NEW BOOKS.

i The Young Duke. By the Author I3 vols. 1. of Vivian Grey . 1 Pulgrave's History of England. HISTORY .... f' (Anglo-Saxon Period.) Family ; Murray. Library, No. XXI. . .1 B1 0 G R AP H Y . . Dr. Epps's Life of Dr. Walker.... Whittaker and Co.

I Wilson s American Ornithology. 1

OaximoLocy . I. Constable, Edin. t Constable's Miscellany. No. 78.. J Vol."

memcise ... Mayo on Indigestion Feilowes. Jukes on Indigestion and Costive. ness Simpkin & Marshall..

FICTION

Colburn and Bentley.

THE SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

The Young Duke is by the author of Vivian Grey ; which is tan- tamount to saying, that it is well worthy of the attention of the novel reader,— and nowadays who does not read novels ? The Young Duke is a view of the same society as is Vivian Grey, but from a different point ; and the artist is the same clever limner who drew the portrait of the Marquis of Caraboo. The author of Vivian Grey gave a new turn to the fashionable novel, threw more satire into it, gave it a livelier air, filled it with freer sketches of life, and in a wild and random way scattered good sense and able remarks on society and every thing else up and down its rapid scenes. Vivian Grey was the cleverest novel of its day ; and The Young Duke is not so only because the author gave the hint to men as able as himself, and who, perhaps, endowed with even greater ad- vantages, may have excelled their master. Affectation of what he is not, is the besetting sin of the author of Vivian Grey : were he not only the author of The Young Duke, but a young duke himself, he could not give himself greater airs of wealth and dis- tinction. Now, as we all know that this is put on, and that the egotism is not egotism but humbug, we feel disinclined to sympa- thize in vagaries which, we confess, were he somebody or some- body else, we should probably maintain to be interesting, for we might imagine them sincere. But feigned confessions are, of all things, our abhorrence. Caricature is the author's forte, exaggeration his great art: whether he is blacking his subject with the deepest and most matchless of dyes, or whether he choose to paint every thing cou- leur de rose, and converts this earth into a paradise, its men into gods, its women into angels, the best success attends his efforts. Nothing can be more striking, more dazzling, and at the same time more harmonious, than his pictures. It is but sketching—but what power is in every stroke of the brush ! The Young Duke is exactly what its name imports—the history of the &Zeit of a young English nobleman of the highest rank, of most abundant wealth, and in the enjoyment of every luxury and pleasure that the imagination of man can conceive and his hand execute. His career —it is called in the world a brilliant one—is struck off by the author in three volumes, at a heat as it were. If we could conceive three thickish duodecimos written some day after dinner, these are the very volumes. The Young Duke is a gallopade through the world of fashion—a waltz—a giddy maddening whirl in the rounds of dissipa- tion; there is no pause—no breathing moments ; all is like an Indian sky, clear, blue, and burning—one blaze of wit, satire, sense, and nonsense, folly, feeling, fancy, and flummery. 'The Young Duke• ruins himself with building Alhambras, with keeping signoras, with buying up studs, with squandering diamond earrings and neck- laces, with throwing his checks about among his friends, and fitting-up his half-a-dozen mansions with every description of rarity, curiosity, and absurdity : but ruin is meant in a ducal sense— a temporary retirement upon thirty thousand a year, and the laying aside a hundred thousand per annum for completing his various palaces according to the estimates of Sir Carte Blanche, the great architect. Amidst the variety of clever scenes which present themselves to our recollection after laying down The Young Duke, it is diffi- cult io find any which will bear separation from the context.. Nevertheless, a scene or two of the author himself will give a better idea of the book than we can hope to convey by description. The miseries of notoriety are frequently dwelt upon with an amusing display of splendid bile : as, for example, in the passage which follows.

" Hitherto the Duke of St. James had been a very celebrated person. age, but his fame had been confined to the two thousand Brahmins who constitute the World. His patronage of the Signora extended his cele- brity in a manner which he had not anticipated ; and he became also the hero of the ten, or twelve, or fifteen millions of Parias, for whose exist- ence philosophers have hitherto failed to adduce a satisfactory cause. " The Duke of St. James was now, in the most comprehensive sense of the phrase, a public character. Some choice spirits took the hint from the public feelings, and determined to dine on the public curiosity. A Sunday journal was immediately established. Of this epic, our Duke was the hero. His manners, his sayings, his adventures, regularly regaled, on each holy day, the Protestant population of this Protestant empire, who, in France or Italy, or even Germany, faint at the sight of a peasantry testifying their gratitude for a day of rest by a dance or a tune. ' Sketches of the Alhambra,'—` Soupirs in the Regent's Park,'—` The Court of the Caliph,'—' The Bird Cage,' &c. &c. &c. were duly announced, and duly devoured. This journal being solely devoted to the illustration of the life of a single and a private individual, was appropriately entitled 'The Universe' Its contributors were eminently successful. Their pure in- ventions, and impure details, were accepted as the most delicate truth ; and their ferocious familiarity with persons with whom they were totally unacquainted, demonstrated, at the same time, their acquaintance both with the forms and the personages of polite society.

