_, of this
class of works, the tendency of which is in most instances of
questionable character. But they give a tone to the reading taste of the
day, as the recent circumstance of two of them forming the first subject
of three _literary_ reviews will sufficiently attest. The work to which
we specially allude, is _Matilda, a Tale of the Day_, the noble author
of which has just produced another of the same stamp, entitled _Yes and
No_, to whose sketches and portraits we shall shortly introduce our
readers. It will be seen that his lordship is no mean artist, nor does
he belong to the novel-making tribe, whose hole-and-corner curiosity has
made us as familiar with the _Corso_ as we are with our own Bond-street.
But the following snatch from _Yes and No_ proves that these smatterers
of fashion--these clippers of reputation--are encouraged by some portion
of that class whose vanities they affect to expose:--

SCENE--_A "Hall" in the Country._

"It is always as well here to know who one's next neighbour is,"
continued Fitzalbert, "for this is not one of those snug parties where
one can do or say what one pleases without observation." "How do you
mean?" asked Germain. "Why, Lady Boreton encourages these literary
poachers on the manors, or rather _manners_ of high life; she gives a
sort of right of free chase to all cockney sportsmen to wing one's
follies in a double-barrelled duodecimo, or hunt one's eccentricities
through a hot-pressed octavo. Not that they are, generally speaking,
very formidable shots--they often bring down a different bird from the
one they aimed at, and sometimes shut their eyes and blaze away at the
whole covey; which last is, after all, the best way. Their coming here
to pick out individuals is needless trouble. Do you know the modern
recipe for a finished picture of fashionable life? Let a gentleman_ly_
man, with a gentleman_ly_ style, take of foolscap paper a few quires;
stuff them well with high-sounding titles--dukes and duchesses, lords
and ladies, _ad libitum_. Then open the peerage at random, pick a
supposititious author out of one page of it, and fix the imaginary
characters upon some of the rest; mix it all up with quantum suff. of
puff, and the book is in a second edition before ninety-nine readers out
of a hundred have found out the one is as little likely to have written,
as the others to have done what is attributed to them."

Again--here is a picture of the guests: "Captains that have b