THE HAMILTONS.

HERE is another blow struck at the Aristocracy, and by one who knows their vulnerable part. The effects of Tory Exclusiveness are shown, not in their operation upon forks and fish, but upon character and morals. The brilliant corruption generated in a court—the selfishness, now ignorant, now insolent, which high state and much pleasure induce—how respectability is risked and happiness sacrificed in pursuing those chances of wealth which public profusion creates, when even an amiable man undertakes the pursuit—how meanness, insolence, and profligacy when the adventurer is of an inferior stamp—are all clearly marked in The Hamiltons. We also see pretty distinctly the heartlessness, the systematic vice, and splendid misery, arising from luxury and idleness. The texts, indeed, are not very new ; they have each been expounded before ; but then it was in grave discussions, aiming to amend by precepts. Mrs. GORE teaches by examples.

The Hanziltons is chiefly valuable as an admirable sketch of manners, and an illustration of the effects which flow from a cer- tain state of society ; for there is not much story, and what there is is not very consistent. The title of the volumes, indeed, is the essence of the work. The New .:Era is an account of the Hamil- ton family and of their connexions, with sketches of the coteries amongst which they move. Air. Hamilton is a respectable work- ing Tory placebunter. of narrow private means, bent upon marry- ing his son and daughter to fortunes, and upon gaining a peerage for himself' as a means of facilitating the matrimonial success of his son. He succeeds in his own object, and becomes Lord Lax- ington. He is disappointed in his children. His daughter mar- ries the third son of his patron, Lord Tottenham. Mr. Augustus Hamilton unites himself to a portionless beauty ; who becomes, however, the only comfort of Laxington, when the Reform Bill has thrown him upon the world a ruined man, and the heir of his title has fallen in a duel, springing out of a profligate liaison with the wife of his friend,—a woman with whom, we are told, his sister in knowledge, his wife in ignorance, associate upon intimate terms. There is also an under-plot,—the progress of Bernard Forbcs,an Utilitarian barrister, who marries Mrs.lIamilton's sister. It is intended as a contrast to the Exclusives ; but here Mrs. GORE is not so happy.

There are some very clever bits of social painting at Laxington, Lord Tottenham's close borough (now in Schedule B), which " piqued itself upon its gentility." The Burtonshaws at Baden, and the society at Vienna, whither Augustus Hamilton is doomed to go as a political spy, are also good. Our extracts, however, shall be taken from the more instructive portions of the volumes—bits illustrative of Toryism before the Bill. Here we have

TORY DOINGS AND TORY TALE.

Yet there were many things in her new mode of life which an uncorrupted nature pointed out as inconsistent and objectionable. So little was Mrs. Hamil- ton habituated to the details of public service, that she could not help attaching an idea of shabbiness to the prodigality with which public money and public agents were rendered subservient to the rise and convenience of those who are themselves the servants of the public in a higher capacity. Her father, indeed, had eaten the bread of the country, and her mother was still its pensioner. But the fate of the gallant Sir Clement sanctified the grant. It was not so with the Hamiltons and Tottenhams, and twenty other families of their party. Some were paid for doing nothing ; many for (Mug very little; yet certain of her new friends, who were in the habit of proceeding from a late breakfast to their various offices, and quitting them at three o'clock, to take a turn in St. James's Street, or to lounge in the purlieus of the House on the chance of a division, were everlastingly complaining of the severity of their du- ties, and gnmilding for the arrival of the recess. The most overtasked weaver of Spitaltields could not sigh more repiningly over his loom for change of air and relaxation of labour ! William Tottenham and Augustus, commissioners of a lottery which hail ceased to exist, and clerks to an office which had never ex- isted, were liberally remunerated as deputies in a sinecure place, the local habi- tation of which was a mystery even to their principal, yet they threw away the proceeds with as much pride and ostentation as if they had been honestly earned; and very often did Susan shudder, on hearing them, in the wantonness of their prosperity, curse the people—" the damned people, the besotted blackguard pee. ple "—by the sweat of whose brows their own leisure was secured !