" At the first announcement of this hebdomadal, his Grace was a little annoyed, and Noctes Hautevillienses made him fear treason ; but when he had read a number, he entirely acquitted any person of a breach of confidence. On the whole, he was amused. A variety of ladies, in tiine. were introduced, with many of wfiom the Duke had scarcely interchanged a bow ; but the respectable editor was not up to Lady Afy.

" If his Grace, however, were soon reconciled to this, not very agree- able, notoriety, and consoled himself under the activity of his libellers, by the conviction that their prolusions did not even amount to a carica- ture, he was less easily satisfied with another performance which speedily advanced its claims to public notice.

"There is an unavoidable reaction in all human affairs. The Duke of St. James had been so successfully attacked, that it became worth while suc- cessfully to defend him ; and another Sunday paper appeared, the object of which was to maintain the silver side of the shield. Here every thing was couleur de rose. One week, the Duke saved a poor man from the Serpentine; another, a poor woman from starvation : now an orphan was grateful ; and now Miss Zouch, impelled by her necessity and his reputation, addressed him a column and a half, quite heart-rending. Pa- rents with nine children ; nine children without parents ; clergymen most improperly unbeneficed ; officers most wickedly reduced; widows of younger sons of quality sacrificed to the Colonies ; sisters of literary men sacrificed to national works, which required his patronage to appear ; daughters who had known better days, but somehow or other had not been as well acquainted with their parents ;—all advanced with multi- plied petitions, and that hackneyed, heartless air of misery which denotes the mumper. His Grace was infinitely annoyed, and scarcely compen- sated for the inconvenience by the prettiest little creature in the world, who one day forced herself into his presence to solicit the honour of de- dicating to him her poems.

" He had enough upon his hands, so he wrote her a check, and, with a courtesy which must have made this Sappho quite desperate, put her out of the room.

" I forgot to say, that the name of the new journal was the New World.' The new world is not quite as big as the universe, but then it is as large as all the other quarters of the globe together. The worst of this business was, the Universe protested that the Duke of St. James, like a second Canning, had called this New World into existence ; which was too bad, because, in truth, he deprecated its discovery scarcely less than the Venetians.

" Having thus managed, in the course of a few weeks, to achieve the reputation of an unrivalled roué, our hero one night betook himself to Almack's, a place where his visits, this season, were both shorter and less frequent.

"Many an anxious mother gazed upon him, as he passed, with an eye which longed to pierce futurity ; many an agitated maiden looked ex- quisitely unembarrassed, while her fluttering memory feasted on the sweet thought that, at any rate, another had not captured this unrivalled prize. Perhaps she might be the Anson to fall upon this galleon. It was worth a long cruise, and even the chance of a shipwreck."

The scene which follows is one of the best-drawn in the whole book. The Duke, by love and disappointment, by finding that he has overdrawn his banker, is induced to gamble for a week, in the course of which he loses considerably upwards of a hundred thou- sand pounds. After some dabbling, a select party fairly set in and play up to their knees in cards.

" The young Duke had accepted the invitation of the Baron de Berg- hem for to-morrow ; and accordingly, himself, Lords Castlefort and Dice, and Temple Grace, assembled in Brunswick Terrace at the usual hour. The dinner was studiously plain, and very little wine was drunk ; yet every thing was perfect. Tom Cogit stepped in to carve, in his usual silent manner. He always came in and went out of a room without any one observing him. He winked familiarly to Temple Grace, but scarcely presumed to bow to the Duke. He was very busy about the wine, and dressed the wild fowl in a manner quite unparalleled. Tom Cogit was the man for a sauce for a brown bird. What a mystery he made of it ! Cayenne, and hucgundy, and limes were ingredients, but there was a magic in the incantation, with which he alone was acquainted. He took particular care to send a most perfect portion to the young Duke ; and he did this, as he paid all attentions to influential strangers, with the most marked consciousness of the sufferance which permitted his presence : never addressing his Grace, but audibly whispering to the servant, 'Take this to the Duke;' or asking the attendant, ' whether his Grace would try the hermitage ?' "After dinner, with the exception of Cogit, who was busied in com- pounding some wonderful liquid for the future refreshment, they sat down to ecurte. Without having exchanged a word upon the subject, there seemed a general understanding among all the parties, that to-night

