ANNE BOLEYN.

Mas. THOMSON is an agreeable writer, who is known to the world by some historical -Memoirs and other works ; and who for a ro- mance of the times of HENRY the Eighth possesses the great requi- site of a familiar knowledge of her subject. Not merely is she ac- quainted with historical and biographical persons and events, the literature of the age, which must be gained from its authors, and the quaint ceremoniousness of its formal manners, habits, and cos- tumes, that must be gleaned from the chroniclers, but she has to a great extent formed a nice and just estimation of the charactei of the times—the most servile, corrupt, bloody, and disgraceful to the aristocracy, of any in English history. These characteristics, too, are indicated with feminine grace and tact ; mingled with the narrative but not a separate part of it—a complexion not a feature.

Anne h '

Boleyn, however, is rather history expanded and supplied, than a romance; and, strange to say, its defects as a fiction arise from its historical truth. The lightness offensive to private pro- priety in a woman and to public decorum in a queen, which histo- rians have attributed to the unhappy Anne, have been brought out by Mrs. THOMSON with considerable delicacy and skill, but with great injury to the character of the heroine ; with whose unbecom- ing familiarity and coquetry the reader has little sympathy. The effect is also injured by the novelist introducing us to the early career of Anne, and painting with probability and discrimination, if without authority, the motives that led her to accept Henry— which she represents as pique and ambition ; very probable, but very unheroic and unsympathetic.

The subject has also the inherent defect we noted in the Jacquerie of Mr. JAM.ES: the title makes every reader, as SCOTT says, "form to himself some particular idea of the sort of manner in which the story is to be conducted " ; and it allows the writer no choice in the conduct of the story or of the persons, unless by engrafting moral improbabilities upon recorded facts. In the main, this last error has been avoided by Mrs. TRosisow, but at the expense of closeness and connexion in her story. An attempt is made to im- part a sort of romantic interest by a hopeless passion of Wyatt the poet for Anne ; but it has no influence on the action, and leads to no result. A similar remark applies to Anne's faithful attendant Mildred, who entertains a hopeless passion for her cousin Wyatt ; but Lord Leonard Grey's love for Mildred is the spice of romance in the work, as the melancholy episode of Wyatt's youthful and neglected wife is too delicate and true a piece of life for mere ro- mance. It may seem a mechanical fault, but a fault it is, for it- strikes the reader, that the story is divided by too many intervals of time ; which gives it a disjointed air. Unity of time and place can indeed rarely be effected, even in the drama, because few actions admit of being so compressed, without producing a forced or unna- tural air : but an obvious lapse of time should have some sufficient purpose ; which it has not in Anne Boleyn, beyond a necessary ad- herence to history. But if, putting aside the idea of a romance, we look at Anne Boleyn as a sort of imaginative commentary upon an historic theme, in which celebrated persons, events. and incidents are introduced, with a substratum of truth, but a 'clothing of dialogue, scenery, dresses, and decorations, as the managers say of their spectacle, it may be recommended as a readable picture of the times of the early Tunous. Things that have little connexion with the story as a story—such as the Introduction of the sweating-sickness, the retirement and burial of Catherine—then become apt enough ; and though objection might be made to several of the scenes as

unnatural in their opening, they are well sustained in their progress. Mrs. Thosisori remarks in her preface—" I have avoided bring- ing forward the coarse and cruel Henry in the scene," partly be- cause she did not consider herself " equal to depict the portrait of such a man." But for this remark, we know not that the circum- stance would have been noted;, for the King is introduced, though on examination it will be found generally in description, not in action ; and Mrs. Tnoxisox rather likes to bring forward his worser parts. Here he is in a gala at Hever, the seat of the Boleyns, when be goes a-wooing.

HENRY THE EIGHTH AS A GALLANT.

The dancing still went on : his Majesty, or, to make use of a term recently introduced, "the Defender of the Faith, jigging away as if his kingdom de- pended upon his accomplishing so many galliards within the hour; whilst the flattering spectators praised, with loud whispers, the inimitable grace of their monarch.

After all, the King, who is supposed to be the father of his people, would do well to avoid such practical participation in their amusements, as exhibitions of skill either in music or dancing, in his own person. Much of our respect to royalty, and of that comfortable feeling which we call loyalty, is founded upon illusion and early prejudice. Dancing, since the days of King David, never increased our elevated notions of any individual. It is appropriate to the young and light-hearted, and not to the ruler in whose hands is the fate of thousands. There is something in it intrinsically ridiculous ; and it is one of those amusements which, whether performed with too much skill or too little, is equally apt to disabuse us of that intense and undefined respect which our superiors either in age, acquirements, or rank, are supposed to inspire.

But Henry, with a solemnity of purpose which raised the recreation to a science, figured till day declined in the various dances then in vogue and at last, just whilst the twilight allowed time for one more performance, he disap- peared, laid aside his mask, resumed his regal habiliments, his slashed doublet and embroidered hosen, his collar, and cap with diamonds surmounted with miniver, and the whole attire stuffed out, or, as it was then called, bombasted in all directions, and reentered the gallery in all the portliness of his natural form, aided in its amplified proportions by fashion. The company assembled all rose on his entrance, and now remained standing, for the King was no longer disguised.

• The dignity of Henry's deportment has been much commented upon. It was the dignity of size. His manners as well as 'his mind were gross ; his con- versation was coarse; his jokes and oaths were profane. Dignity must depend upon the mind: yet there is a sort of portliness, the accompaniment of habitual command, which the vulgar term dignity, and which in Henry was united with quick though coarse repartee, infinite humour, and a shrewdness which showed the powerful and cultured mind shrouded beneath that covering of humour, bad taste, and worn passions. His talents and his lavish expenditure rendered the King popular, long po- pular; for the English found it difficult to believe that he could do any thing wrong; and the King had never any, misgivings as to the part which he per- formed during his awful career of injustice and spoliation.

