Vivian, the Beauty. By Mrs. Edwards. 1 vol. (Bentley and
Son.) —Mrs. Edwards will be fortunate if she does not make an enemy or two of the various "professional beauties," who will fit on the cap she has here offered for competition. The Beauty has been brought out by an elderly nobleman, Lord Vauxhall, to gratify his cynical con- tempt for the taste of modern society, and, when she has played her part, is sent into temporary exile in the Black Forest. Mrs. Edwards always excels in describing the various phases of English life on the Continent, and Schloss Egmont, its inhabitants and visitors, are very pleasantly depicted. In addition to not being beautiful, Vivian Vivash, the Beauty, is represented as so intolerably vain and vulgar, that her by no means too charming companions appear to much advantage in comparison. Lady Pamela Lawless, the lively widow, is the amusing person of the company, and her aigre-doux sketches of herself, her friends, and acquaintance, are really epigrammatic and witty. The burden of jealousy laid on the back of "little Jeanne," the heroine, is by no means greater than she can bear, and the reader's sympathy is never too severely taxed in this clever little book. It has already appeared in a serial form in Temple Bar.
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