was to be a pitched battle ; and they began at once, very briskly. Yet, in spite of their universal determination, midnight arrived without any thing very decisive. Another hour passed over, and then Tom Cogit kept touching the Baron's elbow, and whispering in a voice which every- body could understand. All this meant, that supper was ready. It was brought into the room. " Gaming has one advantage—it gives you an appetite ; that is to say, as long as you have a chance remaining. The Duke had thousands, —for at present his resources were unimpaired, and he was exhausted by the constant attention and anxiety of five hours. He passed over the delicacies, and went to the side-table, and began cutting himself some cold roast beef. Tom Cogit ran up, not to his Grace, but to the Baron, to announce the shocking fact, that the Duke of St. James was enduring great trouble; and then the Baron asked his Grace to permit Mr. Cogit to serve him. Our hero devoured—I use the word advisedly, as fools say in the House of Commons—he devoured the roast beef, and, rejecting the hermitage with disgust, asked for porter. " They set to again, fresh as eagles. At six o'clock, accounts were so complicated, that they stopped to makeup their books. Each played with his memorandums and pencil at his side. Nothing fatal had yet hap- pened. The Duke owed Lord Dice about five thousand pounds, and Temple Grace owed him as many hundreds ; Lord Castlefort also was his debtor

to the tune of seven hundred and fifty, and the Baron was in his books, but slightly. Every half hour they had a new pack of cards, and threw the used one on the floor. All this time, Tom Cogit did nothing but snuff the candles, stir the fire, bring them a new pack, and occasionally make a tumbler for them.

" At eight o'clock, the Duke's situation was worsened. The run was greatly against him, and perhaps his losses were doubled. He pulled up again the next hour or two ; but nevertheless, at ten o'clock, owed every one something. No one offered to give over ; and every one, perhaps, felt that his object was not obtained. They made their toilettes, and

went down-stairs to breakfast. In the mean time, the shutters were opened, the room aired ; and in less than an hour, they were at it again. "They played till dinner-time without intermission : and though the Duke made some desperate efforts, and some successful ones, his losses were, nevertheless, trebled. Yet he ate an excellent dinner, and was not at all depressed ; because the more he lost, the more his courage and his

resources seemed to expand. At first, he had limited himself to ten thou- sand ; after breakfast, it was to have been twenty thousand ; then, thirty thousand was the ultimatum ; and now he dismissed all thoughts of limits from his mind, and was determined to risk or gain every thing.

" At midnight, he had lost forty-eight thousand pounds. Affairs now began to be serious. His supper was not so hearty. While the rest were

eating, he walked about the room, and began to limit his ambition to re- covery, and not to gain. When you play to win back, the fun is over: there is nothing to recompense you for your bodily tortures and your de- graded feelings ; and the very best result that can happen, while it has no charms, seems to your cowed mind impossible. " On they played, and the Duke lost more. His mind was jaded. He floundered—he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough. Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a gamester, at such a crisis, is really insane) were, that his losses were prodigious.

" Another morning came, and there they sat, ankle deep in cards. No attempt at breakfast now—no affectation of making a toilette, or airing the room. The atmosphere was hot, to be sure, but it well became such a Ilell. There they sat, in total, in positive forgetfulness of every thing but the hot game they were hunting down. There was not a man in the room, except Tom Cogit, who could have told you the name of the town in which they were living. There they sat, almost breathless, watching every turn with the fell look in their cannibal eyes, which showed their total inability to sympathize with their fellow-beings. All forms of society had been long forgotten. There was no snuff-box handed about now, for courtesy, admiration, or a pinch ; no affectation of occasionally making a remark upon any other topic but the all-engrossing one. Lord Castle- fort rested with his arms on the table ;—a false tooth had got unhinged. His Lordship, who, at any other time, would have been moat annoyed, coolly put it in his pocket. His cheeks had fallen, and he looked twenty years older. Lord Dice had torn off his cravat, and his hair hung down over his callous, bloodless cheeks, straight as silk. Temple Grace looked as if he were blighted by lightning ; and his deep blue eyes gleamed like a hyaena. The Baron was least changed. Tom Cogit, who smelt that the crisis was at hand, was as quiet as a bribed rat. " On they played till six o'clock in the evening, and then they agreed to desist till after dinner. Lord Dice threw himself on a sofa. Lord Cas- tlefort breathed with difficulty. The rest walked about. While they were resting on their oars, the young Duke roughly made up his ac. counts. He found that he was minus about one hundred thousand pounds.

