The Monthly Review from September to December Inclusive 1836

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1836. Excerpt: ... is, that religion exerts a commanding influence over all the pursuits of enlightened minds; they feel that it is only in the religious direction, that they can travel from glory to glory. Abt. V.--The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman. Illustrated by Six Female Portraits, from laghly-finished Drawings, by E. T. Farris. By the Countess Of Blkssinoton. London: Longman. 1836. Lady Bless Ington has never published a cleverer volume than the present. Each of the six portraits forms the subject of a. na- turally-constructed tale, two of them being pathetic, the others lively and humorous, but the whole beautifully diversified and contrasted; while the autobiographist himself, is one and the same self-complacent, shrewd, and vain personage from beginning to end. Indeed, his character is appreciated and kept up throughout, with a truth, a consistency, and a cordiality, as if the writer had experienced in her own history and feelings every thing laid to the charge of The Elderly Gentleman. With the ease and carelessness of a master, and with not a little of the grace of poetry, many of the vices, the follies, and questionable features of the world of fashion are here set forth, and not a few important lessons urged, sometimes slily, sometimes with commanding authority, but always effectively. But, though the picture which is thus presented of the ways and feelings that characterize our people of highest rank in society be, we believe, unexaggerated, yet it is, upon the whole, anything but complimentary; nor can we flatter our fair readers with the assurance that they look less faulty than the lords of the creation. It also appears to us, that the writer has displayed a great deal of the nicest discrimination and keenest perception in her delineation of fe...