Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-01-14
The Composition OF Err, sneh N0veIs-Thcir
Peculiar Char acters,

The Composition OF FIR, sneh NOveIs-ThoIr
Peculiar Char ai1eters'
The British National h'eUieD thus faith
fully describes the character of the fiction,
which is nowadays the ''cur ent literature
Their heroes have nothing alse to do in
life but to make love. They has e no busi-
ness, or profession, no occupation Many OF
them are men Of fortune, who can afford to
be idle, and waste wealth in the p, lrsuit Of
pleasure. But this is by no means univer
sally or necessarily the case. Thos 2 who
have only scanty income-Seulement b qltoi
vivTe, as they express it--seetn 10 lead D retty
much the same sort Of life, as long, as 1 heir
means last and some times long after t. hey
are ruined. When this point is reached, tn ey
game, contract debts, marry an heiress, ,lr
blow out their brains. In England the grea {
majority of young men of education have
some thing regular to do-an employment at
least If not profession.
If they are born TO a fortune, they have
usually political duties or occupation con-
nected with the management of their estates,
or they travel, or enter the army. If they
are poor, they embrace commerce or the
civil service, or some one or other of the
laborious eallings that lead 10 wealth. If
they have only moderate income, they al
most always exc it out by enteringt on some
profession that is respectable, if not very lu-
crative. 1t is exceptional, and is not con-
sidered creditable, for young man to DO
without some recognized and regular occu-
patton or vocation. In France, on the con-
trary, what is here the exception appears to
be the rule. The result is twofOld, judging
at least by the descriptions of society which
we are now considering. In the first place,
these men, being utterly des@uUreS, without
any other call upon their time, give them
selves up wholly to the contrivanee and the
enjoyments of intrigue. .f.
When in love, they throw themselves un-
reservedly into the pastime; their whole
thoughts and their entire hours are
absorbed in it /; they do nothing else morn
ing, noon and night; it is not to them On
episode, reward, or a refreshment--it is
their daily bread, their business, their calling,
their labor, their life. The lover does not 20
to his mistress in his leisure moments in his
hours of relaxation, in his holidays, in his
evenings latter office hours;" he lies at her
feet all day and every day he adulates, con-
templates and oaresses her from Monday
morning till Saturday night. He is de-
scribedas plunged in a sort of sea of delirious
and delusive intoxication, coming to the sur
face only every now and then to breathe.
The result, of course, inevitably'is both that
thinking of nothing else-passion is PAM
peTed into an excess and perverted into fam
cleS WulCn LogeJner become almost insanity;
and that-doing nothing else-sentiment
dies out from sheer WEAKNESS and reaction,
and becomes quenched in sickening safety
Another characteristic, and, as far as we
know, unique feature of these novels is the
repeated pictures they present TO us, not
| only of absolutely uncontrolled passions aud
| emotions, and Of indulging them without
retieence or shame, but of the entire absence,
apparently, of any consciousness that such
Abandonment of all selfrestraint is in any
way disgraceful and unmanly. The heroes
go into the most outrageous furies; they roll
on the ground in agonies of tears they pass
from the widest excesses of love into the
widest excesses of hatred; they become
speechless with rage; they gesticulate like
madmeD; they give vent TO all the unseemly
violences of the half childish half,saysge
human animal without dignity, decency or
| drapery. 1t is not so much that they lose
all selfcontrol, as that they give no intima-
ton that self control is considered needful,
or the want of it shameful. Extremes TO
which no provocation could goad an En-
glisbman seem to be simple everyday occur
rences among these spoiled children Of license
and intrigueg.