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    April 27, 1850.] ®f)$ IL £&>*?? 115

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    THE ARISTOCRATICAL. In these days of com...

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    The Apprenticeship Of Life. By G. H. Lew...

    embrace some one , you fell flat . I ordered the carriage to stop . You had fainted . I took you in , and you are now driving where we shall find medical assistance . " " Thank you again and again , " said he , " but I need food more than medical aid . " « Food !" fe You are surprised at it ? I am starving !" He began to relate the origin of his want ; this led to questions and answers , which opening up the whole of his history , he frankly , with the charming confidence of youth , told her everything . On mentioning his name she exclaimed , " A Fayol are you ? Then we are cousins ! " « Indeed !" < e Have you never heard of Madame de Chazalon ? " - Is that you ? . . Hovr delightful ! . . You must permit a cousinly embrace , " he added laughing , as he bent forward to salute her . She consented with grace ; and in a few minutes they were babbling like magpies , asking questions which they did not wait to hear answered , and rummaging throughout the family history for details and anecdotes . Thus occupied they entered the town . As soon as the carriage began to rattle over the stones Armand felt the pangs of hunger becoming once more imperious . He had forgotten them in his lovely cousin , but now they reassumed their importunity . The carriage stopped at the door of a handsome hotel . In a very short time the table was laid out with cold chicken , a salad , an omelette , some bouillon , and a bottle of ordinaire . A ferocious onslaught was made by him in spite of the half-earnest , half-playful interference of his cousin , who was afraid to let him eat much after so long a fast . But he was in the highest spirits , and talked and ate as if he had never been in better condition . The keen eyes of his cousin , however , soon perceived that this animation was unhealthy . The burning cheek and burning hand told her too plainly that the excitement was feverish ; and she tried to keep him quiet . But in vain ! Talk he would , laugh he would , gaze on her and doat upon her face he would . How prevent that ? Madame de Chazalon was uneasy until she had once got him into her carriage , and was whirling away with him to her country house , where he was to be nursed . Her own physician was sent for ; but on seeing Armand he pronounced him to be only suffering from a little feverishness , which a quiet night would dissipate . It was not , however , till he had fallen asleep that his cousin ' s alarms were quite quieted . A strange inexplicable feeling of interest filled her heart for this boy , thus suddenly thrown upon the world to struggle his way through it . No woman would have been unmoved by it , but hers was a truly feminine nature , distinguished above all things by its maternity . Have you not known women deficient in maternity—women with large families , perhaps , and nevertheless wanting in that one exquisite characteristic of woman ? They may be kind , sensible , judicious mothers ; but they have not what I strive to express in the word maternity—that large , simple , sympathetic lovingness which springing from a warm , unselfish , tender soul , constitutes the moral superiority of woman . Madame de Chazalon belonged to the womanly natures , and her sympathy was always active and vigilant . A pleasant protecting feeling mingled with her interest in Armand . Their relationship—his story—the strangeness of their meeting—all heightened the interest she felt for him . He deserved it . Though not handsome Armand was very attractive : there was an earnestness in his flashing eager eyes , and a simple manliness in his demeanour which irresistibly prepossessed you ; and the lovingness of his thoughtful face completed the charm of first impressions . Rough in appearance he had the aplomb of a man , without the affectation of boys of that age who affect the man . As his cousin stole gently into his room to see if he were sleeping in comfort , she was greatly struck by the childish innocence of his face in repose , one arm thrown round his head in an attitude of careless grace : the fire and peculiarity of his countenance came from his eyes , which looked through you , and seemed as if charged with triple the ordinary volition of men ; these closed , his face had the gentle aspect of infancy . His cousin seated herself by his bedside , and began to ruminate on the schemes for his future which came crowding upon her mind . That he should go to sea was out of the question . Yet what was to be done ? " Time enough to think of that when he is well , " she finally determined , and then left him to the blissful dreams which visited his pleasant slumbers . It was eight o ' clock before he awoke next morning , and the sun was shining into his room . Raising himself upon his elbow , he looked round , and in a few minutes recalled the events of the preceding day . He rose and dressed . All fever had left him ; but a lassitude remained , which told him he had been ill . The house was very quiet , and he felt like one in a dream . He moved about in a sort of half consciousness , trying to accustom himself to the novelty of everything . The dreamlike sensation continued , even when he had descended into the breakfast-parlour , where the valet enquiring after his health , informed him that Madame was in the shrubbery . He walked to the open window . The fresh perfume of flowers borne upon the soft air of morning stole into the room , and this added to the bright look of the trees and sweet chirrup of the birds gave him a delicious

