MRS. GORE'S DOWAGER.

Is this, as in almost all the other works of Mrs. GORE, there is an admirable picture of modern manners in the higher circles of society, mingled with judicious remarks and pungent satire, set off by a composition easy, animated, and piquant. But perhaps this excellent novelist confines herself too much to one subject; or her experience does not extend beyond that modish society where great refinement, the pursuit of pleasure as the main business of life, and the incessant demands upon the atten- tion, destroy the little earnestness and passion which civiliza- tion has left us. To handle the same subject more than once is not favourable to the production of effect, but to repeat it fre- quently will be destructive to the attraction of the highest genius. For this reason: no essential novelty can be produced; any im- provement must be in details, or at best in parts ; but if, as is too likely, the writer be driven substantially to repeat a pre- vious effort, the reader subjects the work to that most odious of Comparisons a comparison with a former self, and brings a plea- sant memory of the excellences of the past to bear upon the de- ficiencies of the present.

It is true, our fair authoress sometimes gives a specific variety to her subject by making her story the vehicle for displaying some particular family amongst the exclusives. In Mothers and Daugh- ters, the race of husband-hunters was exhibited; in T/w Hanaltons, the rotten ripeness of insolent Toryism was portrayed as it shone putrescently before its fail; and in this New School .for Scandal, Mrs. GORE exposes the malicious dowagers and envious old maids, and essays to body forth the evils they produce, by picturing the agonized feelings of an old fashionable English gentleman who hears that his daughter is faithless to her husband, and by involv- ing another father in a duel with his intended son-in-law, for break- ing off his engagement on a report of the scandalous coterie. The subject gives Mrs. GORE the opportunity of painting to the life the character of old or middle-aged scandalmongers, cancerous and unscrupulous front disappointment, want of a pursuit, and bad nature; as well as of composing many smart and pointed dia- logues, though perhaps rather too evidently founded on those of &ERMAN'S comedy. She has also connected with the sayings and doings of the calumnious coterie, the mode of life, the character, and the happiness of several very amiable families,—the ideal, in fact, of modern aristocracy, in its phases of a good-hearted young nobleman and his happily-matched wife, a respectable County Member and his fitmily, a Peer who conceals deep feelings and high principles under reckless conduct and a cynical tongue, to- gether with several other persons, who are mixed up with the in- cidents of the narrative: the manners in all cases being strictly modern, and, but for the art with which Mrs. GORE depicts the favourable points, such as would be pronounced rather too free and easy.

It must however be said, that the matter is scarcely equal to the weight of three volumes : and probably too much power is assigned to mere scandal, issuing from open and acknowledged dealers in calumny. In many things the world is not over wise, but it is wiser in its own concerns than it suits the purposes of novelists to represent ; and, though mischief may be produced by tale-bearing, it is rather by the indiscreet repetitions and unwit- tingly garbled reports of trifling or censorious people, than by the in- ventions of distempered spite. SHERMAN, though not a dramatist of the very highest order, had too much knowledge of life, and skill in his art, to make the talk of the scandalous coterie affect the action of his drama, though it is very cleverly interwoven with the pro- gress of the story, and may seem to influence it. But two out of the three plots in The Dowager are entirely governed by tales originating with old Lady Delamaine. That which affects young Lord and Lady Gransden is, no doubt, well managed, both in the circumstances which give momentary credence to the tale, and to the little practical result which flows front it. The more tragic affidr was not likely to have happened ; for the suitor's father, who originates the rejection of the lady, knew thoroughly the cha- racter of the scandalmongers, Intel himself suffered from their slanders, and never in filet believed their statements.

Perhaps one sign that the subject of fashionable manners is getting exhausted in the hands of Mrs. GORE, is the description which she introduces, we think more frequently than formerly, and sometimes to suspend her narrative. However, those are perhaps the parts which read best when read alone. Here is one.

LONDON STREETS.