Another circumstance which appeared unaccountable, was the puerile nature of the conversation current among the eminent personages by whom she was

surrounded. • • • Within oration-pitch of Palace Yard—within sight of Westminster Hall, of Westminster Abbey—it struck her that they ought to maintain the odour of officiality ; that their counsel should be close as a despatch box—correct as the draught of a Chancery bill—strong as a Ministerial majority. They appeared at Lord Lexington's table, with all the blushing honours of the Privy Council thick upon them, with the breath of Majesty in their nostrils, with the crackling of the door of the Cabinet lingering in their cars or with the cheers of their packed jury, the House still louder and still more portentous. Yet the graver the crisis, the more trifling their discourse! Poor Susan was sometimes shocked, amazed, orercorne, by their pleasantries. She knew that death-warrants de- creeing the fate of guilty individuals, and measures involving the destiny of guiltless thousands, were constantly passing through the hands she saw upraised in rapturous applause of some half-naked opera-dancer ; and wondered that men who treated as a jest the balance of power, should affix so much importance to the el pions', of a pirouette. While peace or war was agitating the mind of the nation, the nation's guardians were discussing the spicing of a sauce or the phy- sacking of a favourite racer !

A TORY LEADER.

The Marquis of Shetland was positiveness personified. Self-reliance is the

attribute at once of the dunce anil the man of genius. Shetland was the very genius of obstinacy ; wilful in a whisper, absolute in the pas genre of the court :minuet. His " I will," was peremptory as the bluff Hurry's; his coolness, cool as the impassibility of Talleyrand. But be was misplaced—his date and office —he had missed his century. Shetland would have been the man to control with a gauntletted hand the jarring princes of a crusade of the middle ages ; or, in a passing time, to reduce to discipline by summary justice a gang of .lespera- does in the Abruzzi ; snapping his fingers in the face of the Pope and his guards, yet whispering the secrets of his soul in the ear of some mercenary Delilah, or the wily capuchin' her confessor and his own ! But what could such a man excite but to mutiny and irritation the minds of that mighty nation, whose multitudes were already seething and boiling into one of those great noire] hurricanes which mark the epochs and transitions of civilization, as storms arc supposed to accompany the changes of the moon ?—a man who stood like Canute on the shore, bidding the waves " be still," instead of warning the timid into shelter, and instructing the hold but inexperienced to buffet with the billows ? There were pilots watching the waters, better versed than himself in the mystery of those breakers, who laughed his foolhardiness to scorn !

A TORY TOOL OF THE FIRST CLASS.

Lord Lexington was more active in public life, more guarded in private, than the rest of his party ; for he had more to accomplish in the construction of his own fortunes. He had neither fame, like the Marquis of Shetland, nor wealth, like Lord Tottenham, nor ancient rank, like Lord Bahlock, to form his buckler in the sight of the multitude ; and there was consequently no room for relaxation in his adroitness, good-breeding. activity, serviceability. Ile was neither a very fine instrument, nor a very strong one ; but a tool that can be adapted to all pur- poses and is ever at hand, becomes the cabinetmaker's favourite blade ; and his Lordship accordingly took care that no rust should accumulate on his polish, that his edge should be always fit for action. Susan saw not the motive ; she beheld ouly the result ; and joined with the rest of London in asserting that Lord Lexington was the best-informed, the best-bred, the most agreeable man of his age—the epitome, in short, of an accomplished courtier of those other times and countries whose corruption possessed at least the merit of refinement. But Mrs. Hamilton did not, as vet, discern the fearful worldliness of Lord Lexington's character—his moral a'theism, his incredulity in virtue. She saw not that the Name besuin de parrenir which degraded Peregrine Warden into a vulgar sycophant, a pique-asstettc, had elevated the Right Honourable George into the Rochester of Carlton House and its Epicurean Prince. She suspected not that Lexington admitted no system of rewards or punishment% save those dependent on the smile or sign-manual of a Sovereign : she dreamed not that he looked upon the people of England as the feeder looks upon the hounds, whose sleekness and stanchness serve to get his wages raised, but who may cause him to be turned out of the kennel, should their yelping grow too cla- morous or their bones too gaunt.

DISTRESS OF A DO-NOTHING.

