MRS. GORE'S CABINET MINISTER.

THE title of this novel has no relation to its subject, though it might have had when the author planned the work. With SHERI- DAN or CANNING in her eye, we can readily conceive Mrs. GORE determining to point a great moral in her tale ; to warn the youth of genius, winning manners, high aspirations, but limited means, against the flowery seductions of fashion and the tempting heights of ambition. But, from a conscious want of power to carry out her idea, or a doubt of how far the work might be approved by novel- readers, Mrs. GORE has stopped short in her career ; and her hero, Frank Grenfell, instead of embodying the miseries of a poor political adventurer and slave-minister, is enabled by luck to stop in time, after yielding to the attractions of a platonic Aspasia, whose aim is to draw around her the cream of society—mingling with Sheridan and the set which frequented Carlton House, and being looked up to as a favourite of the Prince during the awful pause to parties which attended the Regency Bill of 1810. At the same time, if she changed her scheme, she should have changed its name. The title not only raises expectations which are not realized, but sets the reader upon a false scent, and thaws a harsher judgment upon the work.

Putting aside the author's end, however, the means enable her to introduce a running sketch of fashionable manners towards the close of the first decade of our century; and a vivid picture of the baseness of mere lucre-hunting politicians, in the persons she groups together, and the conduct she shadows forth in some of her characters, when parties seemed on the point of breaking up and the " outs" of coming " in ; " as well as to introduce into her narra- tive a variety of moral reflections, sometimes just, sometimes cynical. But as a politico-social novel, The Cabinet Minister is too much an echo of The Hamilton, without the temporary features which gave zest and applicability to that publication. When the New Era appeared, the downfal of the Tories was recent ; their insolence fresh in the minds of men, their expulsion evidence of their incapacity, and their party in a seeming atrophy. On the other hand, the Reform Bill had not then disappointed the nation ; the Whigs, though not a little mistrusted by the more fitr-seeing, were looked up to with hope by most people ; and both sides were fresh before the world in the particular phase in which Mrs. GORE exhibited them. But the conduct of SHERIDAN, GREY, and GRENVILLE, the Prince, his Household, and the Tories, on the insanity of " poor old dad," is become historical, without the inte- rest which lapse of time imparts : so that the attraction in the sub- ject of the present novel must be less than in The Hamiltons, even were it equal to it ill execution ; which it is not. Parts ex- hibit a considerable degree of spirit and felicity ; but many passages are forced, as if the native vein of the writer was nearly exhausted. There seems a disposition to rely too much upon her excellent manner—a substitution of cunningly-pointed periods, for the no- velty, weight, and matter which they should clothe, not supersede. These remarks upon the political part are in a measure applicable to the pictures of society ; and in the conduct of her story or the perfect consistency of her characters Mrs. GORE has never shone preftinent. Still, taking it all together, it is some time since we have read such a novel; and, unless some new GORE should arise, it will he as long before we get such another. Alike removed from the vulgarity of the "knife and fork," the inflation of the senti- mental, or the theatrical air of the "interesting" schools, her inci- dents and her persons are always natural; and in her worst efforts there are generally portraits of truth and life on which the me- mory lingers. As yet, The Cabinet Minister is the novel of the year.

Like most fictions, this work will not furnish a scene to be made intelligible within our space : we must therefore be content with a few scraps.

" MORAL WORTH" AT TATTERSALL'S.

At Tattersall's, however, even previous to the discovery of his real worth, his moral worth obtained a triumph. The supposed greenhorn espied and pointed out in a moment a blemish in the showy horse trotted out fur his in- spection, which escaped the less practised eye of the fashionable. Me. Grenfell ; whereupon a wink went round that the green-one was a knowing-one; and Sir Henry, whose home-recreations on escaping twice a year from the Eton coercions of Dr. Rudiment had lain chiefly in the stable-yard, now reaped the rich reward of his proficiencies. Jem, the old ostler, swore " it was no use trying, to gammon the gemman in the green coat and tops ; " and the bat of Tatt. was respectfully raised as the country baronet sauntered out of the yard. His susceptibility was somewhat appeased. On one spot of London ground his superiority was already established.

FASHIONABLE LITE.

