bindings in themselves, essentially a mean taste? Is not the truckling to a rich idiotic boy, and the wanton fooleries of idle wealth, a mean thing? Can these mean things be more meanly admired than in a book every line of which is rank with fulsome grandiloquence?"

"Bah, friend," said we to the serious man, "you take all this in your fierce way, au grand sérieux. The object of a novel is to amuse. The artist passes no judgments; his business is to paint persons and scenes. Here we have a picture of a state of society, more or less true to life; there is much that is very diverting, and presents us with human nature. The public likes to hear of the great. No doubt you were interested yourself."

"No," said our serious friend, almost bitterly, and wholly unconscious of our little rap; "I do not judge the book by the standard of the trash in green covers, or of the boyish freaks of a Vivian Gray. It comes from one who has led the governing classes, and ruled this country for years, at the close of a long political career. 'Noblesse

oblige,' they say. Esprit oblige,' I say. And if this be the picture of that order, which a man of genius, who has made it his tool, can sit down in his old age to give to his countrymen-if this be the sum of a life of successful ambition and public honour-then, for myself, I should say, society is not likely to hold together long, for the people will not suffer mere selfishness in power, so soon as they know it to be hollow and weak." And he wanted to turn the conversation on the crisis in France.

"Nay! one moment, son of Danton by Charlotte Corday," we said, with a smile. "What, on earth, is the situation in France to us? We have no Empire here, and no revolutionists but you! But, as to "Lothair," do you not see refinement in the life depicted? They are people of taste, there is plenty of wit, a turn for art; in a word, what is happily connoted by Culture!" We knew he would not like the word, but we wanted to "draw" him, as the young bloods do the President of the Board of Trade.

"Culture!" said our friend, quickly. "Not in any sense of the word that I know. It is true the external forms of life and the habits of the lounging class are not described with quite the vulgar ignorance of fashionable novelists. There is certainly much social grace, some cultivation of mind, and plenty of wit in the society described. But so there has been in almost every order on the eve of its extinction. All the belles marquises and the fascinating chevaliers of Eil-de-Bœuf did not prevent the Court of the Louis from being utterly rotten and mean. And this is rotten and mean. Is the mind in it cultivated to any intelligible end? Is not the mere external parade of wealth dwelt on till one nauseates? Does not the book reek with the stifling fumes of gold, as when the idiot puts rails of solid gold round the tomb which covers his useless old bones? Is not the

life vapid, aimless, arrogant, as if the world and the human race existed only to gratify its selfish whims? I do not say that its whims are gross; but that they are fatuously selfish."

Come, come, good fellow, you are losing your sense of a jest," said we. "Much radicalism doth make thee dull. Why do you suppose now that Lothair is as serious and earnest as yourself? One would fancy all radicals had a ballot-box in place of a skull. Go, and have an operation (under chloroform), and get the joke inserted into your head! Have you never enjoyed a satire or a farce at the play? Do you really think a man of genius, who has fooled British society to the top of its bent, is going down on his knees to his own puppet, in his old age? Forbid it, human genius and successful ambition! Can you not see the exquisite fooling of the characters in the comedy? Was ever such fatuous and yet genial self-importance as the Duke's-and from life they say-so racy when you know the facts! And did you miss that touch of the neighbouring gentry and yeomanry escorting the young goose home-goose, who is absolutely nothing but fabulously rich; so artfully prepared, you know, when you have been just shown the very inside of the amiable young jackanapes. Five hundred of the gentry on horseback, many of them gentlemen of high degree,' the county squirearchy! And all the high jinks of the county when the lad comes of age, as droll as the kowtowing to the emperor at Pekin. Is there a story about the Mikado of Japan as good as the games at Muriel? And the croquet match absorbing statesmen, and played exclusively by Dukes and Duchesses, with gold and ivory mallets! And the gold plate at Crecy House; and the reverences of the haughty Catholics to the Cardinal--Cardinal, too, life to the very fringe of his hat strings, a photograph, too absurd! and the pigeon which was proud of being shot by a Duke! and the lad who throws a sovereign to the cabman ! and the marshalled retainers and obsequious lackeys moving ever noiselessly but actively in the background! O! friend of the people, or friend of man, if that was lost on you, we must be sorry for you. You are like a deaf man at the Opera. Why, it is like a scene in Japan! Turn it all into Japanese, say 'the Mikado' for 'Majestic Theme;' say 'Daimios' for dukes, put two-sworded retainers' for footmen in plush, and lots of male and female Japanese kissing the dust when Satsuma rides forth, and if you like a hari-kari instead of a London ball, and you have Lothair in Japan, and British society, and its mighty aristocracy, and the whole brother-to-the-Sun-andMoon business under the grotesque etiquette of those absurd Tartars. And do you not see how artfully the fulsome and false style is contrived to heighten the illusion of the whole preposterous system? Why, there is nothing better in Voltaire or Montesquieu. Do you take Candide and the Lettres Persanes au pied de la lettre too, most literal of mankind? What of Beaumarchais and the immortal

