ECARTE, OR THE SALONS OF PARIS.*
THIS is an attempt to sketch the life of the English in Paris. We dare say that it is tolerably just : it is certainly very dull. Gambling- houses, duels, intrigue, and prison, are the main materials. Its vices have nothing to recommend them. We do not thank the author for the picture: the subject is naught, and there is but little talent in the artist. We never read a book that would be less missed if the whole impression were burnt to-morrow. Cha- racter there is none, at least none that has not been drawn in five hundred novels. Incident is at an equally low ebb : the author is set up with a chandelier and a rouge et noir table. The story which it is proposed to tell is that of a young man of expectations, who becomes the prey of a titled sharper and his colleagues, a cast-off mistress and some feMale gamblers. The female is de- scribed as not utterly, depraved : she conceives a passion for the hero, and in some measure defeats the projects of her connexion. The young man nevertheless ultimately finds himself lodged in St. Pelagic, and the lady breaks a blood-vessel in despair, which leads to her death. All this time the hero has a virtuous love, who after exercising the utmost forbearance during • the whole coarse of the gentleman's aberrations, comes in at the conclusion to play the part of deliverer : she pawns her diamonds to pay the debt for which he is immured, and in due time gives her hand to the re- formed rake, by way of completing his emancipation. It will be seen that we are disposed to class this novel with the trash of the day ; and its worthlessness is not redeemed by half of it being written in French. The author has endeavoured to show his knowledge and conceal his ignorance by carrying on the greater part of his dialogues in the language of the country in which the scene is laid. We presume that these essays have been corrected by the author's French master ; nevertheless enough of Anglicism remains to render the book a tolerable subject for testing the pro- gress ofyoungboarding-school lathes in the language of the Continent.
*3 vols. London, 1329. Colburn.
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