooms mirth there is a mocking and a bitter spirit which were attended by most of the literary and fashionis often as misplaced as it is unfeminine. able celebrities, and Count D'Orsay was the Mrs Trollope has resided for some years at acknowledged leader of fashion, besides being an Florence, and there one of her sons, T. ADOLPHUS accomplished artist in both painting and sculpture. TROLLOPE, has written an interesting scholarly A career of gaiety and splendour soon involved the illustration of Italian history, The Girlhood of countess in debt. She then applied herself to literaCatherine de Medici, in which he traces the influ- ture, and produced a long series of works, chiefly ences that helped to form the monstrous character novels, which for a time were successful. She had, of the heiress of the Medici. In 1859 Mr T. A. in 1822, published some scenes of metropolitan life Trollope added to his reputation by a biographical-The Magic Lantern, and Sketches and Fragments; work, A Decade of Italian Women, one of the most and she now (about 1840) set to book-making in interesting and delightful books of the season. good earnest. Her first publication was a volume Another son, ANTHONY TROLLOPE, has added fresh of Travelling Sketches in Belgium, very meagre and ·lustre to the family name by a series of admirable ill written. The next work commanded more

attention: it was her Conversations with Lord Byron. animated by a healthy tone of moral feeling and a In 1833 appeared The Repealers, a novel in three vein of delicate humour. The coquetry of her Irish volumes, but containing scarcely any plot, and few girls-very different from that in high life-is delineations of character, the greater part being admirably depicted. Next year Mrs Hall issued filled with dialogues, criticism, and reflections. Her a little volume for children, Chronicles of a Schoolladyship is sometimes sarcastic, sometimes moral, room, consisting also of a series of tales, simple, and more frequently personal. One female sketch, natural, and touching. The home-truths and that of Grace Cassidy, a young Irish wife, is the moral observations conveyed in these narratives only one of the characters we can remember, and reflect great credit on the heart and the judgit shews that her ladyship was most at home among ment of the writer. Indeed, good taste and good the scenes of her early days. To The Repealers feeling may be said to preside over all the works succeeded The Two Friends, The Confessions of an of our authoress. In 1881 she issued a second Elderly Gentleman, The Confessions of an Elderly Lady, Desultory Thoughts, The Belle of a Season, The Governess, The Idler in Italy (three volumes, 1839-40), The Idler in France (two volumes, 1841), The Victims of Society, and Meredith. Her recollections of Italy and France are perhaps the best of her works, for in these her love of anecdote, epigram, and sentiment, has full scope, without any of the impediments raised by a story. But probably not one of the long list will ever be reprinted. 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 friendship: 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. She belongs to an old and excellent family in her native county. 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 some fine rural description, and

contain

*Dublin University Magazine for 1840.

are

Uma Maria Hall

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 and liveliness. In 1832 she ventured on a larger and more difficult work-a 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

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. 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 observation 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 that is ultimately more fascinating than the darker shades and colourings of imaginative composition.