ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth century aristocrats were ‘the Great’, which was impressive rather than romantic. The guillotine brought the Olympians down to earth, and while not really impairing their divinity won for them the sympathy due to human suffering. InNovels of High Society from the Victorian Age, a massive tome of nine hundred closely printed pages, Mr. Anthony Powell has culled three of the most luxuriant blooms from the hothouse of Victorian romanticism. The further efflorescence of Livingstone’s kindlier side is delayed by an episode in which a man who has killed one of Guy’s friends collapses into idiocy under the menace of his pitiless thirst for vengeance. Livingstone, fatally injured in the hunting-field, expresses himself in such penitent and affectionate terms on his death-bed that Hammond breaks down, and when all is over leans his forehead against the corpse’s cheek, sobbing like a helpless child.
