BELFORD REGIS.
THE two best living painters of provincial life and scenery are, without doubt, Miss MITFORD and the author of the Puritan's Grave. Each is familiarly acquainted with the subject proposed
to be painted; each rigidly adheres to it, drawing little from metro- politan modes of life, and nothing at all from metropolitan expan- sion of views, but seeming to narrow the mind to the contracted character of the model. The framework of both is made to take the form of fiction ; but the truth of the likeness is so evident, that every one feels them in essentials to be mere artist-like transcripts from nature, though the complexions may have been a little coloured by the peculiarities of their painters' minds. When we have said in addition, that the productions of each are distinguished for the pleasure they afford, the points of resemblance are ex- hausted; and we may begin the points of contrast, which are quite as strong. The lady delights to take the bright and the best side of things, and even that she tinges with a rose colour. The kind- ness and gentleness of her nature induce her to shrink from misery; misfortune she often handles, but she rather describes the lights which gild or the circumstances which alleviate it, than its harsher and grosser characteristics, whilst she generally has some sentence of mild poetical justice in store for the finis. Foibles or weaknesses she paints, but kindly; and brings out all their redeeming points, if any there be. Her male competitor, on the other hand, though not ill-natured or misanthropical, is a satirist, who has no sym- pathy for folly. His strength lies in ridicule, especially in the ridicule of the small objects which narrow society and petty minds magnify into importance ; and for the trivialities of provincial life he has no regard and no mercy. The pathetic we think he ne- glects; he is not so affecting as MARY RUSSELL MITFORD; but when he tries to touch, he is perhaps more touching, from the stern and sad reality of his picture, though even then he can hardly refrain from dashing it with satire. There is a similar difference in their manner of looking at natu- ral objects. The lady sees nothing but the intrinsic qualities of the things; or if an association be called up, it is a pleasant one connected with her own remembrances. The gentleman uses scenes chiefly for their relation to human weaknesses. A common reminds him of the jobs connected with enclosure-bills; a style, or an existing footpath, of ways which the squirearchy have stopped
up; that belt of trees, whose budding beauty the fair authoress of Our Village would be delighted to paint, leads him to reflect upon its use, which consists in shutting out from view some unsightly or vulgar building; and if the bright colour of the deciduous foliage intermingles with the gloomier hue of the evergreen, why, his mind reverts to the season when the leaves will fall and the eye- sore be half-exposed.
As there is a strong resemblance between the general results of the writers' excellences, yet a striking contrast in their means of producing them, so a similar remark may be applied to their de- fects. The fault of each seems a slight degree of tediousness; the reader, though at leisure, is willing after a while to postpone the remainder of the book. In Miss MITFORD, this arises partly from her primary subject being overlaid with extrinsic matter, and partly from a manner of description too literal. We are not aware that the author of Provincial Sketches ever falls short in executive skill, but his subjects are sometimes too minute and matterless for the elaborate pains he bestows upon them; and perhaps—to borrow a phrase from art—his mode of handling is a little too microscopic. In general character, the Sketches of a Country Town differ nothing from Miss MITFORD'S previous works, or, instead of a com- parison, we should have noted the special peculiarities. The pur- pose, as we observed before, is to paint a quiet, genteel town, situ- ated in a pleasant country, and containing within itself some strik- ing monastic remains, as she painted Our Village. She describes the appearance and buildings of' the town; the general nature of its inhabitants and their classes; its characters are sketched at full- length, and occasionally with a minuteness that the subjects did not require ; its " pretty stories" of affection and duty, and its love- tales of high, genteel, and humble life, are chronicled in her usual manner, with the occasional addition of some dramatic force and spirit, which reminds one of the author of Rienzi. Besides the de- nizens of Belford, she has made use of its casual visitants—Irish haymakers and French emiarants, and drawn more upon the neighbouring country than the title of the work would in strictness Warrant.
Our readers doubtless remember the humorous account of the Loppington subscription assembly in Provincial Sketches, and its biting though good-natured sarcasm. Belford too has its balls; but see how differently Miss MITFORD treats the subject, though
her point of view is the same, and the foibles of the persons per- haps greater.
There were also balls in their spacious and commodious town-hall, which seemed as mach built for the purposes of dancing as for that of trying criminals. Public balls there were in abundance ; but at the time of which 1 speak they 'were of leas advantage to the good town of Belford than any one, looking at the number of good houses and of pretty young women, could well have thought possible. Never was a place in which the strange prejudice, the invisible but strongly felt line of demarcation, which all through England divides the county families from the townspeople, was more rigidly sustained. To live in that re- spectable borough, was in general a recognised exclusion from the society of the neighbourhood ; and if by chance any one so high in wealth, or station, or talent, or connexion, as to set the proscription at defiance, happened to settle within the obnoxious walls, why then, the country circle took possession of the new-comer, and he was, although living in the very heart of the borough, claimed and considered as a country family, and seized by the county and re- linquished by the town accordingly. The thing is too absurd to reason upon ; but so it was, and so to a great degree it still continues all over England. A public ball-room is, perhaps, of all others the scene where this feeling is most certain to display itself; and the Belford balls had, from time immemorial, been an arena where the conflicting vanities of the town and county belles had come into collision. A circumstance that had happened some twenty years be- fore the time which I write ( that is to say, nearly fifty years ago) had, how- ever, ended in the total banishment of the Belford beauties from the field of battle.