A favourite complaint of foreigners against London, is the tedious length of the streets, To an eye familiar only with the picturesque irregularities of fo- reign cities, nothing can exceed the monotony of b wth thoroughfiires as Baker Street or Gloucester Place,—traversing, under varied denominations, a whole parish, and carrying the eye along a waste of weary brick-walls perforated with windows, up to the Northern mists of the Ilegent's Park. There is too equable a sameness CVCII iii the new streets of the Belgravc quarter of the town. From such studied uniformity a neighbourhood derives something in grace and dignity, but every house loses its specific character. Compare, in many of the German capitals, the court or modern quarter—its formal streets rectangularly chequered, till " half the platffirm just reflects the other"—with the more ancient portion, where the quaint facade of the palace Shoulders the burgher's humble domicile, and a Juden Goose, or some other tortuous gangway, winds like a snake through the heart of the city, assuming at every turn a new physiognomy. You applaud the newly-risen quarter— you would select it as your residence ; but a few months after quitting the place, you have forgotten every shapely feature of its unmeaning aspect, while the picturesque irregularities of the old one cling to your memory for ever. But the old streets of the fashionable part of London are gradually losing their physiognomy. Every year we miss some queer old mansion, which has been replaced by a pert fronting of stuccoed brick, having French windows and. balconies, and presenting an insipid fee- simile of its next-door neighbour. Yet, twenty or thirty years ago, even Grosvenor, Brook, and Bruton Streets, were composed of what the auctioneers called " genteel residences,"—alike, but air how different ! some of red brick with vast copin,g-stones, savouring of the Low Dutch taste of William of Nassau, and few of them of later date than the two first reigns of' the house of Hanover ; square, cumbrous, high-shouldered edifices, containing- a good hall and dining-room, with it roomy staircase between ; large nonseeutive drawing-rooms, lighted by small narrow-paned windows; bathrooms to match; while an attic-story, inserted into an angular reel-tiled roof, ren- dered the rest of' the ill-lodged domestics as uncomfortable by night as their service iii dark, damp offices, by day.

FOREIGN MANNERS.

Now, purposed incivility without a cause, or resulting from caprice, is r. thing so utterly incomprehensible to a foreigner of any condition of life, that

there was no danger the Prince should suspect the " not at home " with which Inc was daily accosted by Lord Delmainc's servants, to be the result of ill-will. He saw the knocker tied up. He understood that the Countess was seriously indisposed. He saw no Lady Charlotte Chichester at his nightly balls. And his object in frequenting the house being simply a lounge, (the matrimonial designs imputed to hien by the young. lady with the salts'-hottle never having entered his head,) Inc quietly resigned himself to lose sight of the family till the family chose to recover its health and resume its parties.

It is, in fact, one of the many happy results of the classification of society in

the old. countries of' the Continent, that the system of taking up and letting down acquaintance, so common in England, is a rudeness undreamed of. Every person's place in society is so definite, the circle is comparatively so limited, and formed upon such fixed principles, that, except in cases of some enormous breach of propriety, no person once established can ever be expelled. Unless for cogent reasons, he would not have been there at all; and so often as the lady of the house receives visiters, he has a right to return there twin- sited, and to be well received. There is no talk of " cutting." Such an out- rage would reflect on the perpetrator rather than on the person " cut." There is no talk of " at home to the Count This, but not at home to the So-m(1- SM" An exclusion of this kind would be classed among- the flagrant acts of indecorum. All the vulgar caprices consequent upon a shifting state of society, its short, are unknown in those capitals where people meet and cat ices and play cards in the same apartments to-day where their grandfathers and grand- mothers met, ate ices, and played cards two or three centuries ago.

GOVERSLSSES.

Governesses are seldom endowed with a comprehensive spirit; if they were, few of them would remain governesses. Their school-room philosophy, contents itself with exacting the daily performance of an incalculable number of tasks. Few of them look to the expansion of the mind under their charge—still fewer to the ultimate object of its expansion. Knowledge is made the end, and not the means of' wisdom ; and grammar, geography, history, and Crossman's rate- chism, duly learned and well recollected, suffice as the groundwork of every social virtue.