" What is the matter ?" inquired Susan, one morning, some months after her marriage, of Alm Tottenham, on entering the drawing-room in Brook Street, and discovering what she interpreted to lie the symptons of a family quarrel ; fur William was lying extended in his chintz dressing-gown on a dor- mense , with his feet and their Turkish slippers resting on the back of a chair; and Julia, in a fit of absence, was pinching open the buds of a fine exotic.

" Nothing particular! " sighed she. " Only William is in waiting next week, and is horribly bored at being obliged to go down to Windsor, instead of joining the party at Ronisey Lodge, for Epsom races. It is really too provoking! for he won't let me go without him; and so we are all out of sorts."

" Sorts!" reiterated the amiable Alcibiades of Brook Street, scarcely deigning to notice the entrance of his sister. in-law : "'Pon my soul, 'tis beyond all patience, to go kicking one's heels in an anti-room, or fishing for ready_ boiled gudgeons in Virginia Water, when one knows that the Derby is being run for within twenty miles' distance. I always told my father, when be chose to shove me into that devil of an ushership, that I had fifty times rather—"

" Drive the Brighton mail, or grate lemons for Ude!" cried his wife. " But don't make yourself out such a victim. You will be at Windsor, you know, for Ascot."

" Ascot ! Just a woman's notion of such things ! As if one race-course wanted only a winning post and half-a-dozen running-horses to be the same as another. Supposing I were to tell you, when you have missed Pasta in a new opera, ' Never mind—there is the Surry Theatre and Miss Timminson.' Ascot! I wish you would not talk of what you do not understand." a " • " And after having made a party with Eardley and John and Robert Single- ton, to run over from Ramsey's to Brighton, for a day. or two !" cried Totten- ham. " I really want sea-bathing ! I wish Windsor was at the Devil ! "

" High treason! high treason! '

" To make a piece of furniture of oneself, for a few hundreds a year, and a line in the court circular! To put oneself into the position of an arm-chair or a buffet, planted in the corner of an ante-room till one is wanted ! "

" Particularly," said Julia, provokingly, " when one is wanted elsewhere." " Most people have some disagreeable duty to perform in life," observed Susan, hoping to pacify her brother-in-law. " But not the duty of a footman out of livery," retorted the maleconteut. " My father ought to have taken care that I was provided for in a proper way. What has lie done for me? Scarcely eleven hundred a year, besides my allow- ance ! And just leok at Lord Shetland's nephews; look at young Whitney ; look at Eardley ; look at — "

" But as Augustus often tells you, they have all working places." " Very easy for Augustus to talk ! Sec what your father has done for him ! The reversion of a patent place, and a thousand a year snug in his pocket ! I would give our sixteen hundred for it, over and over again; and unless Lord Lexington or my father take it into their heads to do something for me, I will resign."

" Four hundred a year would be so much better than sixteen ! " cried Julia. " To be sure we must leave our house,—furniture sold off,—no more hunters,— no more hermitage,—no winter at Brighton,—no book at Doncaster! But then you would be your own master."

COURTIER CRAFT.

Augustus Hamilton had not, however, been reared in the atmosphere of pa- tronage, without attaining the certainty that, of all pretensions, pretensions to preferment in a courtier should be most sedulously concealed. Wide as the book of history is opened to the investigation of things, there is so much nairet4 or u nteachability, in royal nature, that the case is not so hopeless as might be sup- posed, when a man is audacious enough to assume that he sacrifices his time, his ease, his convenience, his natural connexions, to a disinterested passion for his sovereign ! Monarchs will always be found of a sufficiently credulous com- plexion to believe, that the select gang of white slaves who shut themselves up with them in their stately mausoleum of Windsor, or the Escurial, despise, as heartily as they themselves despise, the crosses and ribbons and buttons with which the services of the more venal throng are rewarded,—that, as the con.

fectioner's apprentice sickens at the sight of marmalade, a courtier loathes the

very aspect of a coronet, and nauseates the candied perquisites of office. Nor are men of reputable family and distinguished education less abundant, who are not ashamed to play their fantastic tricks ; devote themselves to yachting, boat- ing, farriery, or sealingwax-making, according to the taste of the royal or im- perial throne to which they bow the knee; although assured that, however im- perceptible their meanness to the eye of their sovereign, it is only too clearly dea

veloped in the sight of each other and the world.