Everybody remembers the attack made upon George the Third by an unfor- tunate mad woman of the name of Margaret Nicholson, the quantity of ad- dresses sent up in consequence from all parts of the kingdom, and the number of foolish persons who accompanied the deputations and accepted the honour of knighthood on the occasion. Amongst these simple personages were two Al- dermen of Belford, a brewer and a banker, whose daughters, emulous of their fathers' wisdom, were rash enough' at the next monthly assembly to take place above the daughters of the High Sheriff and the County Members, and half the landed gentry of the neighbourhood. The young country ladies behaved with great discretion ; they put a stop to the remonstrances of their partners, walked in a mass to the other end of the room, formed their own set there, and left the slaughters of the new-made knights to go down the dance by themselves. But the result was the establishment of subscription balls, under the direction of a county committee, and a complete exclusion, for the time at least, of the female inhabitants of Belford.
One of the prettiest, though not the most exciting stories in the book, has a reference to these balls. We cannot quote the whole, and we will not anticipate by abridging ; but we will give a sketch of the heroine, prefaced by a disquisition on Belles of the Ball- room.
Nothing is so difficult to define as the customary qualification of the belle of a country assembly. Face or figure it certainly is not ; for take a stranger into the room, and it is at least two to one but he will fix on twenty damsels prettier than the county queen ; nor, to do the young gentlemen justice, is it fortune or connexion ; for, so as the lady come within the prescribed limits of countygen- tility (which, by the way, are sufficiently arbitrary and exclusive), nothing more is required in a beauty—whatever might be expected in a wife ; fortune it is not, still less is it rank, and least of all accomplishments. In short, it seems to me equally difficult to define what is the requisite and what is not ; for on looking back through twenty years to the successive belles of the Belford balls, I cannot fix on ony one definite qualification. Onedamsel seemed to me chosen fur gayety and good humour—a merry, laughing girl ; another for haughtiness and airs; one because her father was hospitable ; another because her mother was pleasant ; one became fashionable because related to a fashionable poet, whilst another stood on her own independent merits as one of the boldest riders in the hunt, and earned her popularity at night by her exploits in the morning. Among the whole list, the one who commanded the most universal admira- tion, and seemed to me to approach nearest to the common notion of a pretty woman, was the high-born and graceful Constance Lisle. Besides being a tall, elegant figure, with finely-chiselled features, and a pale but delicate complexion, relieved by large dark eyes full of sensibility, and a profusion of glossy black hair, her whole air and person were eminently distinguished by that undefinable look of fashion and high breeding, that indisputable stamp of superiority, which, for want of a better word, we are content to call style. Her manners were in admirable keeping with her appearance. Gentle, gracious, and self-possessed— courteous to all and courting none, she received the flattery to which she had been accustomed from her cradle as mere words of course, and stimulated the- ardour of her admirers by her calm non-notice infinitely more than a finished coquette would have done by all the agaceries of the most consummate vanity. Among the whole list, the one who commanded the most universal admira- tion, and seemed to me to approach nearest to the common notion of a pretty woman, was the high-born and graceful Constance Lisle. Besides being a tall, elegant figure, with finely-chiselled features, and a pale but delicate complexion, relieved by large dark eyes full of sensibility, and a profusion of glossy black hair, her whole air and person were eminently distinguished by that undefinable look of fashion and high breeding, that indisputable stamp of superiority, which, for want of a better word, we are content to call style. Her manners were in admirable keeping with her appearance. Gentle, gracious, and self-possessed— courteous to all and courting none, she received the flattery to which she had been accustomed from her cradle as mere words of course, and stimulated the- ardour of her admirers by her calm non-notice infinitely more than a finished coquette would have done by all the agaceries of the most consummate vanity. Nothing is commoner than the affectation of indifference. But the indiffe- rence of Miss Lisle was so obviously genuine, that the most superficial coxcomb that buzzed around her could hardly suspect its reality. She heeded admiration no more than that queen of the garden, the lady lily, whom she so much re- sembled in modest dignity. It played around her as the sunny air of June around the snow-white flower, her common and natural atmosphere. This was perhaps one reason for the number of beaux who fluttered round Constance. It puzzled and piqued them. They were unused to be of so little consequence to a young lady, and could not make it out. Another caLse might perhaps he found in the splendid fortune which she inherited from her mother, and which, independently of her expectations from her father, rendered her the- greatest match and richest heiress in the county.
Here is a pretty scene from the same tale.
About a month after this conversation, the father and slaughter were walking through a narrow piece of woodland, which divided the highly-ornamented gardens of the governor, with their miles of gravel-walks and acres of Ameti- can borders, from the magnificent park of Lisle End. The scene was beautiful, and the weather, a sunny day in early May, showed the landscape to an advan- tage belonging, perhaps, to no other season : on the one band, the gorgeous shrubs, trees, and young plantations of the new place, the larch in its tenderest green, lilacs, laburnums, and horse-chesnuts, in their flowery glory, and the villa, with its irregular and oriental architecture, rising above all; on the other, the magnificent oaks and beeches of the park, now stretching into avenues, now clumped on its swelling lawns (for the ground was remarkable for its inequality of surface), now reflected in the clear water of the lake, into which the woods sometimes advanced in mimic promontories, receding again into tiny bays, by the side of which the dappled deer lay in herds beneath the old thorns; on an eminence, at a considerable distance, the mansion, a magnificent structure of Elizabeth's day, with its gable-ends and clustered chimnies, stood silent and majestic as a pyramid in the desert. The spot on which they stood had a cha- racter of extraordinary beauty, and yet different from either scene. It was a wild glen, through which an irregular footpath led to the small gate in the park, of which Sir Henry had sent Constance the key ; the shelving banks on either side clothed with furze in the fullest blossom, which scented the air with its rich fragrance, and would almost; have dazzled the eye with its golden lustre, but for a few scattered firs and !lollies and some straggling clumps of the feathery birch. The nightingales were singing around, the woodpigeons cooing overhead, and the father and daughter passed slowly and silently along, as if engrossed by the sweetness of the morning and the loveliness of the scene.
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