Barber? Do you suppose Figaro does not see anything droll in the Count's ménage? And when the Count asks him what he, the Count, had done to merit all those felicities, and Figaro says-Monseigneur, vous-vous étes donné la peine de naître-Do you think Figaro says that, like a solemn fool, or like a man of wit, laughing in his sleeve? What of Beaumarchais' comedies? Are they not one long joke from beginning to end, and a rare joke, too; ay, and one which made men think, and bore fruit! Come and be a good, tame Jacobin, and leave the League for to-night. Go and see Mario and Gassier in Il Barbiere; read Beaumarchais' play before dinner, and you will then see the fun in Lothair'!"

"Pish!" said our serious friend, who really had an appointment at the League. "If it be all a joke, that makes it worse. It is rather a prolonged joke, if it be, and one which plain folk do not readily see through. The world is ready to take all this as a revelation in sober truth, from one who, by his own account, has had special favour from what you call the Majestic Theme. To pander to the public taste is itself a vile thing, even though you scorn them for swallowing your bait. To parade (being a man in authority, whom princes delight to honour) to parade a worthless type of life, with a wink to the knowing that you are quite of their mind, is not a great part. To worship a great State with the knee and the lip, and sneer at it in your heart, and sneer aloud, and sneering, pocket all its good things, and grasp at its chief seats, is rather worse, I take it, than stupidly to believe in it. Figaro, no doubt, laughed at his patrons; but he dearly loved their kitchen, and he pocketed their ducats. And therefore he was a rogue, as well as a slave. But I see no Figaro in the matter, and in truth I have no time for talking now. I have an appointment at a conference of reformers about the land question the land question in England, not in Ireland. Perhaps, indeed, you are all right! I know nothing of literature, and never read a novel. Write a review in praise of 'Lothair,' and convert me!" and the stubborn reformer went off to his meeting on the Land Question, and quite forgot Il Barbiere, Beaumarchais, and "Lothair."

"There was much truth though in his last remark!" we said to ourselves, as he went off-though it was impossible to avoid laughing at his serious air. But we took his advice about writing the Review, and we shall certainly send him a copy.

When our literal friend was gone off on his mission of pulling to pieces the majestic symmetry of our landed system, we fell into a reverie full of the witty Barber, and many a delightful reminiscence of M. Got at the Français, and Ronconi at the Opera. And then taking up 'Lothair' to commence our review, we fell into a light sleep, and dreamt of the Barber!

O Figaro! O most audacious and deft of serving-men, what a wicked wit it is! What a society do you show us! What a sublime unconsciousness of its approaching end! How the young grandees of Spain work their own mad wills! What indescribable gambols of youth! What engaging liveliness of young blood! Any number of varlets to be had for a few ducats, and what droll puts the citizens seem in it all! A gallant lad gets into a scrape, which brings down Guard and Police! Ecco! vien qui! see the insignia of a Grandee! Scusi Eccellenza: I see! a thousand pardons! Off hats and up swords! Le Roi s'amuse :-make way there for his grace! And all this our ingenious Beaumarchais had the happy idea of presenting to Paris in the last decade of the ancien régime. Bold playwright, have a care!