Bold as were Augustus Hamilton's professions of independence in private society, he was too well aware of the uncertain tenure of his father's fortunes, not to have resolved to effect, at almost any sacrifice, a more solid provision for himself. Ile would not, of course, do any thing contrary to the code of polite honour—nothing " ungentlemanly "—nothing calculated to get him black- balled at a club, or stigmatized in the coteries. But, to perform the ko-ton of courtiership in C0111111011 With the highest and mightiest, was no offence either against himself or society ; to run the race of lying or equivocation with a Duke, could be no disgrace ; to swear that the Virginia Water (like the Tesinos of the ancients) was composed of one part water and thrice part fishes, was no reproach—except to the individual who believed it ; to protest that Correggio's " Notte," or Raphael's " Madonna della scuba," were vapid in comparison with Rembrandt's " Lady with the Fan," or Gerard Dow's " Woman peeling Tur- nips," might be an error in judgment ; to prefer Lawrence, the finical, to Van- dyke, the courtly—or Oginski's Polonaise to Beethoven's Symphonies—could only be a fault of taste. Augustus Hamilton professed himself an enthusiastic advocate of Moorish architecture ; and could rave of the Alhambra and Gene- raliffe, in raptures which " Xarifit " might have " flung her golden cushion down " to bear ; and when he saw the ear of Majesty gratified by his protesta- tions that Athens, Paestum, and Girgenti, presented only granite skeletons of forms originally frightful, it was but natural that he should become imliffirent to the sneer which marked the consciousness of the royal circle of his motives and their meanness.

TORYISM BEFORE. ITS FALL.

The world of luxury is an entrancing world ! Let no one presume to under,

value the mightiness of its influence on the soul (the soul, kept active by the- ministry of the senses). who has not encountered and overcome the °ideal ! Its lights burn so brightly—its harmonies breathe so deliciously—its beauties shine so softly—its impressions succeed each otter so rapidly, that the young, and even middle- aged philosopher finds no tub into which to retreat, to fence himself round against its allurements. And vet it is from the midst of the crowd, thus infatuated with pleasure, that the wretched seek sympathy for their sordid and repellent woes. It is from the puissant and the pampered, that the interests of the succourless people demand legislative protection. It is to the man covered with purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, that the beggar lifts up his sores, in confidence of mercy : Vain delusion ! When God hardened Phartiah's heart, it was by the influence of prosperity ; and, to render him just towards the children of Israel, plagues and adversity became his portion !

The Alarquis of Shetland, for instance, was a man humane towards indivi- duals, but wholly without sympathy with the mass. 'f he same faculties which had rendered him a mighty soldier, converted him into a little minister. His arguments were made of cast-iron ; they might be slept asunder, but never modified. As he floated on the surface of the waves, in a gilded galley with

silken sails, and music and sunshine on the deck, it never occurred to hint how vast, how powerful, how fearful, how cold, how engulfing, the element that ministered to his course. It was made, he fancied, to float the vessel of the mutate ; and what signified the numberless living things, leviathans or minnows, who lived and moved in the unseen abyss? Meanwhile the galley did float. The Cleopatra of luxury sat there in her gorgeous chair, and Fashion measured its progress with her silver oars. The in- fluence of the class represented by Bernard Forbes was, like the sweeping whirl-- wiud's sway,

" Whieli, hushed in grim repose expects its prey,"

overlooked, or derided. Julia Tottenham and her sister-butterflies flew with sparkling wings from ball-room to ball-room. The Eardleys and Tottenham and their gay associates, could scarcely find time, in she four-and-twenty hours, for the sleep they were compelled to steal from such a variety of pleasures. It was admitted by every Foreign Ambassador who visited England, that its sur • face of things was wrought to the highest pitch of polish. They admired its Parliament, matched in eloquence, like the hounds of Theseus, with niouths. "each under each ;" its public virtue, so symmetrically diminutive, " small by- degrees and beautifully less ;" its army, so well flogged ; its architecture, if not of marble, so well stuccoed ; it, opera, with so well-dressed an audience ; its- national theatres, each with one so chatty and conversational. The French Ambassador swore that he came to London to dine, where every peer might be a professor of cookery ; the Neapolitan protested, it was only in the Haymarket a cantatrice could sing, or figurante dance, where the House of Peers legislated behind the scenes ; while his Austrian Excellency declared, it was only in St. James's Street a man could gamble ; where, to gain admittance into a club res (piked as many quarterings as for a Chapter of the Empire ! Vice was so ex- ceedingly decorous that it might have taken its seat on the bench of Bishops; and corruption, in phosphorescent rottenness, sent forth a shining light. Eng- land was as the beautiful Savannah, where rattle-snakes are hidden among the blowers, and pestilential vapours lurk in every entanglement of verdure.

