Mr. Blount begins hisDiary' in the year 1788, in his youth, and apparently in his first entrance into continental life. He ends it in 1802, in his premature old age, and on the eve of his death. The letters are fragments of the long correspondence maintained with his friend, and give sketches of his loves and embarrassments down to the period when men neither love nor hate any more. His first letter is dated Tours,' and contains the description of the fair one whose image is thenceforth to haunt him.

That which caused me to stay here four-and-twenty hours at all, was, not a woman, but a broken axletree. Blessings on Dessin's rotten carriages! If mine had stood firm, I should have rolled on the next morning after my arrival, and never have dreamt of what I had missed. But, luckily, I was detained here sorely against my will for a day; and have now been detained here, very much according to my will, for forty.

It is a beautiful country this, hereabouts: the river so fine, and its banks so rich, and yet so romantic-and then the (not harvest, but) vendange moon, smiling down upon both so luxuriantly! Oh! those moonlight walks by the banks of the Loire! A year's delay were well repaid by one of them! But you are still in the dark as to what I am flying into these raptures about: I promised to begin at the beginning, and I will.

I broke down just without the gates of the town, on a Saturday night; and the next day, being detained, I went to church. The old proverb was verified on the occasion

-

"Near the church". you know the rest.

pe

I confess my thoughts were wholly abstracted from devout subjects, by my eyes chancing to light upon one of the loveliest creatures which ever crossed their vision, seated at a very short distance from me. She seemed to be about eighteen, and her beauty was equally great and culiar. She had more even than the usual darkness of complexion of a French woman; her hair was like jet, her eyebrows and eyelashes were, if possible, darker still; and the latter, from their extreme length, appeared to be even more so than they really were. But her eyes were blue deep, rich, transparent blue; which, with such dark accompaniments, gave an air, certainly, of peculiarity, but of most lovely peculiarity, to the expression of her radiant and speaking countenance. Her form was scarcely yet arrived, at its complete fulness, but its outline was perfect; and a few months, as it seemed to me, would finish the filling up. Altogether, I had scarcely ever seen a more lovely, certainly, never a more striking, person. But by this expression you must not conceive there was any ostentation, if I may be permitted the word, of manner or bearing. On the contrary, the most exquisite delicacy was spread, like a veil, over this radiant beauty, softening, and yet enhancing, its perfection. You know I am somewhat fastidious, and am not ready to think every pretty face a beautiful one; but this one was so, and I studied it in every light and posture; for I scarcely removed my eyes from it, during the whole service.

My first endeavour was to discover who this lady of the Loire might be; in this there was not much difficulty. She was, it seemed, an Italian. Her mother had been French, and came from Tours. This VOL. II.

D

mother she had lost some six years ago, and had then come to reside, for education, with her maternal aunt. Her education was now complete; and her father was very shortly expected to arrive, to take her back to Italy with him.'- Vol. i. pp. 6-9.

He gains access to this handsome creature, and obtains her affections; but how he accomplishes either the reader is left to his own invention to conceive, for the author gives no intimation on the subject. Mr. Blount makes fierce love to her for two months, and, at the end of the time, suddenly sets off for Paris, abandoning Antonia, whom he has made as miserable as being desperately in love could make her. No reason is assigned: the hero is alike desperately smitten, weeps, writes raving letters, makes harangues to her picture, talks of hours of felicity, green banks, where mutual Vows were exchanged, and the moon was surveyed with mutual rapture; and, after all, turns his chariot-wheels to Paris, and, in boundless agony at her eternal loss, drives away with his own free will. This may be romantic, but it is altogether unnatural. There is no poverty on the hero's side, no previous engagement, no conflicting authority, nothing which could, in the most trivial degree, justify his determination. The result of this deficiency of motive is not to increase the interest of the story, but to degrade the character of the hero. Mr. Blount, with all his refined feelings and exquisite intellect, is thus actually nothing more than a silly fellow, totally destitute of feeling, and merely treacherous, where the author had prepared us for honour and delicacy. He who habitually flings away his own happiness, merely to see how far he can fling it from him, is less to be pitied than despised; but he who in this absurd experiment is careless how far he may fling the happiness of others after it, adds crime to folly.

The author should have been aware that in all such cases the true character is simply heartlessness and hypocrisy. A dégagé sentimentalist of this order has no feeling whatever.

