writer more than excuses, by the excellent reasons she gives for it, and by the corresponding excellence of its results. This volume concludes the lives of the Anglo-Norman and Plantagenet Queens, and with them the incidental notices of that singular and important period of our history, which, in the death of the Earl of Warwick, the celebrated "king-maker," saw the close of that fierce domination of the nobles, which was no less opposed to the safety and welfare of the monarchy than of the people.

This volume of Miss Strickland's charming work, more and more confirms us in the impression that she is peculiarly fitted for the office she has undertaken, which, though a grave and a comprehensive one, and requiring treatment seldom looked for and obtained at female hands, demands, nevertheless, those qualities of style, and that tone of sentiment and of thought, which are rarely met with in the products of the harder sex. The peculiar charm attaching to Miss Strickland's work, has been nicely and justly described by M. Guizot, when he says (in a letter which is given in the preface to this volume), that it is "plein d'un interet serieux et doux." It has, in fact, the happy peculiarity of blending all that is touching and romantic in relation to human character, with all that is grave in relation to fact. The volume before us includes the lives of Isabella of Valois, second Queen of Richard II. (a queen, by the by, whose life has never before been written); Joanna of Navarre, Queen of Henry IV.; Katherine of Valois, Queen of Henry V.; Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI.; Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV.; and Anne Neville, Queen of Richard III. In the course of these personal biographies,-for such they are, and in that their chief charm consists,-many facts in our history, more or less important, are now for the first time placed before the mere English reader; and every thing, whether new or not, is so happily selected and so simply put, that the narratives have all the force and weight of true history, united to all the strangeness of romantic fiction. The work promises, when completed, to be one of the most valuable of its class to which our day has given birth. It is prettily illustrated, printed in a most convenient form, and sold at a price to which nothing but great popularity can adequately reply.

HISTORY OF A FLIRT.*

As flirtation is a weed of every soil-as rife in the back-parlour of the city tradesman, as in the brilliant drawing-room of the May-fair marchioness-this History of a Flirt, narrated too by herself-her "Confessions" in fact-appeals to every class and condition of the novel-reading world. It is the whole art and mystery of flirtation, set forth by a life-long practitioner, for the relief of her own conscience, and the benefit of her sinning, no less than her suffering fellow-creatures, in posse as well as in esse.

The true flirt is, if we mistake not, a variety of the human character

* The History of a Flirt. A novel in 3 volumes.

that is to be met with in perfection only in English society: but there unhappily it prevails in every condition, and flourishes in endless variety, and unchecked vigour. There cannot, therefore, be a theme better adapted for wholesome satire, or one more pregnant with instructive, as well as amusing, delineations from that real life of the day which is at present the most popular source of literary fiction. Whether the present writer is qualified to make the most of her subject, or has chosen the most eligible plan with a view to that end, are different questions; and in answering the latter in the negative, we spare ourselves the necessity of inquiring too strictly into the former. This "History of a Flirt" takes the form of an autobiography; and in doing so it abandons, as we think, many advantages which would have attended the ordinary form of novel-writing. "Confessions" are very well when they relate the actual events and feelings which have formed the past life of the person making them; since they frequently involve an instructive connexion between acts and their consequences, which can be obtained by no other means. Accordingly, by many degrees the most interesting biographies we possess, are those which have come from the hand of the subject of them. But fictitious autobiographies have been for the most part failures; and this of the Flirt confirms our belief in the essential error of that form of composition in such cases. It takes a great deal of genius, or a great deal of that singularity of character and idiosyncrasy which so often serve and pass as a substitute for it, to render tolerable, much less interesting and attractive, even in a living and breathing entity like ourselves, that perpetual egotism which such a form necessarily involves. But in the case of a creature of the imagination, it becomes, after a while, worse than tedious-it takes the air and tone of an impertinence. We are applying this remark generally not expressly to the individual novel before us. A work of fiction, unless it springs from the broad basis of human nature and society, and offers us general pictures of these as they act and react upon each other, holds the same relation to a novel of the first order, that any individual" portrait of a gentleman" (or "lady" as the case may be), holds to a whole royal academy exhibition.

We repeat-these remarks must not be applied too strictly to the work which has called them forth, and which a large class of the novel-reading world will pronounce a smart, lively, and entertaining production, full of movement and variety, wholesome in its satire, and just in its moral views and tendency. But we cannot help also repeating, that the writer would have produced a more effective, as well as a more attractive novel if she had written it in the third person-or rather in that mysterious and intangible no-person-at-all, which has the happy effect of keeping authorship out of sight, and flattering the reader into the agreeable conceit that he is observing, thinking, feeling, and reflecting for himself; which he can never even fancy he does when the ego of the writer is ever interposing its "damnable itera

tion."

