it is said that the conduct of refined society, in a literary point of view, is, on the whole, productive but of slight interest; that all we can aspire to is, to trace a brilliant picture of brilliant manners; and that when the dance and the festival have been duly inspired by the repartee and the sarcasm, and the gem, the robe, and the plume adroitly lighted up by the lamp and the lustre, our cunning is exhausted. and so your novelist generally twists this golden thread with some substantial silken cord, for use, and works up, with the light dance, and with the heavy dinner, some secret marriage, and some shrouded murder. and thus, by english plots and german mysteries, the page trots on, or jolts, till, in the end, justice will have her way, and the three volumes are completed.
a plan both good and antique, and also popular, but not our way. we prefer trusting to the slender incidents which spring from out our common intercourse. there is no doubt that that great pumice-stone, society, smooths down the edges of your thoughts and manners. bodies of men who pursue the same object must ever resemble each other: the life of the majority must ever be imitation. thought is a labour to which few are competent; and truth requires for its development as much courage as acuteness. so conduct becomes conventional, and opinion is a legend; and thus all men act and think alike.
but this is not peculiar to what is called fashionable life, it is peculiar to civilisation, which gives the passions less to work upon. mankind are not more heartless because they are clothed in ermine; it is that their costume attracts us to their characters, and we stare because we find the prince or the peeress neither a conqueror nor a heroine. the great majority of human beings in a country like england glides through existence in perfect ignorance of their natures, so complicated and so controlling is the machinery of our social life! few can break the bonds that tie them down, and struggle for self-knowledge; fewer, when the talisman is gained, can direct their illuminated energies to the purposes with which they sympathise.
a mode of life which encloses in its circle all the dark and deep results of unbounded indulgence, however it may appear to some who glance over the sparkling surface, does not exactly seem to us one either insipid or uninteresting to the moral speculator; and, indeed, we have long been induced to suspect that the seeds of true sublimity lurk in a life which, like this book, is half fashion and half passion.
we know not how it was, but about this time an unaccountable, almost an imperceptible, coolness seemed to spring up between our hero and the lady aphrodite. if we were to puzzle our brains for ever, we could not give you the reason. nothing happened, nothing had been said or done, which could indicate its origin. perhaps this was the origin; perhaps the duke’s conduct had become, though unexceptionable, too negative. but here we only throw up a straw. perhaps, if we must go on suggesting, anxiety ends in callousness.
his grace had thought so much of her feelings, that he had quite forgotten his own, or worn them out. her ladyship, too, was perhaps a little disappointed at the unexpected reconciliation. when we have screwed our courage up to the sticking point, we like not to be baulked. both, too, perhaps — we go on perhapsing— both, too, we repeat, perhaps, could not help mutually viewing each other as the cause of much mutual care and mutual anxiousness. both, too, perhaps, were a little tired, but without knowing it. the most curious thing, and which would have augured worst to a calm judge, was, that they silently seemed to agree not to understand that any alteration had really taken place between them, which, we think, was a bad sign: because a lover’s quarrel, we all know, like a storm in summer, portends a renewal of warm weather or ardent feelings; and a lady is never so well seated in her admirer’s heart as when those betters are interchanged which express so much, and those explanations entered upon which explain so little.
and here we would dilate on greater things than some imagine; but, unfortunately, we are engaged. for newmarket calls sir lucius and his friends. we will not join them, having lost enough. his grace half promised to be one of the party; but when the day came, just remembered the shropshires were expected, and so was very sorry, and the rest. lady aphrodite and himself parted with warmth which remarkably contrasted with their late intercourse, and which neither of them could decide whether it were reviving affection or factitious effort. m. de whiskerburg and count frill departed with sir lucius, being extremely desirous to be initiated in the mysteries of the turf, and, above all, to see a real english jockey.
