| | | | Laura Gay has evidently been written for the amusement and | edification of that large, and ~~ thanks to such books as this ~~ | rapidly increasing class, which Mr. Thackeray long ago | immortalized. In a word, this story might fitly be designated

"A | Novel for Snobs, by One of Themselves!"

The writer, flattering | himself with the hope that his readers will be numerous naturally | wishes to gratify their various tastes. Accordingly, he offers to one | set amongst them what he knows it is always craving for ~~ | pictures of aristocratic society at home and abroad. For another, he | provides portraits of political characters; and, passing by a natural | transition from the State to the Church, he introduces into his | canvas a few sketches of the clergy and

"our brethren of the | mediaeval ritual"

~~ the whole forming a delightful little chamber | of horrors, enough to make Madame Tussaud | crever with envy. | But our business at present is chiefly with the heroine, who is | intended to embody the writer's idea of female excellence. For our | part, we can only say that if we were to have the misfortune to meet | her in real life, we should shrink from her with an aversion the | justice of which we can readily prove to our readers by sketching a | few of her characteristics, in, as far as practicable, the writer's own | words. Laura Gay does not happen to be

"high bred"

~~ she is only | the daughter of a very successful merchant, whose wife died when | Laura was four years old, at which early age she is described as | being | If our go-a-head | cousins on the other side of the Atlantic were to institute a | baby exhibition in which the prizes given were dependent on the | moral excellences of the child, Laura Gay would surely bear away | the palm. We will not, however, inquire whether this charming idea | could ever be realized, but content ourselves with observing that | Laura maintains these delightful characteristics as long as we are | allowed to have the privilege of her acquaintance. At the age of | nineteen, she appears in the character of an heiress; her father's last | injunction to her having been that she and her aunt should take a | twelvemonth's tour on the Continent immediately after his decease. | said he, | So the father sets off on his | tour, and Laura on hers ~~ taking with her, as handbooks and | companions of travel, | In a very short space of time she arrives at Rome, where she first | sees her hero, Charles Thornton, and also meets with Mr. Redford | and Miss Wyndham, the black sheep of the story. And here is a | little sketch of Laura, standing before the Apollo in company with a | large party, in whose presence she delivers herself as follows: ~~ | | Pretty well this, for a young lady of nineteen! But, during a ride to | the catacombs, she looms upon us more grandly still. Her lover has | been saying that Cicero's feelings for the soil of Athens are ours for | Rome; after which he quotes, | And continued Laura | We should be | obliged to the writer if he would inform us what is the meaning of | the word continued in the above passage, | seeing that the second quotation is clearly not a continuation of the | first. A bold lover Mr. Thornton must indeed have been to | determine to carry on the conquest of a lady who talked Latin in | preference to her mother tongue; but perhaps the fright which she | must have given him on this occasion was partially dispelled | afterwards by a confession which proved that she had not much | more than a bowing acquaintance with Shakespeare. | After spending some weeks in Laura's society, Mr. Thornton is | obliged to return home, in consequence of the failure of a joint | stock company; and after his departure, a longer residence in Rome | becomes so distasteful to Laura that she resolves to set off for | England at once. In consequence of some misunderstanding or | other, Charles Thornton, on seeing her, for the first time after her | return, at a flower-show, accompanied by Lord Huntley, imagines | her to be engaged to him, and treats her so coldly at first, and so | rudely ~~ not to say savagely ~~ afterwards, that she nearly faints. | Lord Huntley is obliged to hurry her away from the gardens and | escort her back to her hotel, where he leaves her, after having | begged | It is satisfactory to find | that, after a while, Laura does | | Joking apart, in what wretchedly bad taste is all this! And what | kind of mind must the writer possess not to perceive that, by | alluding in such unseemly fashion to sacred things, he is doing all | he can to make them

"common and unclean."

| At the time when the occurrence in the gardens took place, Laura | was staying in London to transact some business connected with a | large sum of money which unknown to Thornton, she had caused | her aunt to advance to him for the purpose of relieving him from | his pecuniary embarrassments. The passage in which she is | presented to us, as thus engaged, is so rich that we cannot refrain | from quoting it: ~~ | | After the specimens we have given of Laura, our readers will not | be surprised to hear that she is as

"well up"

in history, ancient | and modern, in political economy and moral philosophy, in religious | questions, and in all the topics of the day, as she is in the classics; | whilst she discourses on ethnology as if she were a second Dr. | Latham. In a word, she is an insufferable strong-minded female | prig, and we do not envy Mr. Thornton the possession of his bride. | We should almost question the propriety of dwelling upon what | hardly merits more than a single sentence of condemnation, were it | not that we regard this book as a type of a style of writing, which is | gaining ground more and more amongst us, and which is more apt | to damage the morals and deteriorate the tastes of novel-readers | than they are perhaps able to imagine. We can scarcely tell whether | such books as these make us feel more scorn at the exhibition | which they give of the ignorance and assumption of the writers, or | more sorrow and apprehension when we find them attracting so | large a circle of readers, and gaining favourable notice from those | whose office it is to guide the taste of the public. If there were any | basis of truth either in the opinions brought forward or in the | pictures given of different classes of society, we would readily | excuse what is faulty in other respects; but as it is we have not a | word to say in their favour. In regard to the sketches of the | aristocracy which Laura Gay contains, it is | clear the writer knows nothing more of high-born ladies than what | he may have picked up from watching them driving in the parks; | and that all he can tell about the manner of life of their husbands | and brothers, is what he has gathered from seeing them lounging in | club windows. As for the morality of the story, it will not be rated | | very highly when we state that, without a word of condemnatory | comment, the writer tells us that | while Mrs. Wyndham is made | to advise her daughter to marry a man she does not love, on the | score that | | We have already alluded to the way in which sacred subjects are | introduced, and we had marked for comment a still more flagrant | violation of the reverence due to them; but it will suffice to mention | that it relates to a portion of a sermon on the Eucharist, to which we | are treated, and which we found it difficult to read through, on | account of the pain and indignation which it excited. To descend to | minor faults, we would advise the writer to be more sparing another | time in quotations, and to be more careful as to grammar and | spelling in those in which he indulges. In the course of a hundred | pages we noticed mistakes in Latin, French, and Italian, such as | "spraetae" for spreta, "phisique" for physique, "entente cordial", | and "charmante sourire." We have sought in vain for such a verb as | "dipassare;" and the Italian reads very like literally translated | English. There is also a sad jumble and misuse of prepositions, and | "sanitary" is spelt with an "o" wherever it occurs. We have, of | course, plenty of fine writing, such as where a gentleman is said to | drop a cloak so gently on a lady's shoulders that it must have | blushed at the tenderness with which it was handled, | etcetera. | But we are tired of criticising, and will only, in conclusion, | admonish the writer to set about learning

"first principles"

| before he presumes to teach them, and not again to venture to hold the | mirror up either to nature or Art until he shall have made a little | acquaintance with both the one and the other.