206 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



dancer through an opera glass ; and Patriotism defending the pension-list 

 from a back seat on the treasury bench ! 



" Oh London, who can listen to thy eternal whirl and roar who can 

 gaze on thy palaces, thy temples, thy solemn gray cathedrals, or pause on 

 the stately fabrics that span thy famous stream, scarce seen for the forest 

 of masts which crowd and blacken above its bosom to an extent no eye can 

 traverse who can pace the wondrous range of thy streets and squares, 

 stretching away, as if to infinity, in showy splendour or sombre grandeur ; 

 who can " read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" all this, and not feel 

 every petty, personal consciousness of Self swallowed up in an overpower- 

 ing sense of astonishment and admiration ? 



" Yet, oh vain ambitious paradoxical London, lay not the flattering 

 unction to thy soul, that because thou art great, thou art necessarily im- 

 mortal. Already the seeds of decay are at thy heart. Thou art dying by 

 inches of a plethora. Thou art swollen and bloated with a dropsy, though 

 thy massive shoulders and wondrous breadth of chest might seem to pro- 

 mise a lengthened life. Dream not then of immortality, but fall to thy 

 studies, and learn wisdom from the past. Think of Rome, now the " Niobe 

 of nations," but once queen-regent of the universe ! What she is, thou 

 must one day be. The time shall come when thy gorgeous edifices shall 

 fall, like hers, in ruins to earth ; when the grass shall grow in thy streets ; 

 when the owl shall hoot from thy roofless palaces, and the adder crawl 

 into sunshine from among thy mouldering fanes ; when Silence and Soli- 

 tude (twin mourners) shall sit with folded arms and weeping eyes beside 

 thy grave ; and the pilgrim from some far-off land, as he wanders through 

 a scene of desolation, shall say " And was this London?" 



The following is a gloomy picture of the disastrous chances to which 

 modest merit is exposed. Mr. ()' Blarney, it seems, favoured the world 

 with a fashionable novel ; and presented it with an elaborate historical 

 work. " Truth is strange, stranger than fiction," although the degree of 

 acceptance which both met with at the hands of an unworthy public ap- 

 pears in this instance to have been equally strange. 



" No sooner had the work appeared, than public attention was still fur- 

 ther attracted towards it, by a series of mysterious paragraphs in the pa- 

 pers, indirectly ascribing it to the eloquent and sprightly pen of his Royal 

 Highness the Duke of ; and, that nothing might be wanting to con- 

 firm its celebrity, a fresh string of advertisements was issued, with the 

 following extracts from the literary journals of the day attached to them 

 by way of rider ; 



" ' Bon Ton* is a tale of first-rate ability ; the author is the Scott of 

 fashionable life." London Museum. 



" A most talented tale, full of point, wit, and sarcasm. The writer 

 forcibly reminds us of Sheridan " Weekly Literary Miscellany. 



" We have been favoured with an early copy of this work (which is yet 

 unpublished) and may conscientiously say of the author that he is quite a 

 prose Byron," Town and Country Magazine. 



"Transcendent! astonishing ! superlative I" Star. 



" It is truly refreshing in this age of cant and humbug to meet with a 

 novel like ' Bon Ton,' penned in the good old spirit, of Smollett arid Field- 

 ing." Weekly Repository. 



" The puns of this exceedingly facetious novelist are worthy of Mr. 

 Rogers, the eminent banker." John Butt. 



" From these discriminating criticisms, it will naturally be concluded 

 that ' Bon Ton' created quite a sensation in the world of fashion and litera- 

 ture. But no, nothing of the sort. Notwithstanding I attired my hero in 

 lavender-coloured slipperes ; made him sarcastic on port wine; intolerent 



