~ 
1829-] 
apprehension on the charge of murder. No- 
thing daunted, Glennon places the strongest 
of his fellows on horseback with the bride— 
mounts himself another, and determines to 
cut his way through all opposition. In the 
plunge he fires upon the officers, and the 
fire is instantly returned. In the melée 
Glennon is shot—the bride is shot—both 
die on the spot, and poor Letitia, torn and 
exhausted by the violence of her emotions, 
dies too. It is a most tragic conclusion, 
but the whole story is told with great force 
and feeling. 
Ecarté, or the Salons of Paris, 3 vols., 
12mo.; 1829.—The first attractions of a 
gaming-house, of the more recherché cast, 
in London, are the cuisines and the wines ; 
while the more conspicuous temptations of a 
Parisian one, are women and dancing. 
Drinking or gaming is stimulus enough for 
an Englishman. Women, at such a time, 
are misplaced; he cannot attend to two 
charms at once; when he is bent upon 
cards or dice, he cares not for women ; and 
when he has the company of women, he has 
no superfluous spirits for cards. Women 
are consequently never seen in English 
hells, and women of this class themselves 
have no turn for gaming. In Paris, both 
men and women, and as many of the latter 
as of theformer, frequent places—the younger 
women decoying for the proprietors or fish- 
ing for themselves ; the older, chaperoning, 
or searching for stimulus; and, mixing in 
the mélée, are as eager to make money by 
their skill, as the young ones by their_ 
charms. Thesalons of Paris are conducted 
with great art and effect. Women, some of 
them once of distinction, before their attrac- 
tions have utterly withered, appear as the 
heads of these establishments, and keep up 
some of the appearances of respectability by 
not throwing open their doors to all. In 
many of them there is no admittance ex- 
cept on special invitation; and they have 
their friends and associates, to point out dis- 
tinguished individuals, nativesand foreigners, 
to whom their invitations are liberally, but 
still with reserve, extended. Dress balls 
are given in some twice a-week, at which 
men of rank and fashion are to be found, 
and women of all ages and of all variety of 
seductions. The rooms are superbly fur- 
nished and brilliantly lighted—gilding and 
mirrors dazzle and distract—wines flow in 
profusion, and delicacies of all kinds abound, 
the expense of which is sustained by a cer- 
tain sum paid by the visitor on entrance, 
and a fee upon each game—collected by the 
mistress of the establishment or her confiden- 
tial agents. The consequences upon the 
young, especially, are generally liaisons, in 
the first place ; and these are quickly follow- 
ed by embarrassments, duels, and suicides. 
The object of the writer is to lay open 
these scenes of iniquity, the agents and 
machinery, with which he has coupled a 
tale, and one, of course, as custom impe- 
Domestic and Foreign. 
543 
ratively demands, of love—to answer the 
double purpose of information and amuse- 
ment—at once to instruct and warn. The 
effect to be apprehended in matters of this 
kind is, that the representation of conse- 
quences, however fatal they may be, will 
not counterbalance that of the fascinations. 
A scene of voluptuousness, stript, in descrip- 
tion, of the coarseness which, in reality, in- 
separably belongs to it, is itself scarcely 
resistible ; the describer, besides, is insen- 
sibly tempted to exaggerate, for his very 
object is to produce effect; and as to the 
perils, most men, and especially young men, 
have too much confidence in their own luck 
or prudence to care a fig about them, whilst 
their curiosity is sharpened by the. very 
descriptions, and the resolution instantly 
fixed, at all events, tosee them. This is all 
the proprietors are anxious about; enter 
the net, and the victim will not readily 
break through, or even wish to break 
through. The author professes a complete 
acquaintance with the scenes he describes— 
he is too warm occasionally, and clothes his 
cyprians with too many of the charms of 
virtue; but we are by no means disposed to 
rave against the licentiousness attributed to 
the book generally, by the violent severity of 
some of our conscientious cotemporaries. If 
these scenes are real, we are not sorry to see 
them thus exhibited ; and if they are in- 
deed fictitious, they must be the fruits of a 
prurient imagination, that riots in profli- 
gacy, and deserves, what the deceiver will 
be sure to gain—the contempt of his 
readers. 
An old and gouty uncle visits Paris, in 
company with a nephew—a youth of high 
talents, considerable cultivation, and great 
personal attractions. At Paris they encoun- 
ter an old friend of the uncle’s, a Colonel 
Stanley, of the India service, and his daugh- 
ter, lovely as one of the daughters of the 
east, and as wise and susceptible as it be- 
comes heroine to be. The young persons” 
had never before met, and, of course, forth- 
with fallin love. Before the youth, Del- 
maine, has time to get into mischief, he meets 
with a college friend, changed, in a short 
space, into a grave, thoughtful person, who 
tells him an eventful story—all how and 
about the ruin of his fortunes and his hopes 
by an unlucky acquaintance with the salons 
of Paris, and concludes, by warning his 
friend against their seductions. Scarcely 
had Delmaine been in Paris twenty-four 
hours, when he was insulted by a young 
French count, notorious as a duellist ; and 
a meeting took place, in which he had the 
good fortune to hit his skilful opponent, and 
escape himself. This event brought him 
at once into a sort of fashionable notice, and 
he became an object of admiration and jea- 
lousy to men and women. A Marquis de 
Forsac particularly seeks his acquaintance— 
a regular owé—and who, upon learning the 
youth’s connexions, immediately gets up 
a plot against him, and prevails upon a 
