lating upon European alliances, employ themselves in caballing with Madame le Brun, the Talleyrand of modern modistes, concerning revolutions in caps and conspiracies against turbans that be. Or, showy intrigantes in white satin, those prime donne of society, who, whatever ministers shall reign, are always to be found in musk-scented correspondence with Downing-street. Or, drawing-room parasites, with the true toady capacity for the running-pattern conversation that forms so admirable an arpeggio accompaniment to the solos. Or, ladies in their ninth lustrum, who have renounced for ever the influence of the puppies, and balmy cards." Peers and parvenus, clubs and coteries, dowagers and chaperones, tuft-hunters and toadies; dandies who write taffeta verses in silken albums, and wash their poodles in milk of roses; dandies couchant—supercilious, silent, self-concentrated; dandies rampant—vehement, garrulous, and gorgeously impertinent; ineffable coxcombry in all its kaleidoscopic aspects, from that of the omnibus-box (scil., opera, not "city, bank") down to that of Swan and Edgar's; these, and such as those, are Mrs. Gore's plastic creatures, her slaves of the lamp. She is expert in the lingo which they use, or affect. Mr. George Borrow is not a greater adept in gipsy slang, nor Judge Haliburton in the racy etymology of Brother Jonathan, nor Dickens in the idioms of Cockneyism, nor Lever in rollicking Hibernicisms, nor Marryat in marine stores of eloquence, nor Thackeray in the hand-book of snobbism, nor Kingsley in Christianised Carlylese, nor Anstey in the platitudes of debate, nor Hume in the "tottle" of the whole,—than is Mrs. Gore in the patavinity of peers and the patois of parvenus.
When she draws a character that we can like or respect, the interest we take in it is greater than such a character would elsewhere command, from the relief it affords to the tinkling cymbalry and crackling thorns and gilded gewgaws around. Being the only very human thing present, it is hailed as a bird (to use her own illustration) which alights upon the mast during a sea-voyage, and which the manner notes with intense interest, however dingy its plumage or poor its voice. It is a mercy to meet with such a rara avis, making no pretensions to merciless wit, and unambitious of a repute for persiflage. Not that Mrs. Gore’s wit, with all its levity, is devoid of wisdom. Wit she somewhere defines the animus of wisdom—legitimate offspring of an union between good sense and good spirits. But there is a weariness to the flesh in over-much commerce with the exercise and the victims of raillery; satire, however polished, becomes an edged tool with which we care not long to play—nor to see it glancing, and doing execution in the grasp of others. Three volumes of sprightly sarcasm leave one in poor spirits—or perhaps a little angry at having spent so much time on hollow hearts that do not improve on acquaintance. The author is then in danger of being characterised in Grammont's words—elle ennuie en voulant briller. Jeffrey says that such a brilliant circle as that of Madame du Deffand probably will never exist again in the world, and adds, "nor are we very sorry for it." The company in which Mrs. Gore is most chez lui, is in kind, not degree, akin to that which graced the suppers at the convent of St. Joseph; not so
