542 Monthly Review of Literature. 



in the second volume, and the boudoir scene in which Basilides breaks in on 

 Laurentia and Thusnelda to announce the rising against the Emperor Max- 

 imin and his representative, the Prsefect are the best in the book. The third 

 volume is too full either of bombast and namby-pamby on the one hand, or 

 of gross and puerile absurdity on the other, to allow of a favourable notice flf 

 that section of the work. 



The Victims of Society. By the COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON. 

 3 Vols. post 8vo. Saunders and Otley. 



FROM the former writings of la belle Comtesse we could not have supposed 

 that we should ever be able to assign her the highest honours of literature by 

 the side of Richardson and Miss Edgeworth : yet we must acknowledge that 

 she has this time sent forth to the world a book of very extraordinary merit 

 facile princeps of all the domestic novels that have appeared of late years. 

 We began the book under great disadvantages ; for there is a certain reserve 

 belonging to Englishmen, a certain prudish sentiment respecting female 

 propriety, of which they cannot divest themselves, a feeling repudiated by 

 lajeune France as utterly ridiculous. We have imbibed these notions, an<L 

 hence with respect to the authoress and her book we were not favourab^p 

 prejudiced. The talent, b.owever, which is displayed throughout, the con- 

 summate skill with which the hidden springs of human action are laid bare, 

 the sagacious and deeply scrutinizing ability with which the anatomy of 

 French and English society is dissected, involuntarily call forth our admira- 

 tion, and draw off our attention from the authoress to the book. 



The tale (which is related in the epistolary form) is intended to show the 

 difference between English and French morals between the wholesome dread 

 of female impurity prevalent in England and the licentious freedom permitted 

 by the new philosophy of France The whole, however, is touched 

 off so happily and conveys so vivid a picture to the imagination, that we can 

 scarcely find fault with its warmer tints. The story is very simple ; for the 

 talent lies not in the concatenation of circumstances, so much as in the true 

 and lively style in which she draws the portraits of her characters in the 

 masterly skill with which she carries forward the action of the drama from 

 the languid common-place of the opening chapters to the successive events 

 which form a true climax in the latter volumes. 



A young and sensitive girl Lady Augusta Vernon the idol of her parents 

 and the admiration of the circle in which she moves, is prevailed on by Lord 

 Annandale a sporting character and a roue to become his bride. The lovely 

 lady visits the fashionable circles of London, and becomes the victim of a 

 hollow and heartless friend or fiend, who, having a jaded reputation herself, 

 and desiring that others should be as wretched as herself, omits no effort to 

 undermine the character of the unsuspecting Lady Annandale. Miss Mon- 

 tressor is as clever, as she is unprincipled ; and her letters from first to last 

 betray a talent, which immediately dispels any doubt respecting the success 

 of her evil machinations. Conceiving an unholy passion for the gay nouveau 

 marie, she contrives to sow dissension between him and his wife ; and the 

 attentions of a Lord Nottingham, an intimate of Annandale's, to the gentle 

 and pure-minded Lady, give her the means of carrying her diabolical projects 

 into full effect. The end of the whole is, that the maligned wife is obliged 

 to leave her husband's house, and the unwitting lover is threatened with an 

 action for crim-con : she soon dies of a broken heart. Miss Montressor 

 becomes the Countess of Annandale : but rank and fortune cannot washout 

 the stains of a guilty conscience. Her former shame rankles in her mind ; 

 and the importunities of the seducer of her youth-: a man formerly gay, 

 heartless, and de ton ton, but now a low, brutalized black-leg, thief and 

 assassin, who demands [a maintenance as the price of secrecy, fills to the 