This novel will find large favour among the circulating-library class of novel-readers, and particularly among the provincial portion of that class, to whom its various pictures of village and of watering-place society, its pic-nics, and quadrille-parties, and whist-playings, and tea

drinkings, and manoeuverings, and match-makings, and match-marrings-its small moralities and smaller immoralities-will come peculiarly home.

THE CASHMERE SHAWL.*

WHAT a topic for a Romance of Real Life! How many such romances have arisen out of the acceptance or non-acceptance-the proffering or the withholding of a "Cashmere !" Ask our lively neighbours the French what "strange eventful histories" hang upon the fringes, or lurk within the folds of these "magic webs." For the compassing of a "real" Cashmere-a veritable product of the eastern climate and the eastern loom-what will even an English petite maîtresse do or suffer! what will the petites maîtresses of other lands not do or suffer! In Paris, the "belle of the season" reckons her conquests by the number of her Cashmeres, and estimates their respective triumphs by the cost and récherche of these most unequivocal testimonies of her power; and even in sober England, where these proofs of devotion are not openly exacted or even accepted, without danger to the giver as well as the receiver, the eloquence of a Cashmere has before now succeeded in softening the heart which to all other appeals had been obdurate. Then what secrets have been confided to the soft folds of the Cashmere, or whispered while aiding in its adjustment, which else had slumbered for ever in the souls of their speakers!

And it is in this latter capacity that we are now specially concerned with the Cashmere. It appears that under peculiar circumstances-a certain "pressure from without" which is ingeniously explained in the introductory chapter of this eastern romance-Cashmeres can confabulate as well as the birds of Jean Jaques; and that the one now in question-albeit "fallen from its high estate" on the shoulders of eastern beauty, and reduced (like the human mind at its birth) to a quire of white paper-has nevertheless done for the author of " Almacks Revisited" pretty much what Asmodeus did for Don Cleofas; with this difference in favour of the former, that our ci-devant shawl tells of its own experiences and adventures, in connexion with a state of society and manners infinitely more strange and romantic than even the privacies of Madrid itself could disclose.

Seriously, this is a very clever and interesting work, in more than its mere "novel" character; for while in that point of view it displays a lively and sparkling fancy, considerable imagination, and no insignificant share of that rarest of all qualities in the modern romance-writer, invention,-it at the same time furnishes what we have every reason to believe true, as they are certainly forcible, spirited, and highly-amusing pictures of a condition of society, manners, feelings, and modifications of human character so strange, and at the same time so contradictory to the ordinary results of human intercourse in civilized life, that if they were not corroborated by every traveller, recent as well as past, it

The Cashmere Shawl: an Eastern Fiction. By Charles White, Esq., Author of "Almacks Revisited." 3 vols.

would be impossible to credit their veresimilitude. Another strong feature of interest in this romance is, that it pictures the actual condition of eastern society and manners in our own day, and even introduces among its characters some of the most remarkable men who have late figured in our most popular books of travel-in particular, the celebrated old" Lion of Lahore"-who has recently furnished us such a fund of entertainment, and such valuable food for reflection, in the works of Mr. Osborn, Mr. Alfred Vigne, &c.

The machinery of this novel has been glanced at in the opening of this notice. It is similar to that which was employed with so much success in the celebrated "Adventures of a Guinea." Our "Cashmere Shawl" relates its "adventures"--first, those which befel it while still on the living back of its parent in the beautiful valley of Cashmere, and during its subsequent wanderings, and afterwards those which attended it while in the hands of its various favoured possessors, the beauties and notabilities of its native clime. We do not know that much is added to the interest of the narrative by this artificial construction of it; but at all events nothing is lost; and judging by the result, which is a most pleasant and entertaining one, the plan has been well chosen.

One or two examples will favourably illustrate the nature of the materials of this clever fiction, while they afford a sufficient notion of the style and spirit in which it is written.

The following incidental description of the attack of a boa-constrictor, and the means by which the menaced results were foiled, is full of spirit, and at the same time quite eastern in its style. The young Cashmere goat, his mistress, and her lover, are the parties who figure in the description.

"All of a sudden, I know not why, my limbs became transfixed by instinctive terror. In vain I sought to move or bleat. Blood and sound were coagulated, and my eyes turning upwards, encounted the appalling gaze of a huge serpent, whose gigantic folds entwined the stem of a young plane-tree, like a mighty cable twisted round a mast; terribly the monster glared at me with its fiery fascinating eyes; as with quivering tongue, wide-extended jaws, and throat inflamed with hunger and excitement, it barred the passage.

