11 AUGUST 1849, Page 17

LiONIE VERMONT. * Mildred Vernon, a previous production of this writer,

never reached us : the critical panegyrics in the journals led us to expect the advent of a new novelist who should combine the minute truthfulness of Miss Austen in painting characters, and the clinquant brilliancy of Mrs. Gore in depicting manners, with a depth of social philosophy such as Bulwer aims at. The actual does not realize that expectation : but the author of Mildred Vernon is a clever person. The rhetorical predomi- nates over the dramatic in his or we believe in her mind, (notwithstand- ing the mascuffne tone of the book, and the unfeminine character of parts of it,) so that the persons are not always true or consistent in dialogue, and there is too much leaning to "effects," both in scenes and situation. Either by- nature or study, however, the writer has a truer sense of art than many contemporary novelists ; there is little exaggeration in the persons, and the story is pursued to its true termination. The book be- fore us has a large view of society and its living elements ;. though something must be ascribed to the novelty of the subject to English read- ers a good deal perhaps to its greater inherent variety and contrast. read- ers, Vermont is a tale of the last French Revolution, in which pri- vate fortunes are skilfully combined with public events ; the latter cre- ating the greater interest, but the dramatis personie are so involved in them that the connexion of the private and the public in the story is complete. The author's political views or objects are not clear ; for, while contemptuously opposed to the Orleanists and the Republicans, the writer does not seem to anticipate success to the Legitimists, and is awake to their blindness and prejudices. In the novel these various parties are contrasted with considerable skill ; the Legitimists and the Republicans occupying a much more considerable place, displaying more energy, and if not more virtue less sordid vices, than the friends of Louis Philippe; which is probably near the truth. The story of Leonie Vermont is well enough adapted to the objects of the writer, but the interest of the book depends less upon its story than upon its persons and its scenes. The best character is M. de Briancour, the Ultra-Legitimist, who has "learned nothing and forgotten nothing "; still indulging in visionary hopes of a restoration of the old regime, lettres de cachet and all. Of course his acquirements are nil, his abilities not great ; but his courage and his gentlemanly bearing inspire respect, his cheerful good-nature, when politics are not in question, attachment ; and there is something " refreshing " in the fidelity of his faith. He is painted, no doubt, couleur de rose, as a type of the extreme Legitimists ; but he is the truest character of the book. His daughter, Isabelle, em- bodies the really religions Frenchwoman of the modern school : she is beautifully drawn' but perhaps too angelic for humanity. Her brother, Fernand Vicomte de Briancoar, the hero of the novel, is designed to re- present the young French Royalists; men of honour and principle, who wish to see the elder branch of the Bourbons restored as matter of right, but would not achieve it through the miseries of France, or assist in it without conditions favourable to popular liberty,. Leonie Vermont and her brother Philippe have been brought up and protected by M. de Bri- ancour; the sergeant their father having saved his officer's life at the ex- pense of his own. These represent two classes of Republicans ; Leonie, the enthusiastic, unworldly hopers for human perfectibility ; Philippe, the selfish, material, luxurious Frenchman, without religion, principle, or honour, and who is ready to commit any crime for self-gratification. To these bad qualities the author has added artistical taste and power, a sense of external beauty, without any care for the truth on which it is founded; and has perhaps intended Philippe Vermont as a type of the artistic na- ture of the French mind, as he certainly is a very stern if not exaggerated picture of the artist character. Pierre Larcher, a workman, embodies the honest Republican ouvrier ; whom poverty, and a disgust at the vices of the rich and the corruption of Louis Philippe's reign, have made dis- satisfied with existing things and a tool of selfish agitators. Celestine, a grisette, is the type of a class numerous everywhere, but in her circum- stances and characteristics peculiarly French, though the subject is rather forbidden in English novels, and is not very original in foreign. There are numerous other persons,—Legitimists, Orleanists, Republicans, and men of the day, whose opinions are those which are uppermost for the time ; characters, indeed, who have no connexion with the tale, but serve to display, what is the writer's main object, the present state of thinking, feeling, and acting, among the French people. The story, such as it is, turns upon the love of Fernand de Briancour for Leonie Vermont. The first obstacle is the well-known feeling of the Count touching a misalliance, and the certainty that if a marriage took place,the paternal doors would be closed against the lovers. As Fernand is without means, he procures his father's consent to offer his services to the Government of Louis Philippe; and his applications aptly introduce some sketches of political society and the corruption of the Guizot lffmis- try. Fernand has just lost all chance of office and of marriage, through the rascality of a bourgeois Deputy and a Minister's secretary, when the Revolution of February breaks out, and all the chief dramatis personae

