He emerges just before he comes of age, and appears before us in the midst of an elegant family, in which, fortunately, all the daughters are married excepting one, who has great beauty and a remarkably fine voice. He immediately, as in duty bound, falls desperately in love, and in the most honorable manner possible confides the state of his feelings to the mother of the object of his affections, who is, by the way, a fine specimen of a thorough-bred English lady.
The mother wisely and tenderly counsels delay, and we would recommend her conduct in this interesting occasion to all the middle-aged ladies of our acquaintance when placed in a similar situation. Lothair accepts her decision, and in the mean time becomes more and more intimate with the cardinal, and forms the acquaintance of a Catholic family distantly connected, and becomes somewhat smitten with the real heroine of the tale, Clare Arundel. The objective point of the story now develops itself. A struggle for the rich and titled youth commences between the English Establishment and the Church. Political and mercenary motives are, with great impartiality, ascribed to both the contending powers. The combat between the rough and honest Scotch Presbyterian uncle and the accomplished and fascinating cardinal is wisely dropped.
No imagination could suggest the thought that one who had escaped from evangelicalism could ever return to it. It is, in the author's mind, simply a political squabble for the influence and vote of the future peer. His soul is of no account.
The conduct and development of this contest gives the right honorable romancer an opportunity to introduce the lords and ladies, the dukes and bishops, cardinals and monsignori, artists, wits, and men about town, with whom he delights to fill his pages. They all speak in character, and in the main with artistic consistency, and their conversation is certainly sprightly, often witty, sometimes wise, and never offensive on the score of taste and morality. It affords him the opportunity to flatter and praise, and at the same time exhibit a power of sarcasm and ridicule, the effective methods of his earlier writings, by which he climbed to his present position. He exhibits talents and a knowledge of life which would have made him equally successful in the role of banker, picture-merchant, diamond-broker, or even old clo'man. He gloats over the splendors which he describes; and beauty, rank, fashion, fine clothes, crystal, porcelain, pictures, jewels, "ropes of pearls," castles, palaces, parks, and gardens, are dwelt upon with the cherishing fondness of the gentlemen of keen eyes, hooked noses, and unctuous touch. Character, conduct, motives, principles, sentiments, affections, passions, and religion are mingled in admirable confusion, are estimated at the same value and weighed in the same balance.
There is for him as novelist or pamphleteer no principle but expediency, no rule of conduct but temporal advantage. He worships a golden calf. These be thy gods, O Israel! At a critical period, while our hero is wavering between his Anglican and Catholic mistress, and the cardinal is striving to acquire a wholesome influence over his somewhat unstable relative, while he is sailing on the summer sea of high life and elegant society, he goes to Oxford to see his horses. He has wisely left those useful animals at the university, while he is pursuing his studies of life and manners in London. At Oxford, he meets Colonel and Mrs. Campian, and is taken completely off his feet. Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Corisande and Clare Arundel, the Establishment, and Catholicity disappear at once, and Madre Natura in the splendid physique of the divine Theodora, claims an unresisting captive and victim.
This is either an inspiration of a romancer's imagination or a study. If the latter, there is no hope for the right honorable author's salvation on the score of invincible ignorance.
Lothair basks in the splendor of Theodora's beauty, and surrenders his reason to the fascination of her false political principles. The lower or transient good is preferred to the higher, the permanent good. He chooses the lower, as did Lucifer and Adam, Judas and Luther, and multitudes have done and are doing. Naturally and artistically there is no way out of this scrape excepting through a catastrophe; religiously, excepting through penance. Theodora is the ideal of Greco-Roman heathenism, and the artist Phœbus is its high-priest. They are fine creations from an artistic point of view.
They enable the author to introduce some clever writing about art, and some speculations regarding the Aryan and Semitic races, evidently with the intention of associating revealed religion with the idea of superstition. The effect left upon the mind is something like that produced by a certain class of sermons which we read on Monday morning in the New-York Herald. The novelist is hurried on at this stage by the necessities of the pamphleteer. Political events succeed each other so rapidly that he was obliged to send Lothair as rapidly as possible to the field of battle (his heathen destiny) against the church.
With exceeding facility the money which was going to build a cathedral, to please a pious girl, is diverted to aid in blowing up St. Peter's, and Lothair finds himself as Captain Muriel, in the field, on the staff of one of his former acquaintances, Captain Bruges, the red republican general advancing against Rome. Theodora and Colonel Campian are also with him, the former disguised in male apparel, and acting as secretary to the general. We suppose her prayer uttered under the depressing intelligence of the embarkation of the French troops to assist the holy father, is an expression of the religion of nature. Why she should pray to God instead of Jupiter, we confess we do not see, unless in deference to the opinion of most of the author's readers. He might have fulfilled all the indications by quoting Pope, and at the same time complimented the memory of a poet who is getting rather out of date.
However, she hears the French have disembarked, and accordingly suspends her prayers and recovers her spirits. The impending catastrophe comes. The tragic is accomplished, and the divine Theodora is slain. Madre Natura and the secret societies are hurled against the rock of Peter, and shivered. Theodora is mortally wounded, and dying, impresses a chaste kiss upon the lips of Lothair, and exacts the promise never to conform to the Church of Rome.