Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/188

182 Captain Wentworth, and were suddenly met full in the face by the "long glory" of the autumn moon shining down the sea, and little Billie, gently waving his yellow tail, — itself apparently a sheaf of moonbeams,— stood studying the glittering line which terminated so picturesquely in himself, I know that admiring glances were bent upon him, which might well have rivalled the fervor of Mr. Elliot's or Captain Wentworth's glance at the heroine of "Persuasion." The genius of Landseer would have needed the aid of the genius of Turner properly to render the scene. A young friend of mine, an artist, who will yet make his power felt in the world of art, assures me that there can be no genuine picture without a "human interest" at the centre of it. Would not a canine interest do? Certainly it seemed to me that that long shaft of light which led up to little Billie, was a fit subject for the grandest art.

There is tolerably good evidence that the scenery of Lyme had made more impression on Miss Austen's imagination than that of any other part of England known to her. She speaks of the wilderness of fern, and rock, and tree among the ruined cliffs between Lyme and Pinney — the great landslip beyond had not happened in her time — with something like rapture, a state of mind which, to her sober though vivid nature, was as rare as it must have been delightful. Indeed, those were not the days of popular devotion to natural beauty. Wordsworth was only beginning to educate the English imagination; Ruskin was not yet; and the religion of natural beauty was in its infancy; Miss Austen herself does not, I think, give us a single bit of fine scenery-painting in all her novels. But she does go out of her way for the space of a single page to indulge in a sort of reverie of delight over the loveliness of Lyme and its neighborhood, though she does not describe it: and I think she must have felt the latent poetry in her so far stirred by the deep-blue seas and crumbling cliffs of Lyme, as to make it seem to her a specially fit scene in which to place that final triumph of the affections over a cold and worldly prudence which is the subject of "Persuasion."

 

 From The Spectator.

"dead season," when we have the most beautiful days of the whole year, and the parks and Kensington Gardens are revelations of unsuspected loveliness, offers a favorable opportunity for indulging in the harmless pastime of looking in at shop-windows, which no one would confess to having time to do at livelier epochs, and so studying the smaller arts and industries. The magnificent objects of commerce are, for the most part, in eclipse; even the "great bargains" have had their day; modes are modestly represented by dubious articles which have not taken during the season, and are stragglingly paraded for the ensnarement of inexperienced provincials. Fanciful adjuncts to dress which no woman of fashion would have been seen without six months ago, or would dream of wearing now, are displayed with the ostentation of a final effort; and the coming season is heralded by a tempting exhibition of furs and flannel, whereby bargain-hunters are persuaded that winter goods are to be had ever so much more cheaply by being purchased before anybody requires them. These features of the "dead season" one passes by and reasons not upon. But now is the time to inspect the shops in which the wonderful things which nobody can possibly want are sold, — the mysterious cutlery, including complicated machines for doing the simplest things; the cheap jewellery, where every conceivable vagary of bad taste is indulged in the article of brooches, and the multitude of second-hand silver watches implies either a general "depression," or promotion to gold on a large scale; the minor bric-à-brac, among which ancient spoons and the chimney candlesticks of former days figure largely, and real live snuffers and their trays may be found; the ugly and expensive fancy-work which never cheats anybody into the belief that the impossible patterns are worked at home; and the amazing stationery, whose arrangement has become quite a competitive art. Most fascinating of all are the toy-shops, — not the very grand toy-shops, the splendid "emporiums" in which every useless luxury and costly device of the day are reproduced in miniature for the children of this generation, who are above being amused by Jack-in-the-box, and who, having doubts on the deluge at the age at which their grandparents sucked the paint off the long coats of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, regard 