are more or less involved in its vortex : the Count, as a hopeful looker. on, expecting that it must end in the recall of the Legitimate Sovereign ;

his son, as a National Representative, and in the outbreak of June as a National Gaard and prisoner to the insurgents; Philippe Vermont, as a mob leader, a luxurious and wasteful place-holder under the Provisional Government, and when displaced an orator of the Clubs, and a cow- ardly instigator of revolt, from the dangers of which he ffies; Pierre Larcher, as a follower of Philippe, and on Celestine's suicide through the artist's profligacy, his attendant Nemesis. These positions of the principal male persons naturally introduce some striking scenes of the Revolution. And this is very skilfully done. Avoiding history, the incidents are con- trived to exhibit individuals or the people in historical events. The first adventure of M. de Briancour the elder, on the downfall of Louis Philippe, 4 Wade Vermont; a Story of the Present Time. Illy-the Author of Mildred Vela non." In three volumes. Published by Bentley. will furnish an example. The family are assembled, on the eventful 24th of February, in the Count's house.

"And now came noises indescribable from the street; yells, groans, deep mut- terings, the rash of a crowd, and the inarticulate words of the many-voiced monster.

"Of the latter, however, some were borne upon the wind to the chamber where our trio were standing. M. de Briancour literally tore open a window, and thrust his head into the street.

• What !' he shouted to a group gathered round the door of the house, has he abdicated ? '

"'He is gone!' was the answer of a dozen voices above.

"'Chasse?' asked the Count, in a tone nothing can describe.

'Chasse ! ' was the echo from beneath.

"M. de Briancour, in a fever of impatience, seized his casquette, and, with a loud exulting laugh of irrepressible joy, 'He is gone!' he shouted triumphantly. " Who? ' asked Leonie.

"'The Usurper!' cried the Count, dashing out of the room. • " rVive la Republique exclaimed Leonie, with sudden inspiration.

A" Viva le Roil' made the staircase echoes ring, as H. de Briancour flew like ghtning -down the steps.

"'God bless all who suffer!' said Madame Isabelle, with deep emotion, as, in obedience to an impulse she could scarcely understand, she proceeded to her own room, earnestly to pray for all those who, whatever their sins, had this day began the work of expiation.

"'Cry, " Vive le Roi !" can't you?' ejaculated M. de Briancour, as he took his ill-favoured portress round the waist, and gave her a loud-resounding kiss. "'Which one?' demanded the astounded old woman.

"But the Count could not stay to reply. He is gone!' he triumphantly shouted, and was half-way down the street before she had shaped her question. Every step he took, every man he met, confirmed the tale that he had been told. 4 He is gone I'

"There was the one fact in which, for a short space of time, every preoccupa- tion, every prevision of the future was merged. The dreamer had cast off the cloak that covered him, fancying that was the nightmare under which he lay op- pressed; but he slept on still, and soon dreamed as before, and the nightmare will come again, and many another nightmare, perhaps, ere the morning dawns upon him—if morning ever shall dawn upon that dreamer again. "One o'clock was striking when M. de Briancour, dressed en vainquenr, found himself at the foot of the great staircase of the Chateau, in the midst of a crowd who had certainly no analogy with the splendours around them. "In an instant the rash up the stairs was frightful, and the Count was carried sway by the irresistible torrent. "'This is not the first time you've been here,' said somewhat suspiciously to de Briancour a garcon bonlanger, whose mealy jacket was stained by powder and blood.

"'No, not exactly,' rejoined the Count; but it is the first time these eighteen years.'

"'Ha! ha!' added the baker's boy, nudging his neighbour's elbow jocosely ; but there is nothing for you in the scramble, camarade I'

"'Who knows ? ' said carelessly M. de Briancour. The words were lost in the deafening shouts which at this instant burst forth from all sides, and greeted a Personage who had taken possession of the stair-head, and from thence was pre- wing to haranguethemultitude. This was no other than a huge, pudgy.cheeked, black-faced coalheaver, who, attired in a general officer's uniform, and having adorned his head with one of the ex-King's wigs and court-hats, was in the act of playing sovereign, and receiving his liege subjects in mock state.

a children,' he began, it is always with renewed pleasure that Bravo! bravo!' burst from the crowd at this imitation of Louis Philippe's well- known phrase. "'Gentlemen,' recommenced the coaTheaver ; the circumstances which unite as at this moment are so exceedingly delicate --'

