678 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[\JUNE, 



suffrage. If property, suffrage, and 

 taxation, were commensurate, there 

 could be little cause for any class to 

 grumble. 



Wedded Life in the Upper Ranks; 

 2 vols. Compared with the pretensions 

 of these volumes, the performance is 

 miserable, and fairly entitled to the dis- 

 tinction of being the most contemptible, 

 in its class, of the season. The princi- 

 pal tale is a dull narrative of domestic 

 life, unenlivened by one spark of talent. 

 In point of incident it has little interest, 

 and that little is damped and deadened 

 by the hum-drum style in which the de- 

 tails are described. There is a plentiful 

 lack of essentials. It has neither force 

 nor humour nothing striking in cha- 

 racter, nor discriminating in sentiment 

 the level parts of the story have no ani- 

 mation, and the dialogue is utterly des- 

 titute of point or smartness. Among 

 the rest of its negative qualities, it has 

 nothing, not a line of it, that shews 

 actual acquaintance with the classes 

 whose habits it professes to exhibit, be- 

 yond the common hashes and minces 

 that come warmed up day after day, till 

 they are enough to make a cat sick. 

 But what are the peculiarities of Wedded 

 Life in the Upper Hanks ? One of the 

 tales tells of the Heir of a Marquisate, 

 who, in compliance with the wishes of 

 his anxious papa and mamma, married 

 a lovely woman, a protegee of their own, 

 for whom, with all her charms, he does 

 not care a fig. The noble youth had 

 past his teens had been in the world 

 and the wars, and in the general pursuit 

 of life was already use ; but in very 

 early youth, or boyhood rather, he had 

 fallen over head and ears in love with a 

 lady, who, he believed, chose to marry 

 somebody else, and shortly after died 

 by which sad events his whole stock of 

 love was exhausted, and the sources for 

 ever, apparently dried up. He became 

 cold, dark, gloomy, and indifferent, 

 not only to the ladies, but to life, and 

 all its enjoyments. 



The lady who has the ill-luck to marry 

 this miserable personage, is of course 

 neglected, and all but harshly treated ; 

 and, lovely and amiable as she is, in im- 

 minent danger of loving somebody else 

 who might be disposed to reciprocate. 

 The devil never sleeps, and an agent of 

 mischief is at hand, and, as was very 

 natural, in the person of the noble lord's 

 bosom friend and confidant. The lady, 

 however, when just at the brink of the 

 precipice, steps back, and escapes the 

 irretrievable fall ; and in the meanwhile, 

 the gloomy marquess, at some foreign 

 court, discovers the very lady, whose 

 death had withered his affections, in the 

 land of the living, and in the capacity of 

 a kept mistress which was in fact the 



part she had always played. The dis- 

 covery sweeps away his sighs and his 

 sorrows, and, what is better, replenishes 

 the fountains of love, which, without 

 loss of time, he pours, full, fresh, and 

 overflowing, upon his neglected wife 

 and the pair are as happy as bridal folks 

 can be in the " Upper Ranks." 



The other tale is simply a sketch 

 superior in execution to the more com- 

 plicated tale of the comfortable position 

 of a country gentleman of 10,000 a 

 year, who has married a kept-mistress, 

 and is cut by all his respectable neigh- 

 bours. But it matters little what are 

 the materials a writer chooses to work 

 upon, if he understands neither their 

 capabilities, nor the use of his tools. 



A Compendious Exposition of the Prin- 

 ciple and Practice of Professor Jacotofs 

 System of Education, by Joseph Payne. 

 Mr. Payne has the merit of making 

 known in England M. Jacotofs System 

 of Education, or more correctly, M. 

 Jocotot's Mode of Teaching Languages. 

 He is also preparing several books for 

 the acquisition of Latin, Greek, French, 

 Italian, &c. on the same plan. The 

 Epitome Sacrse Historic is already pub- 

 lished, accompanied with a literal trans- 

 lation, and prefixed by a sketch of 

 M. Jacotofs principles. We have no 

 doubt this same method is admirably 

 calculated to accelerate the acquisition 

 of language, if of nothing else. Every 

 one has now perhaps some general notion 

 of the plan it is to commit the contents 

 of some one book to memory, repeating 

 it incessantly, and analysing every sen- 

 tence, phrase, word, and syllable which, 

 once accomplished, will enable the stu- 

 dent with little difficulty, to read any 

 other book of the same language. The 

 labour is all at the beginning, but that 

 is, it must be allowed, immense, both, 

 for pupil and teacher. M. Jacotot and 

 his admirers anticipate another advan- 

 tagebut an use which we are disposed 

 very strongly to deprecate. This same 

 method which, impressing the pupil by 

 dint of repetition with a multitude of 

 ready-made sentences a living diction- 

 ary of phrases, will also supply him with 

 the means of expressing his own concep- 

 tions and with phrases of the best qua- 

 lity too for of course a well- written 

 book will be chosen. But what will 

 this produce but mere trickery a piece 

 of patch-work the revival of a cento- 

 tastecommunicating the form of ele- 

 gance without the spirit of it and 

 teaching the world, what it already 

 does sufficiently, to cloth inanity in 

 pompous periods. Behold a printed 

 specimen : 



" Calypso was inconsolable 'for the 

 departure of Ulysses. In her grief she 

 found it a misery to be immortal : her 



