1828.] 



Domestic and F&reign. 



we have various, varying, and variable at 

 command surely in full variety, as Mr. 

 Hood would be tempted to say. 



De Beauvoir, or Second Love; 3 vols. 

 \'2)iu>. Longman and Co. : London. 

 Among the multitude of novels that the few 

 last years have poured from the press, it 

 is remarkable that so few have touched 

 upon the habits and manners of the sex. 

 We are presented with drawing-room life, 

 dinner life, gaming-table life, and theatrical 

 life ; but the actual embarrassments which 

 task the delicate spirit and graceful virtues 

 of woman, moving in a certain rank of 

 society, have hitherto scarcely found a his- 

 torian. Yet it is in the story of those dif- 

 ficulties, that the finest lessons for the con- 

 duct of woman must be looked for, that 

 the contrast between morbid sensibility 

 and real feeling must be felt ; and the line 

 drawn between the selfishness of a narrow 

 mind, and the generous prudence of a 

 heart capable of making the happiness of 

 society. 



We can conceive few subjects more ca- 

 pable of the most striking eloquence and 

 taste, or of making a stronger impression 

 on public intelligence and morals. 



The novel before us is of this class, 

 adopts the subject of those embarrassments 

 with the force of a mind fitted to discuss 

 them, and offers its lessons of wisdom and 

 virtue with a dignity that makes them im- 

 pressive, and a native elegance that makes 

 them interesting in a very uncommon de- 

 gree. 



The limits to which we are necessarily 

 confined, prevent us from going into the 

 detail of a stoiy, which is long, various, and 

 animated. Mrs. Cavendish, a woman of 

 condition, is married to a man of merit, to 

 whom, however, her hand has been given 

 with some degree of reluctance ; an earlier 

 passion is at her heart. But she perseveres 

 in her duties with steady propriety, during 

 his life. Her chief embarrassments then 

 commence ; she is pursued by suitors of 

 various characters. She has a daughter, 

 whose settlement in life becomes another 

 source of care. She has relations and 

 friends, to whose prejudices and singulari- 

 ties of opinion she is forced to pay a pain- 

 ful deference ; yet, with perpetual hazard 

 of offence, she finally surmounts all her 

 difficulties, steers tranquilly through the 

 troubled sea of family disquiet, and is at 

 once honourable and happy. Specimens 

 of the graceful and finished language in 

 which these incidents are told, might be 

 found in numberless parts of these vo- 

 lumes, yet they cannot be separated from 

 the work without impairing their effect. 

 The following is the sketch of one of the 

 characters, under the pain of mind produced 

 by a calumny : 



Amelia, with pallid lips, and fixed and tearless 

 eyes, continued seated on the couch, where she 

 had read the letter. It lay upon her knee. She 

 sat, indeed, the image of a sudden and confused 



195 



dismay. Her toilette but half completed, a cha- 

 racter of negligence was strangely blended with 

 the finished elegance of her beauty ; the golden 

 wreath hung loosely through her hair; the deli- 

 cate and sandalled foot was scarcely perceptible 

 amid the long foldings of her shawl. Sue woro 

 altogether the air of one called suddenly from the 

 elegancies of life to meditate upon its sorrows. 

 How terrible was the change! How severe the 

 suffering! Helpless and hopeless she sat. She 

 was in the power of the injurcr, whoever he 

 miifhtbe! 



The note was despatched, and Amelia found 

 herself again in solitude. She gazed on the f-stal 

 preparations that were scattered round her. Hov 

 valueless in one instant had become the glitter- 

 ing parade of life. She threw herself on the seat 

 she had quitted : tears bitter and agonizing; sobs 

 sorrowful and deep, burst from her heart. She 

 tore, with trembling haste and nervous energy, the 

 ornaments from her hair, and threw them on the/ 

 floor before her feet. She remembered not the 

 lapse of time I 



The following sketch is in another style, 

 but not less true to nature : 

 ~ " The facetious Captain Bennet a man who 

 finds his way every where ; and who establishes 

 himself wherever it may seem to him best, by the 

 force of either his wit or his will a person who 

 let him have done what he may, never seems to 

 imagine that he can have given the slightest of- 

 fence, so that at last, you forget it too ; one who 

 can make himself useful, when he pleases, and 

 affects to be always at the disposal of his friends. 



The description of a high-minded man, 

 under the first influence of beauty, is faith- 

 ful to nature, and expressed with very 

 striking power of language 



De Beanvoir, with brow bent in- thought, tra- 

 versed the apartment. Every feeling that sof- 

 tens, every sentiment that exalts, were busy at 

 his heart ; a sympathy, complex in its causes, but 

 bearing in view one effect alone, the compas 

 sion which a brave man feels for beauty, when he 

 beholds upon its brightness a single tear the 

 consciousness of lofty energy, of personal iriflu. 

 ence, of impassioned will the wish to carry 

 those into action for the benefit and blessing of 

 another. While, at the same instant, the spirit 

 and the sentiment were subdued by the feeling, 

 that the very being for whom he would have thus 

 devoted himself, had paid worship to her own un 

 happiness, and would regard him as an intruder, 

 did he but touch the steps of the temple. All 

 those vivid passions of a mind generous, and aspir- 

 ing, and delicate, sent their shadows, one by one, 

 over the countenance of De Beauvoir. 



After this picture of the bridegroom, we 

 cannot resist giving its graceful and spirit- 

 ed counterpart in the agitations of the 

 bride 



There was indeed in the situation of Amelia 

 much to excite the sympathy of an observer like 

 De Beauvoir. Alternately blushing brightly 

 amid the preparations for her bridal happiness t 

 and turning pale with the apprehension that over 

 that happiness there would steal a vapour subtle 

 to destroy ; elate one moment, as childhood at its 

 play, and depressed at another, as childhood in 

 its tears loving fondly her betrothed, and yet 



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