" Immense as this loss was, he was more struck—more appalled, let me say—at the strangeness of the surrounding scene, than even by his own ruin. As he looked upon his fellow-gamesters, he seemed, for the first time in his life, to gaze upon some of those hideous demons of whom he had read. He looked in the mirror at himself. A blight seemed to have fallen over his beauty, and his presence seemed accursed. He had pursued a dissipated, even more than a dissipated career. Many were the nights that had been spent by him not on his couch ; great had been the exhaustion that he had often experienced ; haggard had sometimes even been the lustre of his youth. But when bad been marked upon his brow this harrowing care ? when had his features before been stamped with this anxiety, this anguish, this baffled desire, this strange, unearthly scowl, which made him even tremble? What ? was it possible ?—it could not be—that in time he was to be like those awful, those unearthly, those unhallowed things that were around him. He felt as if he had fallen from his state,—as if he had dishonoured his ancestry,—as if he had betrayed his trust. He felt a criminal. In the darkness of his medi- tations, a flash burst from his lurid mind,—a celestial light appeared to dissipate this thickening gloom, and his soul felt as if it were bathed with the softening radiancy. He thought of May Dacre ; he thought of every thing that was pure, and holy, and beautiful, and luminous, and calm. It was the innatevirtue of the man that made this appeal to his corrupted nature. His losses seemed nothing : his dukedom would be too slight a ransom for freedom from these ghouls, and for the breath of the sweet air.

" He advanced to the Baron, and expressed his desire to play no more. There was an immediate stir. All jumped up, and now the deed was done. Cant, in spite of their exhaustion, assumed her reign. They begged him to have his revenge,—were quite annoyed at the result,—had no doubt he would recover if he proceeded. Without noticing their re- marks, he seated himself at the table, and wrote checks for their respec- tive amounts, Toni Cogit jumping up and bringing him the inkstand. Lord Castlefort, in the most affectionate manner, pocketed the draft; at- the same time recommending the Duke not to be in a hurry, but to send it when he was cool. Lord Dice received his with a bow,—Temple Grace, with a sigh,—the Baron, with an avowal of his readiness always to give him his revenge." Now for a little of the good sense for which we have giveri the author credit. The following. passage contains his remarks on oratory ; which are assuredly judicious, if not original.

" Nothing is more singular than the various success of men in the House of Commons. Fellows who have been the oracles of coteries from their birth, who have gone through the regular process of gold medals, senior wranglerships, and double foists—who have nightly sat down amid tumultuous cheering in debating societies, and can harangue with an un- ruffled forehead and an unfaltering voice, from one end of a dinner-table to the other—who, on all occasions, have something to say, and can speak with fluency on what they know nothing about—no sooner rise in the House, than their spells desert them. All their effrontery vanishes. Commonplace ideas are rendered even more uninteresting by mono- tonous delivery ; and keenly alive as even boobies are in those sacred walls to the ridiculous, no one appears more thoroughly aware of his un- expected and astounding deficiencies than the orator himself. He regains his seat, hot and hard, sultry and stiff, with a burning check and an icy hand, repressing his breath lest it should give evidence of an existence of which he is ashamed, and clenching his fist, that the pressure may secretly convince him that he has not as completely annihilated his stupid body as his false reputation. " On the other hand, persons whom the women have long deplored, and the men long pitied, as having no ' manner '—who blush when you speak to them, and blunder when they speak to you—suddenly jump up in the House with a self-confidence which is only equalled by their consum- mate ability. And so it was with Arundel Deere. He rose the first night that he took his seat—a great disadvantage, of which no one was more

sensible than himself ; and for two hours and a half he harangued the fullest House that had ever been assembled, with the self-possession of

an habitual debater. His clenching argument, and his luminous detail, might have been expected from one who had the reputation of having been a student. What was more wonderful, was the withering sarcasm that

blasted like the Simoom, the brilliant sallies of wit that flashed like a sabre, the gushing eddies of humour that drowned all opposition, and over. whelmed those ponderous and unwieldy arguments which the producers announced as rocks, but which he proved to be porpoises. Never was there such a triumphant debut; and a peroration of genuine eloquence, because of genuine feeling, concluded amid the long and renewed cheers of all parties.

