THE LIFE OF A BEAUTY.
Aurnoucu somewhat of a veteran in novel-writing, the author of The Jilt appears to have mistaken the vocation ; which was rather to the article or the tale than to the three-volume fiction. On first opening any of this writer's books, the smartness of the style, and the vivacity of remark, though both pushed a little too far, stimulate the reader's atten- tion and induce him to expect a superior work to that which he even- taally peruses. Independently of more special faults, the author wants mastery of life and morals to plan, and strength to sustain a story through three volumes ; and as mere smartness cannot interest us long, the reader who looked for a keen if not a sound or trustworthy dissection of some phase of society and failing of mankind, falls into a well-written circu- lating-library novel, whose interest rather diminishes as the piece proceeds. There are three features in a fiction, which must all conjoin to produce a first-class novel,—manners, characters, and story : at the same time, any one of them will suffice to give mark and freshness to a work ; that is, supposing the greater can exist without including the less—character with - out manners, or a complete story without both the former. In The Life of a Beauty, these three desiderata are much upon an equality, but all second-hand ; taken from books, not borrowed from reality, and very often from books that were not much indebted to living observation. The prin- cipal beauty (for there are three beauties in the book—grandmother, Mother' and daughter) is the child of a Scotch baronet, sent to London to a boarding-school kept by a Scotchwoman, and whose father from pre- judice proposes to marry the beauty to an old Scotch friend, in despite of the splendid English offer her charms have obtained for her. Hence, for great part of one volume we have a succession of Scotch characters, not such as our Northern countrymen seem ever to have been, but such as the poems of Churchill and the playa of Macklin induced the playwrights and novel- ists of a former generation to draw' while the softer features of the domestic mdnage appear to have been taken from more authentic pictures of life, like The Cottagers of Glenburnie ; though, being second-hand, and not corrected by any living knowledge, they exaggerate the necessary changes of their originals. The English characters and even the manners are equally remote from reality; though the outlines are not so startling, or, it may be added, so striking. They are either common, or taken from the joint-stock of novelists, or metaphysical creations, possible but nn- hltely, invented to carry out some purpose of the writer.
On reading the titles of this author's books, we see at once that some social practice, or some fault, is taken as a theme from which to deduce a moral lesson. Beyond the temptation of being too didactic, and sacri- ficing the story to the lecture, there is no objection to this. Indeed, most great works whether designedly or not, show the fatal influence of a passion carried to an extreme. But judgment and genius are both re- quired to select such a subject as shall be at once uncommon and striking in its special circumstances, yet universally true in its general cha- racter. To this achievement the writer of these volumes is inade- quate. Everything is in the extreme, yet embraces nothing. The trots- bles and distresses of the two beauties, whose career is told at length, arise from their being praised and petted beauties, taught to consider their charms as superseding every other excellence : but the most uncritical reader mug feel that the circumstances are so very peculiar that they are never likely to occur generally. Some, indeed, may derive a sense of the ills of beauty from the book; but it will come, we opine, from the precept, not the example—the essayist, not the novelist ; such remarks, for example, as appear in these smart opening passages, and which also furnish a good specimen of the writer's best style.
"Angelina Enztaore was born and bred a beauty ! Every one understands what it is to be born a beauty; although some weeks (nay, months) must elapse before even to the fondest eye and most sanguine heart the little wizen wee thing,' red-faced, bald-headed, flat-nosed, and old-looking, can-give any great promise of the charms that are to enchant the world.
"Still, undiseemed and uodiscernable, the germ is there. The most fatal and fascinating of gifts is enclosed in that little bad. It will expand into a matchless flower, if born a beauty; if not, it may to outward view be an unsightly weed: but whatever its outward form, to it belong a heart, a mind, a sour.; and therefore, however nurses may triumph, parents rejoice, and friends congratulate, we pro- nounce it a fearful thing to be born a beauty, if as is too generally the case, that circumstance leads to the being bred a beauty too! 'What is it, then, to be bred a beauty ? Is it not to be set apart from the cradle as a priestess of vanity ? To be taught betimes to dwell and ponder on those charms all t'kunale education should induce their possessor to forget? Are not the agdvantageti of a face and form of surpassing loveliness frequently, by the folly of those around, ruined by those end and repelling drawbacks, frivolity, egotism, and self-worship? "Alas! alas! among the hosts of single women whom the coarse maid so harshly terms old maids,' how many owe their joyless fate to that great but unsuspected enemy their beauty! 'She must have been a great beauty—what a wonder she never got a husband!' In that common remark cause and effect ga hand in hand. She was a beauty—she knew it—how could she but know what she had heard from her cradle—what was repeated before she knew the meaning of the words—repeated, with many a hug and exulting caress, by the proud and silly mother; reichned by the sillier father; broadly asserted by the nurse-maid with every new bit of finery; insinuated into the little head with the first plume stuck into the white beaver hat, and conveyed to the little heart with the first gaudy sash and glittering necklace. "Yea, that sad, subdued, and disappointed old maid,' with what the French SO graphically call 'de si beaux restes,' with such fine features, such an air of corn-. mend, and yet such a look of desolation, but for her once brilliant beauty, she might now be a fond and cherished wife, living her own youth over again in that of her children, glorying in her daughter's modest charms and her son's manly virtues and attainmenta "There is nothing so unlovely as selfishness, and nothing, generally speaking, so selfish as a woman bred a beauty. No homage suffices—no conquest contents her. She cannot love; and those who cannot love cannot long be loved: they may enthral the senses for a time, but the heart they have so easily won they as easily lose.
"And now to our heroine, Angelina Luxmore."
Considered as a story—as a picture of manners, persons, and events— The Life of a Beauty is poor, and rises little above the common circu- lating-library novels. But the tale of Angelina Lux.more, however un- likely, is better than that of her daughter. There are effects in the-ez aggerations of the one, but the other is merely feeble in its absurdity.
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