    sensation , which was soon overpowered by the exquisite vision of his cousin , who , without her bonnet , and holding a parasol over her head , was at that moment standing amidst the flowers of which she seemed the queen . Dressed in a loose flowing morning robe of white muslin , ornamented with exquisite lace , Hortense , lovely as she was , seemed to have caught fresh beauty from her environment ; flowers accompanied her better than almost any woman : she knew it : they were one of her luxuries . In her dark luxuriant hair she wore a profusion of them ; and she must have

    had the genius of flowers , for certainly no one ever arranged them with such picturesque audacity . The Goddess Flora herself could not have decked her head with more taste and prodigal beauty . As with her flowers , so with her toilettes . Hortense had the art of creating them for herself alone ; No one else could venture on her daring yet successful costume , which , setting aside all the prescriptions of fashion , were triumphs of the art . The great secret was that she dressed with an eye to her own style of beauty , whereas other women dress with an eye to some standard set up by Fashion .

    Hortense was now in her three-and-thirtieth year , and in spite of all that toilette could accomplish , she looked her age and more . She was indubitably in her summer time . But what a glorious summer ! and what magnificence was promised even for the autumn ! Her figure , once perfect , had lost its yielding elegance of youth , and had ripened into a fulness which , though not destitute of grace , betrayed her age , and even added to it . In

    her large , round , dimpled , arms , the heavy beauty of which gave a peculiar dignity to her actions , and in her figure , a connoisseur would have seen charms which more than compensated for the loss of that incomparable freshness and elegance of youth , over which a poet or an artist might have sighed . Everything was harmonious in her . The trailing indolence of her movements , so quiet and so graceful , seemed exactly suited to her style of beauty and to no other .

    Her face was younger than her figure ; but even on it experience had set its indelible trace : it had disengaged her features from that sweet indefiniteness which seems to linger round girlhood , and to vanish only as the years deepen . All the wavering lines had become settled . The face was moulded by the soul . Her complexion was of that warm brown through which the colour shines softened like light through an alabaster vase—the ~ colour

    Titian ' s pencil lingered so fondly over . The texture of her skin was as delicate as it had been in youth ; nor were there any of those signs of fatigue about the eyes and temples which first betray waning vitality . Her eyes were large , open , and lustrous , their rich brown pupils seemed as if bathed in light . Her mouth was full and liberal—the ruddy lips " provoking a kiss , " as Anacreon would have said . To finish this imperfect description I would say she had what the French style les mains royales .

    Such was the vision—if I have succeeded in giving you any image of this beautiful creature—which in the light of a summer morn , surrounded with flowers , met Armand ' s astonished and enraptured sight . She looked up and beheld him ; a bright smile broke over her face as she exclaimed : " What , up ! And how do you feel now ? " The window was open ; the ground was but half a dozen feet below , andin another instant he was at her side . " Imprudent boy ! " she said as she held out her cheek to his salute . ( 2 b be continued . ')

    April 27, 1850.] ®F)$ Il £&>*?? 115

    April 27 , 1850 . ] ® f ) $ IL £ &>*?? 115

    The Aristocratical. In These Days Of Com...

    THE ARISTOCRATICAL . In these days of commotion and turbulence it is thought dignified to abstain from every expresssion of warmth and energy . The passive and immovable are types of ideal beauty . On the same principle " chiseled features" and ( e aristocratical heads" invariably enter into the description of every author who expects celebrity . In these models set before us for our admiration , not only the features are really and truly chiseled , but are precisely of the same material as that which the chisel works upon . It is hardly worth while to expose the impropriety of the expression in our novelists ; but it is time they should begin to learn that what in statuary is visibly chiseled is crude and imperfect . The inferior workman has performed all that ; and the

    sculptor comes forward to efface the vestige of it with his consummate skill . The word " aristocratical" requires more notice , and shall have it . There are those who assign to the peerage alone the title of aristocratical , ignorant or dissembling that families more ancient than three-fourths of it lost property and station in the wars of the Roses . At the very least , this portion of the nobility , as the peers alone are called , are not only of recent distinction , but also of servile descent ; that is below knighthood . This dignity , formerly most coveted , and most justly , is now reduced in England as much as the Senatorial Order is in Rome , although very differently ; the knightly being multiplied here beyond all computation , and conferred on men who have neither horse nor ass , nor could venture to bestride the lower

    on the contrary , the Senatorial Order in the Eternal City ( the word Rome , like its reminiscences , being out of date ) the Senatorial Order is reduced to one personage , sitting with his arms before him under a crafty old priest , and kissing his toe for the privilege of doing it , Unquestionably there must be in existence many thousand descendants of the noblest Romans . Probably gangs of these are at this very hour labouring in the mines of Cumberland , labouring in darkness under the ocean ; probably no few among the crews who are conveying to the Thames the fruit of their labour , are descendants from the sea-kings . What became of the Romans left behind by the legions ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 27, 1850, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27041850/page/19/