" The truth is, Eloquence is the child of Knowledge. When a mind is full, like a wholesome river, it is also clear. Confusion and obscurity are much oftener the results of ignorance than of inefficiency. Few are the men who cannot express their meaning, when the occasion demands the energy ; as the lowest will defend their lives with acuteness, and sometimes even with eloquence. They are masters of their subject. Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mackind may supply us with facts ; but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own mind. To make others feel, we must feel ourselves; and to feel ourselves, we must be natural. This we can never be, when we are vomiting forth the dogmas of the schools. Knowledge is not a mere collection of words ; and it is a delusion to suppose that thought can be obtained by the aid of any other intellect than our own. What is repetition, by a curious mystery, ceases to be truth, even if it were truth when it was first heard ; as the shadow in a mirror, though it move and mimic all the actions of vitality, is not life. When a man is not speaking, or writing, from his own mind, he is as insipid company as a looking-glass.

"Before a man can address a popular assembly with command, he must know something of mankind ; and he can know nothing of man- kind without he knows something of himself. Self-knowledge is the property of that man whose passions have their play, but who ponders over their results. Such a man sympathizes by inspiration with his kind. He has a key to every heart. He can divine, in the flash of a single thought, all that they require, all that they wish. Such a man speaks to their very core. All feel that a master-hand tears off the veil of cant, with which, from necessity, they have enveloped their souls ; for cant is nothing more than the sophistry which results from attempting to account for what is unintelligible, or to defend what is improper. " Perhaps, although we use the term, we never have had oratory in England. There is an essential difference between oratory and debating. Oratory seems an accomplishment confined to the ancients,—unless the French preachers may put in their claim, and some of the Irish lawyers. Mr. Shiel's speech in Kent was a fine oration ; and the boobies who taunted him for having got it by rote, were not aware that in doing so he only wisely followed the examples of Pericles, Demosthenes, Lysias, Isocrates, Ilortensius, Cicero, Caesar, and every great orator of anti- quity. Oratory is essentially the accomplishment of antiquity : it was their most efficient mode of communicating thought; it was their sub- stitute for printing." We will close our notice of The Young Duke with some of the author's poetical prose : it would look very well tagged.

" They were the first tears that he had shed since childhood, and they were agony. Men weep but once, but then their tears are blood. I think almost their hearts must crack a little, so heartless are they ever after. Enough of this. " It is bitter to leave our father's hearth for the first time : bitter is the eve of our return, when a thousand fears rise in our haunted souls. Bit- ter are hope deferred, and self- reproach, and power unrecognized. Bit- ter is poverty; bitterer still is debt. It is bitter to be neglected; it is more bitter to be misunderstood.

"It is bitter to lose an only child. It is bitter to look upon the land which once was ours. Bitter is a sister's wo, a brother's scrape ; bitter a mother's tear, and bitterer still a father's curse. Bitter are a briefless bag, a curate's bread, a diploma that brings no fee. Bitter is half-pay !

"It is bitter to muse on vanished youth ; it is bitter to lose an election or a suit. Bitter arc rage suppressed, vengeance unwreaked, and prize- money kept back. Bitter are a failing crop, 4 glutted market, and a shattering spec. Bitter are rents in arrear, and tithes in kind. Bitter are salaries reduced, and perquisites destroyed. Bitter is a tax, particu- larly if misapplied ; a rate, particularly if embezzled. Bitter is a trade too full, and bitterer still a trade that has worn out. Bitter is a bore 1 " It is bitter to lose one's hair or teeth. It is bitter to find our annual charge exceed our income. It is bitter to hear of others' fame, when we are boys. It is bitter to resign the seals we fain would keep. It is hitter to hear the winds blow when we have ships at sea, or friends. Bitter are a broken friendship and a dying love. Bitter a woman scorned, a man betrayed ! " Bitter is the secret wo which none can share. Bitter are a brutal husband and a faithless wife, a silly daughter and a sulky son. Bitter are a losing card, a losing horse. Bitter the public hiss, the private sneer. Bitter are old age without respect, manhood without wealth, youth with- out fame. Bitter is the east wind's blast ; bitter a stepdame's kiss. It is bitter to mark the wo which we cannot relieve. It is bitter to die in a foreign land.

"But bitterer far than this, than these, than all, is waking from our first delusion ! For then we first feel the nothingness of self—that hell of sanguine spirits. All is dreary, blank, and cold. The sun of hope sets without a ray, and the dim night of dark despair shadows only phantoms. The spirits that guard round us in our pride, have gone. Fancy, weep- ing, flies. Imagination droops her glittering pinions, mid sinks into the earth. Courage has no heart, and love seems a traitor. A busy demon whispers in our ear that all is vain and worthless, and we among the vainest of a worthless crew ! "