A SPECIMEN 01' TIIE " DOWAGER."

" There ! she must be gone now, I fancy," said the Dowager, rising in

haste, and. stumbling towards the window, " for Lady Gransden has taken to her eternal piano. I vow I would as soon live opposite to Broadwoed's or Tomkinson's, and listen all duy ts the tuning of instruments. No ; 1 declare Lord Grandison's chariot is still at the door.. Ali, poor old coachman fre knows by this time what it is to have a young lady out. A very different affair to take the Earl to his club, or Ids dinners, and twice in the season, perhaps, to the Levee : elderly gentlemen of Lord Grandison's turn of mind, you know, are not fond of taking out their own carriage on all occasions, and having their haunts spied out by their servants, and being racketed about in all hours a0 weathers, at the caprice of a child. To be sure, the set-out proclaims the dif- ference. Six months ago, no one had ever seen such a wig as that on the head of Lord Grandison's coachman : annt just look at the off-horse 1—poor thing! the whole Veterinary, College would not bring it round to what it was. l'nt surprised, though, that Lady Gransden can find nothing better to amuse her young friend with than the rattling of the piano." " But don't you hear the harp ?" inquired Mrs. Knox. " I have always wondered who it was that played duets so charmingly with Lady Gransden." " And you never were at the pins to imptire ?" cried the Dowager, full of contempt for her insensibility. " The luop—chwts!" she continued, lending a more attentive ear. in A pretty sort of duet ! Why there is a date, my dear Ma'am. They are playing a trio regular harp, piano, and flute trio. Now who in the world can be "Jiving that fluter

" Lord Gransden, perhaps." " Lord Graitsden 1 Did you ever bear him attempt Jim Crow on the key- bugle,:Ms'am, inn Sin- Henry Windsor's coaching-parties ? The mail don't know olio note from another."

" Sir Henry Windsor then, perhaps : Sir Henry is often with the Grass- dens."

" Often, indeed—too often, perhaps. But I suspect he has found hints:dr& trop lately. No, inn: of all Lady Gransden's admirers, Lord Chichester, Ma'am, is ja,it now the favourite against the field. Lord Chichester is—hut I am wrong perhaps in running net this," said the Dowager, pretending to cheek herself. " However, you nmy take ray word flir it, Sir Henry Windsor is not of the practising-party. Sir liettry Windior is down. at Dorking, cajoling his old uncle, who has got another tit of the gout. I inquired of his own 'flan yesterday where he was gone, as I had seen post-horses at his door late the evening before ; and lie told me that his master had been sent fur down to old Mr. Windsor's, who was very bad." " I hope Sir Henry will come into a good fortune," said Mrs. Kimx, good- naturedly ; " and then, perhaps, he will marry. It is a thousand pities should remain single, on account of the fitmily-diantonds. I have heard mamma say that the late Lady Windsor's diamonds were the finest at Court of any woman's under a Peeress." "Married? Sir Henry Windsor married?" retorted the Dowager, with a look intending to convey a whole green bag of accusations."

ARISTOCRATIC FEELING IN ENGLAND.

So exaggerated is the influence of the aristocracy in England, or rather so servile the spirit of the middle classes, that in nobleman in the vicinity of ins country seat, as compared with the same man in his London club, is as the mag- nified Ilea in the plates of it treatise upon entomology compared with the same insect in its natural condition. The " Lord Anything " of an obscure country neighbourhood is talked airy all its Squires, as if there were something specific in the very hoofs of his coach .horses. To them he is a regal personage. They know the names and 'mintier of his servants—the arrangemente of his house- hold. On all occasions, they quote his sayings ; and when Ire says nothing, wonder what Inc thinks ; till reasonable beings visiting in the ncignboarliod become sick of his very name."