TELE DIVORCED.
THIS novel is intended as a sort of rersonatel commentary on the Seventh Commandment. Lady Howard, "the Divorced," is drawn as a very amiable lady ; an excellent mother—a submissive, loving, and penitential second wife—with the only drawback of having formerly eloped from one of "tile noblest, gentlest, kind- est of human beings," whose single failing, so far as we can gather, was that of having been rather plain. The tale opens some sixteen years after this event ; when Lady Howard having married her seducer, has two children, just old enough to feel the var:ous disagreeables that they are subjected to on account of their birth. The interest, or rather what should have been the interest o' the story, consists in painting the effects which those slights gra- dually produce, first upon the children, and then upon the parents. The s n, Lad Talbot, "a most exemplary young man," when he hears by accident of his mother's misfortune, forswears his country, gres ti Paris, falls in love, passes his time in an alternation of hard study and rough exercise, becomes consumptive, and dies. Lady Alice, quite the heroine of a modern novel, is loved and be- loved by a Colonel Leicester; but the gallant officer's mother, a Puritanical old lady, firmly opposes the match ; and, by dint of a little improbable artifice, succeeds. The Colonel goes abroad ; tha lady breaks a blood-vessel, and dies, like her brother. Lord Howard, hardened by these misfortunes, neglects and ill-uses his wife; goes one day to a dinner "in the City," where somebody, i;uorant of the position of some of his company, remarks on the fully of people who marry wives that have eloped. His lordship quits the roam, half drunk and in dudgeon; goes home, shoots himself through the heart, and dies intestate. The heir at law is a miser ; Lady Howard is thrown upon the world with nothing but her jewels to subsist upon; the produce of these is almost ex- hausted, and want bt.gins to stare her in the face, when she is rescued by her son of the first marriage, and after a little time dies toa—with, according to the testimony of her daughter-in-law, "not one word of prayer."
How far such subjects are well adapted for fiction, is question- able. It is quite clear, that if treated at all, they should be treated truly. No moral lesson can be taught, no pity can be excited, by dressing up paragons of amiability at ho never could have been placed in the situations supposed. The crimes of adulterous parents will most likely be revenged upon their children, but in a different way to what Lady CHARLOTTE BURY fancies. The original sin of the parents, even if pitiable through circum- stances, (which is not the case with " the Divorced,") would taint the whole of their conduct, and influence their character, apart from their rejection by society ; and these things, operating upon the dispositions of their children from their earliest years, would form characters that would punish the authors of their being, not by social accidents, consumptions, and physical evils, but by the Lear-like inflictions of contempt, iogratitude, or a forced and formal duty more painful and more cutting perhaps than open rebellion. Nor would the punishment rest here: the - parents would have to see the combination of early evil habits and the rebuffs arising from the prejudice of the world, (if the world is really old-fashioned enough to maintain such prejudices,) pur- smug their childreff through life, and dashing their happiness and success.
The pervading defect of Lady CHARLOTTE BURY'S conception, is not redeemed by excellence of execution. She seems to have looked at each part without regard to the whole ; and to have got up the parts themselves solely in relation to what she deemed a pretty, samt-like sort of sentimental effect. Her deeper scenes are rather entertaining than interesting—they remind one of Tom Thumb. Her morality is cant ; her reflections are trite and threadbare. The only happy parts—and they are very few—are some touches of character in her commonplace wordly people, who merely serve to carry on the story when it halts. The following speech of a Mother to a daughter reads ulmost like a transcript. It is deli- vered at Almack's; and the Lord Stuart is the son of Lady Howard by her first husband.
"I am sorry Lord Talbot is gone, mamma; / was so happy to meet with bun again ; and he is grown so handsome."
"He is very well as to personal appearance ; and he will be Lord Howard, and. have a magnificent estate ; but what are all these advantages worth, when there is not a respectable foundation for them to rest upon? It is in vain to deceive you, Fanny, or to allow you to deceive yourself. I think it my duty - to warn you as my child. That Lady Howard was Lady Vernon ; that 'be left her husband (and such a husband) to run off with Lord Howard. Although this scandalous affair happened twenty years ago, still, now that her children are grown up. Lord Talbot d pail for those who regard worldly advantages more than respectability of character, the matter will be discussed, and the whole thing be brought forward again. How it should chance the* -_ Lord Stuart is the dear friend of Lord Talbot, and that neither of them should know the story of their birth, is quite an enigma ; but so it is, that is evident, from a conversation I held with the latter just now. This state of things cannot, however, continue ; and how it may end, who can say ? At aff events let as be cautious, and have nothing to do with this tripotage. By keeping aloof, we shall be able to judge of what it may be expedient to do hereafter ; but at present it would be higly indecorous that we encourage Lord Talbot to form habits of intimacy with us, which we might be obliged afterwards to forego.'
Lady Ceraar.orra states in a kind of postscript, that the tale is founded upon facts. This may be true, without shaking the truth of our remarks. The story itself may be so peculiar as to militate against its use for the general purposes essential to a work of fiction. Or Lady CHARLOTTE may only be acquainted with the outline, and fail in filling it up ; or a part of the outline, and be incapable of completing it : or it is possible that she may know this whole, and yet be unable to reproduce it. If so, she is not the first by many, entitled to say, with the dull repeater of a joke whose point he had lost, "It was very good wit when I heard it."
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