frivolity of the great; on the other, selfishness and rapacity are grown into the national character of the mass of the people. Religion no longer dwells in the heart and spirit, but is become a dead form; notwithstanding the most unenlightened spirit of Catholicism,-with fewer ceremonies, indeed, but combined with like intolerance, and a similar hierarchy; and which, besides the bigotry and the pride of Rome, has this over and above, that it possesses an enormous share of the property of the country. Like causes have also given an analogous tone and direction, to what is preeminently called society. Experience will confirm this to every man who has access to what is called high life in England; and it will be highly interesting to him to observe how different a growth and aspect the same plant has assumed in France and England, in consequence of the original difference of the soil; for in France it grew rather out of chivalry and poetry, combined with the dominant vanity of the nation, with levity of character, and real delight in social existence: in England, out of a brutal feudal tyranny, the commercial prosperity of later years, an illhumour and moroseness innate in the nation, and a cold stony self-love. People on the continent generally form to themselves a more or less republican picture of English society. In the public life of the nation this is certainly very observable, as also in their domestic habits, in which selfishness is strangely prevalent. Grown up children and parents soon become almost strangers; and what we call domestic life is therefore applicable only to husband, wife, and little children, living in immediate dependance on their father as soon as they grow up, a republican coldness and estrangement take place between them and their parents. English poet maintains, that the love of a grandfather to his grandchildren arises from this; that in his grown up sons he sees only greedy and hostile heirs, in his grandchildren the future enemies of his enemies. The very thought could never have arisen but in an English brain! An 'In the relations and tone of society, on the other hand, from the highest step to the very lowest, not a trace of any element of republicanism is to be found. Here every thing is in the highest degree ultraaristocratic; it is caste-like. The present so called great world would probably have taken a different form and character, if a court, in the continental sense of the word, had given tone and direction in the highest instance. 'Such a one, however, does not here exist. The kings of England live like private men; most of the high officers about the court are little more than nominal, and are seldom assembled except on occasions of great ceremony. Now as somewhere in society a focus must be organized, from which the highest light and the highest authority in all matters connected with society must emanate, the rich aristocracy seem here called to assume this station. 'It was, however, spite of all its wealth and puissance, not yet qualified to maintain such a station unquestioned. The English nobility, haughty as it is, can scarcely measure itself against the French in antiquity and purity of blood (if any value is to be attached to such things), and in no degree against the higher German nobility, which is for the most part intact. It dazzles only by the old historic names so wisely retained, which appear through the whole of English history like standing masks; though new families, often of very mean and even discreditable extraction (such as descendants of mistresses and the like), are continually concealed behind them. The English aristocracy has indeed the most solid advantages over those of all other countries, from its real wealth, and yet more from the share in the legislative power allotted to it by the constitution; but as it is not upon these grounds that it chooses to assert or to justify its supremacy, but precisely upon its assumed nobie blood and higher extraction, the pretension must unquestionably appear to the rest of the world doubly ludicrous. The members of the aristocracy probably had an instinctive feeling of this; and thus, by a tacit convention, not nobility, not wealth, but an entirely new power was placed on the throne, as supreme and absolute sovereign-Fashion: a goddess who, in England alone, reigns in person (if I may so express myself), with despotic and inexorable sway, though always represented to mortal eyes by a few clever usurpers of either sex. The spirit of caste, which, emenating from this source, descends through all stages of society in greater or less force, has received here a power, consistency, and full development, wholly unexampled in any other country. The having visited on an intimate footing in a lower class, is sufficient to ensure you an extremely cold reception in the very next step of the ladder; and no Brahmin can shrink with more horror from all contact with a Paria, than an "Exclusive" from intercourse with a "Nobody." Every class of society, as well as every field, in England, is separated from every other by a hedge of thorns. Each has its own manners and turns of expression, its "cant" language, as it is called; and, above all, a supreme and absolute contempt for all below it. Of course every reflecting person sees at a glance, that a society so constituted, must necessarily become eminently provincial, (kleinstädtisch i. e. small-townish) in its several coteries; and this strikingly distinguishes it from the large and cosmopolitan society of Paris. Now, although the aristocracy, as I have remarked, does not stand as such on the pinnacle of this strange edifice, it yet exercises great influence over it. It is indeed difficult to become fashionable, without being of good descent; but it by no means follows, that a man is so in virtue of being well-born, still less of being rich. It sounds ludicrous to say, (but yet it is true) that the present king, for instance, is a very fashionable man; that his father was not in the least degree so, and that none of his brothers have any pretension to fashion; which unquestionably is highly to their honour; for no man who has any personal claims to distinction, would be frivolous enough long to have either the power or the will to maintain himself in that category. On the other hand, it would be a doubtful and critical matter to affirm decidedly what are the qualities which secure the highest places in that exalted sphere. You see alternately the most heterogeneous qualities occupy a post in it; and political motives, in a country like this, cannot be entirely without influence: yet I believe that caprice and luck, and, above all, women, here, as in the rest of the world, do more than anything else. 'On the whole, fashionable Englishmen, however unable they may be to lay aside their native heaviness and pedantry, certainly betray the most intense desire to rival the dissolute frivolity and "jactance" of the old court of France, in their fullest extent; while, in exactly the same proportion, the French now seek to exchange this character for old English earnest ness, and daily advance towards higher and more dignified purposes, and views of existence.'