"It was not like one of those torpid, languid reptiles seen in captivity; loathsome and monstrous in size, but weak and lustreless, in force and colour. No! there it was, radiating in a thousand prismatic, undulating hues; glossy, swelling, and powerful as an hundred capstans. Its sinuous contractions crushing forth the tree's sap, its weight bending the very stem, and its fierce vibrations, grating like hail upon the bark.

"Allah ill allah! So small a creature as I, would have been a mere pistachio nut, to a brute whose huge dilating gullet could make passage for an antlered stag.

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Already it brandished its broad, flat head on high and exposed its tesselated, white belly, as gradually untwining its spiral coils, it arched the broad circles of its back, writhed its tapering tail, and took its deadly aim.

"Stricken with terror, the dastardly Koshrou rushed over the sideward rocks and fled. A heart, less generous than that of my gentle mistress, would have followed his example. But seeing me doomed to destrusction, she uttered aloud the name of Allah! darted forward, and seized me in her arms at the very moment when the serpent, unclasping its last fold, prepared to spring.

"One awful bound-one terrible embrace, and both of us had shared the

the same appalling fate. But at the instant the horrid reptile hurled itself forward like a hissing rocket, its sinuous tail remained nailed to the bending tree, its projected body fell to the ground, and in lieu of sacrificing us to its rage, it writhed and struggled awhile in the dust, and then recoiling back, again entwined the stem and furiously gnawed the bark.

"The hand of fate is supreme! Had Gulabi not ascended the rock during the recent chase; had not the rays from her eyes penetrated the young khan's heart, her cypress form had lain a bleeding, slime-slurred mass; disfigured, suffocated, crushed amidst the gigantic wreaths of Satan's image.

"Stricken by her beauty, as the deer is smitten by the hunter's arrow, Mir Zeeman, for that was the youthful chieftain's name, had no sooner seen the rights of sepulture performed over his fallen retainers, than he started, well armed, from his castle, and hoping to obtain a nearer view of the beautiful vision which had enthralled his soul, entered the woods that fringed our camp." -Vol. i., pp. 187–191.

The young hero had in fact followed the beautiful maiden's path, intending to address her, when hearing her terror-stricken cry at the sight of the monster, he had rushed forward just in time to transfix it to the tree with his hunting-spear.

We have every reason to believe that the following may be accepted as a bona fide description of the residence of a powerful Affghanistan chief.

"The shades of evening had already fallen upon the earth, ere we reached our destination, so that although an owl, during day, might have seen through the little grating made expressly in the panniers, an eagle could scarcely distinguish surrounding objects at that moment.

"At length we reached a lofty wall, a high narrow door was thrown open. and admitted us into an outward court, which besides being embellished with gardens, fountains, and kioshks, contained stables and sheds for horses and attendants. In this were many of the khan's followers holding torches, among whom stood more than one in the dress worn by the little messenger who had visited the camp, with others in coats of mail, well armed. It was evident, therefore, that Mir Zeeman was a man of great power and wealth; so that my mistress could not conceal her satisfaction at the idea of becoming the wife of so eminent a personage.

"We then passed through a second gate, into another square, surrounded on three sides with buildings two stories high; here also were many of the chief's retainers; some smoking, some roasting pieces of flesh upon their ramrods at a charcoal fire, some sleeping upon coarse carpets under the vaulted arcades that occupied one side, and others amusing themselves by playing at marbles, or fighting quails, by the light of paper lanterns.

"Our escort having dismounted outside, delivered us over to the care of some men armed with sabres, shields, and lances, who guarded a third door. Thence we passed into an inner court, overlooked on the north, by a long sculptured balcony, and upon the south by latticed windows, lighted within, and resounding with sounds of music, and the echo of female voices; this was the harem, the end of our journey.

"Our conductor, after shutting the door, led us up some marble steps into a spacious and lofty hall, the vaulted roof of which was supported by painted columns and adorned with arches of carved wood, finished with scrolls, inscribed with golden-lettered sentences from the Koran. A crystal lustre filled with coloured wax tapers, hung from the centre, and upon either side were several windows fenced with gilded lattices, and many doors sheltered by velvet and silken hangings. Along the walls, which glittered like stars, from being washed with seemghil (silver earth), were spread narrow strips of felt, serving as seats for attendants. The floor was of tessellated marble, and so slippery, that I had much difficulty in keeping upon my legs.