But we turn from this improbable delineation to subjects of more interest. The taking of the Bastille is supposed to have been witnessed by the diarist; and that fatal and extraordinary event is very graphically described. The scene now changes, and the diarist gives the story of a woman who might have been his own counterpart, the wife of a man of rank, whom she had married to please her family. Lord Montore is a proud and cold character, and not at all suited to the brilliancy of his young and handsome lady.

She was, indeed, originally one of the most fascinating and delightful persons in the world. She was extremely lovely, though not of a calm or regular style of beauty. She was of shorter stature than the most perfect standard for a woman; but her form was exquisitely cast, combining lightness, and delicacy of outline, with the brightest and richest filling up. To the gay and buoyant liveliness of youth, she joined an archness, even an espiéglerie of manner — a smile lurking in the glance of the eye, and rippling upon the beautiful lip which be

trayed a kind and degree of talent seldom so much developed in such early youth. Yet he who would, from these indications, have deduced that she allowed the deeper and stronger feelings to be drowned beneath the bright and sparkling spray of wit and gaiety, would have been far wrong indeed, in the estimate of her character. On the contrary, she was one of that class of persons a class much more numerous than is generally supposed—who, being naturally of joyous, elastic, and lively temperaments, gave their apparent energies to the light surfaces of things; and yet, who possess, perhaps even more than, certainly as much as, any other description of women, the fire of strong feeling always burning beneath these bright but less ardent coruscations awaiting only object and occasion to call it into vivid (and to some, unexpected) life. Women of this description are calculated, in a most eminent degree, to give and to experience happiness, if united to a man whom they love, and whom they respect; but they are also calculated to experience and to cause the most extreme misery, if they be bound to a husband whom they dislike, and hold in slight esteem.'- Vol. i. pp. 112-114.

A failure of congeniality will not, we are afraid, go far with a jury; but it is the wand with which novelists habitually feel entitled to work all their wonders. In a short time, Blanch discovers that her lord is not congenial, and, as all women with their minds fairly settled on such a subject will also discover, she ascertains that a Mr. Lumley has the requisite congeniality. She accordingly, in the due exercise of the rights of romance and woman, elopes with the new lover. Here, however, the novelist gives way to the historian; and it is found (as regularly happens in real life) that the adulterer is still more contemptuous, cold, and negligent.

The story of this wilful unfortunate rapidly comes to a close. Her health has declined when Blount met her again; and these two susceptibles are on the point of falling in love with each other. However, they separate. Blanch is removed to Nice, where she sees her former husband, and soon after is left alone by Lumley, who coldly returns to England. She wastes away, and dies. The story is prettily told, but nothing can compensate for the choice of the subject. The delicate distresses of an adulteress are worn-out topics, and unworthy, even if they were new, of the pen of any writer who laid claim to public attention.

Blount now wanders into Italy, gives way to licentiousness, and consoles himself by the exhausted and idle plea, that life is now insupportable without strong excitement. This plea answers all sorts of purposes with him; and, on the strength of it, he continues to be heartless and self-satisfied to the end. He at length accidentally discovers Antonia, who had long since taken the veil. He attempts to prevail with her to elope: she refuses; but, finally, is released from her vows, by the breaking up of the convents in the French invasion of Italy. Blount had, by this time, returned to England, and he writes to her to join him, and proposes to marry her. She is lost in sight of the English shore; and Blount, through

• the

necessity of excitement,' becomes a gambler: this necessity of excitement being here gratuitously presumed to be the thirst of a fine spirit, not, as it invariably is, the common gross appetite of a débauché for gross gratification. He indulges in sensuality, seduction, and play.

Blount, now in poverty, marries a woman of fortune, of whom he grows weary in a few weeks; and, in search of excitement, they go to the Continent. Blount's second visit to Paris shows him all

things changed.

Mercy upon me! how every thing is changed in this town, since I was here last! To be sure, they have been stirring years which have elapsed since then; and, with regard to political matters, I was of course pretty well prepared to find what I have found. But I did not quite expect, though perhaps I ought, so complete a revolution in society also. The Fauxbourg St. Germain is deserted. At Versailles, grass grows in the courts. Instead of a king with powdered hair, à l'aile de pigeon, and a habit Français, I find a consul with lank locks, and a General's uniform, reviewing his troops, on a white horse at full gallop. In like manner every vestige, not only of the vieille cour, but of the former state of society altogether, has passed away. No coteries, no petit soupers, no conversation teeming with subtle compliments, and epigrammatic turns of expression. Every thing now seems active and energetic occasionally coarse, perhaps, and with the faults arising from coarseness; but, for that very reason, perfectly free from all those which appertain to frivolity. Society certainly is not so brillant and refined, nor is it nearly so agreeable to those who seek it merely for society's sake; but it bespeaks a much higher and stronger tone to pervade men's minds in general throughout the country. There is no longer that monotony, which, in despite of all its charms, was undoubtedly felt even in the delightful ré-unions of which I speak. The great events, which have so recently passed at home and abroad, prevent the petty topics of passing occurrences to have the same interest which they formerly had, in the absence of all more stirring subjects of discussion.

