nybody did write it in the modern manner, it would
not in the least resemble the old fashionable novel.

Here a curious point arises. We have all studied the ingenious lady who
calls herself Ouida. Now, is Ouida, or rather was Ouida in her early
state sublime, the last of the old fashionable novelists, or did
Thackeray unconsciously prophesy of her when he wrote his burlesque
_Lords and Liveries_? Think of the young earl of Bagnigge, "who was
never heard to admire anything except a _coulis de dindonneau a la St.
Menehould_, . . . or the bouquet of a flask of Medoc, of Carbonnell's
best quality, or a _goutte_ of Marasquin, from the cellars of Briggs and
Hobson." We have met such young patricians in _Under Two Flags_ and
_Idalia_. But then there is a difference: Ouida never tells us that her
hero was "blest with a mother of excellent principles, who had imbued his
young mind with that morality which is so superior to all the vain pomps
of the world." But a hero of Ouida's might easily have had a father who
"was struck down by the side of the gallant Collingwood in the Bay of
Fundy." The heroes themselves may have "looked at the Pyramids without
awe, at the Alps without reverence." They do say "_Corpo di Bacco_," and
the Duca de Montepulciano does reply, "_E' bellissima certamente_." And
their creator might conceivably remark "Non cuivis contigit." But Lady
Fanny Flummery's ladies could not dress as Ouida's ladies do: they could
not quote Petronius Arbiter; they had never heard of Suetonius. No age
reproduces itself. There is much of our old fashionable authoress in
Ouida's earlier tales; there is plenty of the Peerage, plenty of queer
French in old novels and Latin yet more queer; but where is the _elan_
which takes archaeology with a rush, which sticks at no adventure,
however nobly incredible? where is the pathos, the simplicity, the purple
splendour of Ouida's manner, or manners? No, the spirit of the world,
mirroring itself in the minds of individuals, simpered, and that simper
was Lady Fanny Flummery. But it did many things more portentous than
simpering, when it reflected itself in Ouida.

Is it that we do no longer gape on the aristocracy admiringly, and write
of them curiously, as if they were creatures in a Paradise? Is it that
Thackeray has converted us? In part, surely, we are just as snobbish as
ever, though the gods of our adoration totter to their fall, and "a
hideous hum" from the mob outsid