The greater danger incurred by Francis Grenfell, meanwhile, was as imper- ceptible to Lady Beckford as to Sir Henry ; the deadly influence of an order of society whose aims are so triviaL Lady Mary Russell's coterie resembled a stage of well-dressed puppets, or one of Giroux's baby-houses, rather than real life. It was all make-believe, all littleness, all frivolity ; and, as people by ac- customing themselves to wear microscopic glasses would lose the faculty of cor- rectly measuring external objects with the naked eye, a man habituated to hear importance assigned only to the trivialities of life would deceive himself in the end as to their actual importance. The Sybarite complains of the rumpling of the rose-leaf ; the Oriental princess, stagnating in the unnatural stillness of the harem, shrinks from the touch of a feather shed by the fan of her a.tten- dents ; and a young man of high endowments, confined to the enervating at- mosphere of one of these London boudoirs, becomes enfeebled lumina and sen- sitive to the slightest incidents. With plausible deceit, the doll-like Aspasias of these puppet-shoiv circles claim proudly as their own certain Nestors of mighty renown in the political or literary world, careful not to inform the young aspirant that these elderly heroes, so far from having

" Betrayed

Their noon of manhood to the tnyrtfe ;Lade," were careful to avoid its effeminating influence till their laurels had not only sprouted but required pruning, and they could afford to hazard a leaf or two by basking in the unnatural forcing-house of fashionable life.

INTEREST.

"Indeed!" said Lady Mary gravely. "Have you then much Parliamentary interest ? In these times, you know, there is only one qualification for office— the backing of so many votes : Downing Street, Horse Guards, Admiralty, all are in the same tune. Talk to them of your talents, your services, your wounds, your arm lost in Egypt or your leg at Traffilgar, and you will be asked by some smirking prig of a secretary whether your demand is seconded by any influential person ; which means, in my coarser phrase, have you any Parliamentary- interest "

SLIER LOAN IN DECLINE.

The influence enjoyed at this period by Sheridan over the mina of' the Prince, though great beyond his favour at any previous period, belonged neither to the wit, the poet, nor the orator, but the man of expedients. The unfortu- nate manager sod scarcely more fortunate politician was himself bewildered by embarrassments, the origin of a petty system of policy which he was willing to make the law of others, as recklessness (which he called necessity) had ren- dered it his own.

Those who busk in the sunshine awl prosperites of life are little aware of the foul and bewildering exhalations which emanate from the Slough of Despond. The right-minded and right-hearted give way at once, and subunit to be as- phyxiated rather than contend with such 1101S0111C vapours ; but those whose hearts are harder, and whose wit sharper than their sense of integrity, too often prefer the diseased existence generated by malaria, and grow Mdifferent to the defeatures and deformity disfiguring their moral aspect. Conscious of the forfeiture of public respect, the brightest intellectual of the tinter, after having dragged down his high renown to the vulgar level, cared little whom he involved. in disrepute. Perplexed by duns, and aware that the security of his latter days depended upon his accession to place, the sparkling genius of Sheridan was non• exhausted by attempts to enliven the ennui of a royal circle ; while his sagacious foresight. disgraced itself by the concoction of intrigues for his owe establishment ur puwer at the expense of his party and

his principles. • RATS.

Convinced, therefore, that the Prince and the Whigs and the Prince and the Throne were to he henceforth one, she determined to take her station as near as possible to the foot, and seize the earliest opportuffity to creep upwards. Lord Raynham and herself protested to each other, that for some time past they had been discontented with the existing order of things; that the Peninsula alarmed them, that Walcheren disgusted them, that the state of the popular mind was most critical. Mrs. Perceval had been too long in returning Lady Raynham's last visit ; and Lord Eldon had omitted to notice an application from his lordship concerning the reversion of a living which did. not happen to be in the Chancellor's gift. Lord Rayultam remarked to Iris lady that he had in fact no-tie to the Fe- sent Administration. Ile never held office; his obligations to Ministers in a few trifling instances were matters of private friendship—a mere exchange for his personal hospitalities. There was nothing, positively nothing to prevent him from voting according to his conscience on the regency question, or in tendering his iiiithful services to the Prince through the medium of his young friend Frank Grenfell.