And the consummate impudence of our Figaro, the exquisite liberties he takes with his great friends! strutting behind their pompous footsteps, mimicking their gait, and laughing back at the audience. O mad wag, they will find thee out! Why Bartolo's self, though thou art thrusting thy lather into his rheumy old eyes, will see thou art mocking! And as for Almaviva, he may be a grandee of Spain, but he is a gentleman, Barber, and may not relish thy menial pranks!

And what a rich and golden kind of life it is in Almaviva's palaces, if you chance to live there; how the power of wealth can create like a conjuror's rod; what extravaganzas of caprice money can produce!

"O che bel vivere,
Che bel piacere,
Per un Barbiere,

Di qualitá di qualitá !"

All in good taste, too! from the best makers in the Puerta del Sol-solid, real, representing so much human labour, so many consumable things, so much food, clothing, &c., as the dull dogs in political economy make out; and the cream of it is, that each production is more useless and bizarre than the last. It is like an Arabian night-Aladdin's lamp, Peribanou's fan. Ask for what you like there it is. Will his Lordship ride? See a troop of exquisite thoroughbred Barbs, stand pawing the turf, and champing their golden bits whilst inimitable jockeys hold the stirrup! Would his Grace care to sail? Haste! ten thousand labourers, whilst thou art at luncheon, all carefully kept out of sight, shall make thee a spacious lake of artificial water: a gondola of wrought pearl floats on its perfumed breast-its sails are of amber satin. Will your Grace deign to take the trouble to sink into this velvet couch? Does his highness like this prospect? Presto! a majestic palace rises with its stately saloons from out its statued terraces. His Grace's retainers throng its porches in obsequious crowds, and with the plumage of a

cockatoo! Will his Lordship enter and deign to pass a day beneath the chaste magnificence of his new home? or will his Excellency condescend to indicate in which of his princely castles he will be served?

And the beauty of it is, that it is all real. It is fact. No Aladdin's palaces vanishing with the dream. But there they stand, built by actual human hands, and fitted up, as we say, by the best purveyors in Madrid. It is a little prosaic-it wants the romance of Aladdin ; but it gains tenfold in being real. One of those economic bores would calculate out for you how much sweat of man went to the making of it all; how many millions of men and women it would support if it were all turned into food; how many lives have been worn out in attaining this stupendous result. And, after all, if your whim so be, you won't let the poor wretches even see you; but will go and hire lodgings in the Champs Elysées, or perhaps, after all, live in a tent on the top of Caucasus. O it beats Crassus and Lucullus, and dims Versailles and Monseigneurs! And the best of it is, that it is all right and good. It is necessary to give a high tone to life. Authors, statesmen, bishops even can prove it. Crassus was a brute, Versailles was a blunder; but this-this is the cultured magnificence of their stately lives.

What a dream we had! We seemed to see a Magnifico-was it Figaro, Aladdin, Rouge Sanglier, or some Grand Vizier of all the cultured magnificence of these stately lives (by special behest of the Majestic Theme), enter into the Paradise prepared for him of old? We beheld him in a vision, bepalaced for evermore in choice saloons resplendent with ormolu and scagliola! There, as he reclined on couches of amber-satin, dazzling duchesses and paladins of high degree fed him with hatchis, as seraphic as his fancies; and served him from salvers of sapphire, expressly manufactured by Ruby of Bond Street. Farewell! Barber-Grand-Vizier! in thy day thou hast amused many, apparently thyself also; why shouldest thou not amuse us?

Moral! Retrorsum Tonsor! satis lusisti! Get thee behind the scenes, Barber, and let another speak the epilogue. The historian saith" Small substance in that Figaro: thin wire-drawn intrigues, thin wire-drawn sentiments and sarcasms; a thing lean, barren; yet which winds and whisks itself as through a wholly mad universe, adroitly, with a high-sniffing air; wherein each, which is the grand secret, may see some image of himself and of his own state and ways. So it runs its hundred nights, and all France runs with it; laughing applause all men must laugh, and a horse-racing Anglomaniac noblesse loudest of all. . . . Beaumarchais has now culminated, and unites the attributes of several demigods." (Carlyle, "French Revol. ;" sub. ann. 1784.)

FREDERIC HARRISON.