360 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



scribed, has no sympathy with the good, whatever may have been her 

 former sufferings, when she aUies herself to a felon and a heartless liber- 

 tine, because she had known and loved him in his days of youth and 

 virtue. She might have assigned to him a weekly pittance to save him 

 from the degrading habits which extreme poverty engenders — but there 

 is a want of delicacy in a generous and high-minded female affiancing 

 herself to a coarse, depraved, and ruthless vagabond, whatever might 

 have been his warrantable pretensions before lie had linked himself to 

 vice and infamy. The good old mode of rewarding virtue and contemning 

 vice is, we think, the best denouement for all tales of the imagination ; 

 it is more in consonance with sound reason and moral feeling, and teaches 

 a better lesson to the young and the thoughtless. The author must 

 have had some misgivings on this point, too, for when he had completed 

 this incongruous match, he is at a loss what to do with the happy pair, 

 being perfectly aware that they had placed themselves out of the pale of 

 respectable society, and had therefore no chance of spending a pleasant 

 honey-moon in their native country — after their marriage, therefore, he 

 starts them off, with all their kin, for America ! Considered as a literary 

 composition only, we must, however, acknowledge, that the story of 

 ** The Emigrants" is entitled to much commendation. 



Lives and Portraits of the celebrated Women of all Countries. By the 

 Duchess of Abrantes. London : Bull and Churton. 1835. 



We have, here, a work which professes to present us with " the lives 

 and portraits of the celebrated women of all countries ;" but instead of 

 being gratified with a portly volume in royal 8vo. closely printed in 

 double columns, like Gorton's admirable " Biographical Dictionary," we 

 are actually served with a nutshell — a paltry duodecimo of 366 pages of 

 very fair-looking "brevier," enlivened with the " sayings and doings" 

 of no fewer than sixteen ladies of celebrity ! ! ! Forming a high esti- 

 mate of the fair, of their talents, their virtue^s, and genius — we open our 

 eyes in astonishment, and cannot but marvel what strange apathy stole 

 over the Duchesse d' Abrantes and her gallant coadjutor the Count 

 Straszewics, when they wearied, yawned, and laid down their pens and 

 their labours thus prematurely. Surely some envious Merlin — some 

 wicked masculine elf, — jealous of the fame and glory of the feminine 

 half of our species — stealthily distilled '* poppy and mandragora" on the 

 eye-lids of its literary advocates, and lulled them into a treacherous 

 oblivion of duty. From the promising prospectus before us, we dis- 

 cover, first, that *' women seemed doomed by the imjust silence of 

 biographers to be forgotten" (ungrateful pedants, we blush for ye !) ; 

 second, that the fair widow of Junot and the chivalrous Noble were 

 *' long engaged in preparing to set forth the claims of women to cele- 

 brity ;" dLwd third, that these writers intended to *' devote their future 

 labours to the biography of the celebrated women of all ages." We 

 furthermore find that the collection was to ** present not only the moral 

 characters of the most distinguished females," but likewise " their 

 portraits," and that for this purpose '* nearly all the public and private 

 galleries of Europe" were to be thrown open to the artists selected. 

 Indeed ! and could the long labours of the assiduous defenders of the 

 gentler sex, — could their patient researches into the history of woman, 

 could the written and oral records of *' all ages and countries'* supply 

 them with but sixteen females of celebrity ? or is it possible that a paucity 

 of materials for illustration occasioned the untimely decease of their 

 project ? — is it a fact that " all the public and private galleries of Europe" 