But, in despite of all this, which I am obliged to admit, when I come coolly to think upon the subject, certain it is that to me Paris gives very inferior gratification to what it formerly gave. To be sure,

I have undergone my revolution also: I am older, sadder, in weaker health, and married. When I first came to Paris in eighty-eight, I was young, in full health and blood, eager in my pursuit of pleasure, and tolerably successful in obtaining it. I had the good fortune also to gain admittance into a most delightful circle. Without being at all a literary man myself, I mixed with the gens de lettres. Marmontel's house was open to me, and Grimm I met constantly, and listened, with the utmost interest, to the piquant observations upon what was passing around us, which gave so peculiar a charm and vivacity to his conversation. Now, Marmontel is dead, Grimm has retreated to the court of his old patron the Duke of Saxe-Gotha; all who composed that set are dispersed and gone. The Abbé Morellet is the only one of them who remains; and he now is more remarkable for that circumstance itself, than for the animated and sensible social talents which he contributed in those days, as his share of that exquisite mental pic-nic. I

have been to see him; and our conversation almost wholly turned upon the total extinction of the society in which we had formerly met.

Now, I am here, not to reside some time, and to mix with the Parisians as a resident; but as a mere John-Bull traveller, with my wife in one hand, and my catalogue in the other, come to see "the sights." And, plague take it! my wife is as much out of place here, as any cockney-dame who has never been out of the sound of Bow-bell. I may almost be thankful that there are no longer such soirées, as those at poor Madame de Corvillac's; for, upon my soul! I should scarcely dare present her there. Not that she is not very well presentable, if she would but hold her tongue: but she talks such ineffable nonsense; she asks such excruciating questions; she- but I will not talk of her just now.

With respect to "the sights," there can be no doubt of their extreme increase and improvement since the Revolution. The collection at the Louvre is certainly the most splendid assemblage of productions of art in the world. I shall not stop to enquire how it came there; it is sufficient that it is there, for me to go and luxuriate upon its riches, day after day.

Alas! with what emotions did I behold the Venus, here in her new abode! I last saw her at Florence. At Florence! Oh! what a world of memory dwells in that one word! What a tissue of fond thoughts, of passionate affection, of deep love, does it call up? My visit there was the crisis of my life, as a subsequent time was its catastrophe. The sight of this statue made those days almost present to me again - present for all the painful condiments of passion, but not including any of its delightful attributes. I recollect going to pass hours in the gallery, day after day, while the fever of anxiety was preying upon my heart, that I might, if possible, forget the passage of time, in the contemplation of all the beauties and wonders by which I was surrounded. In the Tribune, and in the Cabinet of Bronzes, I used mostly to take my stand — gazing, in the one, on all its peculiar riches of art, both in sculpture and in painting; and, in the other, on that exquisite piece of statuary which almost renders the presence of any thing else needless.'- Vol. ii. pp. 230-236.

He dies, utterly exhausted. The 'editor' thus makes the amende, by giving a short summary of the principles of this useless and

unamiable individual:

If the reader have viewed this progression in the same light that it has appeared to me, a not unprofitable lesson, may, I think, be drawn from it. Mr. Blount I take originally to have been a man of warm and upright feelings, as well as of considerable ardour of disposition. But he caused his own misery, and that of her who loved and trusted him, by that most pernicious and enervating bent of mind with regard to women, for which, thank Heaven! our language wants an expression; I mean, that common to men whom our neighbours term à bonnes fortunes. The increasing action of this corroding influence is, I think, very apparent in the gradual change of tone throughout the course of these papers. He begins by talking of these matters with gaiety and buoyant. animal spirits. He resolutely shuts his eyes against every thing which he feels it disagreeable to look upon; he seeks only present enjoyment, and he finds it. After further self-indulgence, we find him more difficult to be excited, and occasionally looking back with tenderness and