" 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 outside thrills through
the temples.
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