-vol. iv. pp. 370–376. The author pursues the comparison between the present state of our aristocracy, and that of the old regime of France, to an extent to which we cannot follow him. Our "exclusive" dandy he considers not half so good as a roué of the regency, for the dishonesty and vice of the latter were covered beneath a captivating address, which the dandy knows nothing about. Our prince indulges in a variety of little remarks against several of our leaders of fashion, both foreign and native, from which we are inclined to suspect, that he must have experienced, when here, some personal slights, which sunk much deeper into his memory than he was perhaps aware of. There is, nevertheless, a great deal of truth in the bold, and by no means flattering picture which he has drawn of "fashionable life" in this metropolis. But it wants the authority of impartiality. Private feelings are too manifestly mingled in the colours which he uses, and the satire, though just, will, wefear, lose much of its efficacy on this account. ART. VI.-Francis the First. An Historical Drama. By Frances we. Do we object to all these proceedings, or to any of them? Not Miss Fanny Kemble is a lucky author, in being able from her connexions and her position in society, to command all the assistance which her father's theatre and the journals could possibly have afforded her. It was something new, moreover, for a lady, and so young a lady, to appear before the world at once in the double capacity of an author and an actress, the delineator on the stage of one of the characters which she had imagined and painted in the closet. The attempt was in every respect a bold one, and deserved all the indulgence which it has universally experienced. If we have any prejudices on the matter, they are decidedly in favour of a daughter, who has been for some time taxing all her accomplishments of mind and person, for the honourable purpose of redeeming her father's property from the ruin with which it has more than once been menaced. Nor is it to be denied that the drama-the fair author does not call it a tragedy-now before us, is as a mere literary work, a production of some merit. There are some passages which, we confess, we did not expect from a pen necessarily so unpractised in the arts of poetical composition. But taking the piece as a whole, and forgetting-as impartial critics looking only to the character of our national drama we ought to forget all the extraneous circumstances attending it, we are bound in our honest judgment to say that it is marked by many glaring faults, and wants most of the requisites which we believe to be essential to excellence in this department of our literature. We discard from our consideration all those canons of criticism which are founded upon arbitrary principles with respect to the unities of time and place, and other such exploded doctrines of the French school. It is sufficient in our estimation, if the piece succeed in fixing the attention during the time of its performance so steadfastly on the stage, as to kindle the imagination, and induce it to identify the characters of the drama with the persons whom they are intended to pourtray. This species of mental illusion it is the great object of dramatic compositions of every class to excite; it may be in the power of the actor to mar that object by his incapacity, or to heighten it beyond our conception by his talents; but we can put the piece to the test in our study as well as in the theatre, and either way it will, generally speaking, lead us to a right decision as to the merits of the composition. Judging Francis the First' by this simple rule, we should say that, neither in the closet nor on the stage, is it capable of attaining the object which the drama has in view. The plot turns in the first place upon the sufferings and final success of the Duke of Bourbon, a vindictive traitor, who does not, like Coriolanus, redeem his treason by the grandeur of his character. There is a meanness in his motives, a littleness in his ambition, a falsehood in his conduct, which enlist all our best feelings against him, and would induce us to wrest from him, if we could, the triumph with which his proceedings are crowned. This could not be avoided, for it is matter of history, and it could not have been otherwise represented. But then it was not a matter of necessity for the author to choose that particular passage in history for her subject; and it must be admitted, that she was unfortunate in a choice, which, instead of engaging our feelings in favour of her hero, points them, on the contrary, against him. Again :-few persons, we believe, have read the history of Francis the First without rising from it with the impression, that, however gross the faults which he committed during his reign, whether as a politician, a soldier, or a man, there was still a gallant bearing in his conduct, a chivalry in his soul, which after all make us think of him as one of the most generous and amiable sovereigns who have wielded the sceptre of France. Miss Fanny Kemble, however, appears to have read his history in a very different sense. She has here represented him as no better than Louis the Fifteenth in intellectual capacity, and quite equal to that monarch in all his infamies of debauchery. The attention of the king seems, throughout the first four acts of the play, to be almost exclusively devoted to the gratification of his passions, and the seduction of the innocent, at the same time that he appears to be kept in leadingstrings by his mother. This inferiority of character to that which we read of him in history, may very well suit the purposes of the plot, but it does not at all correspond with our previous notions; it is in every way beneath them. And in the fifth act, where alone Francis appears himself for a scene or two, he scarcely has time to recover himself in our esteem, when he is abandoned by fortune and taken prisoner. This finale is in strict conformity with history, but it is a very undignified conclusion for the dramatic career of a monarch, to whom we should be so much inclined to wish success. Thus Bourbon rejoices in victory, whom we should desire to see humbled by defeat; and Francis is degraded by the surrender of his sword, whom we should be happy to see triumphant. But the monstrous error of this drama is the king's mother, Louisa of Savoy-a woman whose conduct, in every instance where she appears on the stage, is repulsive in the extreme, and a violation of all the decencies of her sex. The author has here less excuse from history, as the passion which she imputes to Louisa for the Constable Bourbon, is altogether gratuitous. Bourbon had betrayed his allegiance, by joining Charles the Fifth before Francis turned his arms against the Milanese. It is notorious that the Constable's treason was the result of the persecutions which he had suffered from the king, aud the confiscation of his property. Yet Miss F. Kemble makes Bourbon a governor of the Milanese for France before it was conquered, and she makes the queen mother, who actually detested him, recall him from his post, under an impulse of irresistible love, at the very period when he was in open arms against her son. But even if history warranted the story which the fair author has invented, she would, in our judgment, have not the less violated all the rules of good taste, in drawing the character which she has here given to the queen. When that personage first makes her appearance, she, a woman of nearly sixty years of age, is made to speak of the passion of love with all the fervour of youth! Now out upon this beating heart, these temples, That throb and burn so; and this crimson glow |