There is niceness of observation and neatness of remark in this cbaracter of

A LADY OP THE OLDEN TIME.

By the side of Baron de Cobham sat a middle-aged lady ; one of that order who, never knew the joys of a sofa nor the pernicious luxury of easy-chairs. Even when nodding in her sleep, after her noon repast, the .Lady de Cobham was never seen to bend forward for more than an instant; she slept in an erect position; and if human nature gave way in a momentary weakness, such a lapse from bodily rectitude was instantly retrieved by an additional bracing of those rigid muscles which death could alone relax.

Seated in a high-backed carved chair, narrow in its proportions, but wider far than the taper figure which was planted against it, Lady de Cobham held in one hand a fan, made of ostrich-feathers inserted into a silver handle curi- ously wrought and studded with gems. But this appendage, displayed under pretence of screening from the blaze of a wood-fire a complexion already withered and dried up beyond the power of sun or fire to impair it more, was the only piece of foppery in Lady de Cobham's adornments. A long stiff corset, snaking the waist seem unnaturally. small, covered by a bodice of old- maidish neatness, divided her slim figure into two compartments; otherwise Lady de Cobham would have represented a straight line. Her dress was of a dark brown serge, with a stout girdle, from which hung, not the fashionable appendage of a small looking-glass, but a good heavy bunch of keys, a pair of useful-looking scissors, a bodkin, and a large pincushion, which, strange to say, proved rather ornamental to the spare figure of Lady de Cobham, adding some- what to her small stock of importance. Her coif, but recently assumed, for Lady de Cobham had been until of late a spinster, came low upon her fotehead; and underneath its dark edge a band of fine white linen passing across the brow, (a fashion still retained in country- places even within our own recollection,) made the sallow and wrinkled face beneath seem more sallow. Neat sharp features, composed into a certain par- ticular expression, the effect of practice, into which they always resolved them- selves after the effort of speaking, well accorded with Lady de Cobham's figure. Her mien was, in truth, a perfect representative of the word propriety; and, with her tight sleeves and kirtle thrown over her shoulders, she had a species of dignity, which is always attached,. in our eyes, to matronly respectability.

A POPULAR ASSEMBLAGE, TEMP. HEN. VIII.

Then there were the common people ; not kept back, as in these over-popu- lous times they must be, from witnessing the amusements of their superiors, but coming in groups, the better classes on double-horses with pillions, most on foot, all in the humblest habiliments prescribed by statute, distinct suffi- ciently from the great and favoured, and happily restrained by sumptuary laws from excesses in dress, the point least essential to happiness, and the cause of more misery in life than we choose to allow.

There were artificers from Shoreditch, apprentices from Ludgate, shopkeepers from Chepe, in doublets or frocks of gray fustian, and with beards made round like a scrubbing-brush ; there were farmers and yeomen from Kent, with doublets of frieze and fustian, with trunk-hose ; there were the merchants and their wives, the latter in farthingales and with stockings of different colours, holding by the arm their husbands or brothers; who-, by the politeness of the age as it was deemed, were distinguished from the meaner sort by vests with celoured sleeves, bombasted with lining, and full of jugs and slashes, with galli- gaskins to keep their dresses out, and wearing their hair in divers fashions ; some with long locks and others with their hair cut about the ears as if trimmed by the assistance of a wooden bowl, surmounted by a cap and feather. These, mixed up with clodhoppers and clowns, in full or smock-frocks (one of our most ancient costumes) and kersey-breeches, countrywomen with tight russet gowns and hoods of the same material, mariners, and all the crafts which could pour from the narrow streets of the metropolis, stood without the ring, but at a very short distance from the centre, where rank and fashion, beauty and royalty, were collected.

FANCY-SRETCH OP THE RIZZIO OP ANNE BOLEYN.

Smeaton, with his lute in his hand, was placed in the centre of the circle, prepared to begin whenever commanded by the Queen.

At a signal he commenced. His voice, a tenor, was rich, sweet, and cultivated. Smeaton sang of love—of love romantic, hopeless, impassioned; and ever and anon his dark eyes were turned to the bending form of the Queen, intent upon the performance. He was a man of low stature, stinted in growth by the too early practising of an exciting art, and by the forced exhibition of premature talents. His face was, however, handsome. Soft hazel eyes, whose gaze could melt into the most voluptuous expression, a clear though brown complexion, and fea- tures minute but regular, were set off by the assumption of a foreign mode.of retaining the hair long and curling, shading an oval and well-proportioned face. Every word, every look, betrayed that Smeaton, despite his lowly for- tunes and his appointment as the Queen's musician, was a rake : he did not affect to be virtuous, but pretended to a frank honesty the antipodes of hypo- crisy; which, with the undiscerning, had an excellent effect. He could jest upon his own vices, and convert even his poverty and lowly birth into a sub- ject of merriment. It was impossible to censure too strongly a man who affected not to be better than be was, made merry with ill-fortune, and had an air of acknowledging his transgressions from virtue with such vivacity and candour that they must seem to be unpremeditated. So the world thought. But be assured, my female reader, that the avowed libertine is not the less deceptive because he has the effrontery to acknowledge half the measure of his sins. Be satisfied he betrays to society merely such misdemeanours as are graceful, gentlemanly, and venial. The deep absorbing selfishness, the hollowness, the flimsy con- sistency of what the world calls honour, which are the worst attributes of all such men, are kept aback ; whilst the very attempt to make their vices pa- latable, and to invest them with the open bearing of honest virtue, shows a de- pravity of heart most truly to be abhorred.