" Ahorse laugh, varied by whistlings, and uncouth sounds of many descriptions, covered the remainder of the sentence. Bat, gentlemen,' added the mock- monarch with solemn gesture, in future, I pledge you my word, the Charter shall be rigorously adhered to.' "'A has la Charte I' vociferated the crowd; and the toy of a moment being swept away in the person of the bedizened chartonnier, the populace, disposed to be rather goodhumonred than otherwise in the hour of victory, dispersed itself through the galleries, salons, and boudoirs of royalty, committing few excesses, save such as might serve to show it had a right to do whatever it chose—smash- ing glasses, breaking windows, and firing at the pictures on the walls. In the principal receiving-room there was, however, a halt, and a profound silence ensued. 1%. man without hat, coat, or oravat, his arms bare, his shirt open, his hair in dis- order, suddenly sprang upon the polished surface of a richly carved table that occdpied the centre of the salon, and, with outstretched arms, imposing silence upon the multitude, he commenced the first verse of the Marseillaise. The air was caught up with wild enthusiasm, and the novel inmates of the royal abode seemed to derive some nameless satisfaction from the mere fact of making the senseless walls ring with the oft-repeated chorus of the hymn of revolt. Further on, in a gallery adorned with paintings, and where princesses were used to find solace in music, the mob were for giving themselves the innocent diversion of de- molishing a splendid pianoforte of Erard's. But a young man, tall, fair, and whose bearing (notwithstanding his strange accoutrements) betrayed gentle blood, stepped forward, and laid his hands upon the keys.

"'Let the Captain alone ! ' cried a powerful voice to those who pressed on to.- wards the instrument; 'let him alone, I say., and tell him to give us a song." "'La Carmagnole!' shouted one Ca ira!' shrieked another; or give as again Enfants de la Petrie !" roared a third.

" ' I know none of those songs,' replied, steadily, and perhaps not without a little haughtiness, the young man, looking his strange auditory in the face; but,' and here his features relapsed into a half sort of smile, 'I will play you a polka if you like to dance.'

• "And dance they did. And what a dance! and what words they put to the notes of that polka!

"N. de Briancour turned away in disgust, and, with some other stragglers, loi- tered into the private diningroom of the Royal „Family. Here the evidences of re- nest occupation were particularly striking: the fire still burning, the symmetry of

the chairs deranged, a thousand little traces of woman's presence everywhere, and on the ground near the hearth an embroidered handkerchief, dropped as though by some hand unnerved by sudden fear, all combined to show how, in the very Midst of the most peaceable enjoyments of life, the lava tide of revolution had rushed in upon these doomed ones, and swept them away even as they stood.

"Enemy as he was M. de Briancour felt softened when he thought of the wo- men, the innocent, the young, the gentle beings who had so lately been dragged down and crashed by the fall of a throne.

"The Count had seen enough, and these minor details of a great misfortune rather sickened him than otherwise. As he turned to retreat—'Pardon, Mon-

sieur le Doc,' said an ouvrier, presenting him a pack of cards with his dirty fin- gers won't you do the Spanish Ambassador the honour of taking a hand at whia? You perceive, we are making up the tables'; and as the Count turned round, he saw a dirty, ragged, blood-stained, powder-begrimed congregation of imeatiera playing at a reception at court. "'Here is the Nonce du Pape,' continued the first man who had addressed the /Bond, and peeping over whose shoulder he recognized the baker's boy with whom

he had mounted the stairs. Oh, see! there is the British Ambassador—will you allow me to introduce you; would not you like to play with him?'

"When When his turn comes, Etienne, to play cards with ambassadors here,' mut_ tered the journeyman baker under his teeth, and pointing to the Count at the aame time, 'you and.I shall probably be in no humour to make fun of that or anything else.'

" A has les Carlistes I "A has lea &suites I' was instantly shouted from one end of the saloon to the other; and matters might have gone ill for M. de Brian. conr, had not just then the rush of the crowd from the throne-room separated him from those who seemed not unlikely now to become his aggressors."

There are many more scenes of an analogous kind, descriptive of cor- ruption under Louis Philippe, of the folly and triviality of the Legiti- mists even at the most momentous times, of the profligacy and luxury of the so-called Republicans when in power, of the want of principle in the bulk of the "respectable" classes, and of the popular courage mingled with its levity and ferocity. Altogether, though not free from defects and blemishes, the book may be read with interest, as a good pic- ture of Frenchmen and Parisian incidents during a remarkable period of history, from an English point of view in politics.