A DISPLACED TORY.

He was no longer the spoiled child of the clubs, where his sayings had been recordeul. as bon mots, and his insolence tolerated as eccentricity, so long as he had money and credit to hazard on the chance of an extravagant bet. It was whispered that lie had debts of honour, both of the turf and gaming table, un- paid and unpayable. It was known that he was the butt of a thousand duns. Men began to take off their hats to him, who had once passed him with a friendly nod ; and other men began to pass him with a familiar nod, who had once stood respectfully uncovered in his presence. He had no fund of personal respectability on which to draw, in the failure of his worldly fortunes. Time had been, that his acquaintance was a stepping-stone to preferment ; that he was the influencer of the influential, the bird that carried whispers of what was passing in the world, even into the King's chamber. But now, there was a long farewell to all his greatness! Even he could not remain blind to the fact that he was good for no other purpose than to form a lay-figure in the gaudy pageants of aristocratic life. Ile knew nothing—could do no single thing towards the progress often great purposes of existence. He was useless to a fallen party ;— was no orator ; had neither wit for attack nor wisdom for defence ! And such was the man who had presumed to despise, to insult, to trample on others !—who had assumed the pride of the serpent, when he was, in truth, the weakest of worms !

All these are clever and brilliant, and the volumes abound with such passages. They are also significant. The " state and pros- pects of Toryism " are bad indeed, when a shrewd woman like Mrs. GORE, a member of the coteries, composes a fashionable novel expressly to hold the Tories up to contempt and odium—to ridicule their follies, to denounce their public profligacy, to expose their private vices. But is it quite fair in a quondam friend to trample on the fallen? Is it quite independent to Latta- the Whig Ministry as they am buttered? Is it quite true, that we " have a Chancellor in Brougham such as the Woolsack has not boasted for many centuries—a practical man as well as a philosopher—a lawyer as well as a politician—a man of experience no less than a man of genius?" Is it quite philosophic to attribute" the combi- nation of every vice, of every meanness, of sensuality, of prodi- gality, of hollow and heartless ostentation," amongst our nobility, to the training of GEORGE the .Fourth ? or to confine political misdeeds and a lust after place to Tories alone? The New 'Era has not yet produced the expected Millennium. The name of the Ministerial connexions in office is legion. The age of patronage is not quite past. The " buckh munds" are yet flourishing; sine- cures and pensions still exist, and all the places are not working places. Nay, what is more—for these are as drops of water in the ocean—the pale-faced, debilitated weaver, must still ex- change the result of his long day's wearisome toil, for one loaf, to the serfs of the English Aristocracy, when others are ready to give him more bread for less labour. Ile must still pro- cure his coffee from the Colonial interests, and sweeten it with Colonial sugar, no matter how injurious the restrictions to us or to other nations. And, let industry turn which way it will to earn a subsistence, it is tittered by protections, upheld for the interests of a few, or by taxes imposed to enable the lawmakers to escape their clue share. But the are signs and tokens abroad that forbid despair, or even depression. The Whigs are not as jocund as Mrs. CORE describes the Tories to have been when the whisper that " the King was indisposed " spread dismay amongst their ranks: for there is divisfon in the camp. The Liberals " arc gathering" by more than "twos and threes;' and the People "hail their ap- pearance as that of the sea-birds which harbinger a storm. The New /Era is already ill its morning twilight." It would be hard indeed if it were not—if the People bad struggled merely to dis- place the profligate Do-littles in office, by a class a grade or two more respectable, or to substitute, in coteries, the prosy and pom- pous self-sufliciency of the old Whigs, for the flippant yet polished insolence of the Tories.