the moral, complained, that in a professed work of amusement, the author had contrived to harrow up their feelings to a degree that was intolerably painful. Old Cibber raved on the subject like a profane bedlamite; and, what was perhaps of more consequence to Richardson, the rumour of Lovelace's success, and Clarissa's death, occasioned Lady Bradshaigh's opening her romantic correspondence with him, under the assumed name of Belfour. In reply to the expostulations of the latter, Richardson frankly stated his own noble plan, of which he had too just a conception to alter it, in compliance with the remonstrances of his correspondents.

"Indeed you are not particular in your wishes for a happy ending, as it is called. Nor can I go through some of the scenes myself without being sensibly touched. (Did I not say that I was another Pygmalion?) But yet I had to show, for example sake, a young lady struggling nobly with the greatest difficulties, and triumphing from the best motives, in the course of distresses, the tenth part of which would have sunk even manly hearts; yet tenderly educated, born to affluence, naturally meek, although, where an exertion of spirit was necessary, manifesting herself to be a true heroine."

Defeated in this point, the friends and correspondents of Richardson became even more importunate for the reformation of Lovelace, and the winding up the story by his happy union with Clarissa. On this subject also Cibber ranted and the ladies implored, with an earnestness that seems to imply at once a belief that the persons in whom they interested themselves had an existence, and that it was in the power of the writer of their memoirs to turn their destiny which way he pleased; and one damsel, eager for the conversion of Lovelace, implores Richardson to "save his soul;" as if there had been actually a living sinner in the case, and his future state had depended on her admired author.

Against all these expostulations Richardson hardened himself. He knew that to bestow Clarissa upon the repentant Lovelace would have been to undermine the fabric he had built. This was the

se which the criminal had proposed to himself in

he had committed, and it was to dismiss him

not punished. The sublimity of the destroyed, since vice would have miserable through its very.

phant even by its degrada raw down on the guilty retribution, and his expiated. Besides, gradation which the 1, could she, with on her by

The tailor in a country town quarrels with the butcher who as called him snip, and determines to live on cucumbers to punish ... That is highly meritorious, and very laudable. The butcher, In return, refuses to wear a coat, and clothes himself in a bull's ...le; and thus the village prospers, and thus the Gaul determines at his meat with his fingers, and thus Sheffield thrives and comorce flourishes.

We have regiments, battalions, armies of doganiére, commissions. Treasury, Exchequer, Excise, tidewaiter and landwaiter, riding officer and gauger, and all the combined intellect cannot invent a duty ad valorem. This is wondrous strange. But it will arrive on some lucky day, and it will then be wondered why it did not arrive before, and our babes will doubt of the wisdom of their ancestors, and the generation that quits the nipple will take to the graceful bouteille, fit envelope of its graceful contents, and the black sturdy Bull bottle will be forgotten, with its black Stygian liquid, and wit and health will wonder at themselves, and Chancellors of the Exchequer shall drink three or six bottles a-day, as well as Lord Chancellors, and shall not die at forty-six with red noses and Promethean livers. It used to be supposed, that the object; the purpose, the existence, the soul of commerce, was interchange; the giving of iron and cotton, which cannot be eaten and drunk, for corn and wine that can; by those who have more razors for shaving than they want, and more muslins than their wives can wear, to those who have more corn and wine than they can swallow, while they go unshaven, and their wives are clothed in linsey wolsey. In short, it was once thought that commerce was commerce, and nothing else. There could not have been a greater fallacy, as Customs and Exeises have shown. But fashions revolve, and perhaps a day is coming when commerce will really be the thing which it pretends.

If the French had eaten ten hundred Marechals d'Ancre, committed a dozen of St. Barthelemy's, and twenty revolutions, they have atoned for it all by inventing claret and champagne. It is claret which is the real "Ami de l'Homme;" nectar which Jove never knew. If a man wishes to be happy all the evening, and sober in the morning, let him drink claret. If he wishes to be merry for an hour, and sober in the next, let him drink champagne.

We shall perhaps be accused of preaching in our cups, and yet this is worth another paragraph. The people drink, and the people become drunk; each, high and low, in their several ways, and each according to their fancies, purses, habits, or philosophies. But the drunkenness of the one is not the drunkenness of the other; nor, whether for drunkenness or for drinking, are gin and claret, porter and champagne, equivalents. There is a mighty dif ference between the drinking of a count and a cobbler, of a Chancellor of the Exchequer and a tinker. There is a mighty difference in the results, Unquestionably there may sometimes be slight

matrimony, to love, honour, and obey her betrayer, have sat down the common-place good wife of her reformed rake. Indeed, those who peruse the work with attention, will perceive that the author has been careful, in the earlier stages of his narrative, to bar out every prospect of such a union. Notwithstanding the levities and constitutional good humour of Lovelace, his mind is too much perverted, his imagination too much inflamed, by his own perverted Quixotism, and, above all, his heart is too much hardened, to render it possible for any one seriously to think of his conversion as sincere, or his union with Clarissa as happy. He had committed a crime for which he deserved death by the law of the country; and notwithstanding those good qualities with which the author has invested him, that he may not seem an actual incarnate fiend, there is no reader but feels vindictive pleasure when Morden passes the sword through his body.

On the other hand, Clarissa, reconciled to her violator, must have lost, in the eye of the reader, that dignity, with which the refusal of his hand, the only poor reparation he could offer, at present invests her; and it was right and fitting that a creature, every way so excellent, should, as is fabled of the ermine, pine to death on account of the stain with which she had been so injuriously sullied. We cannot, consistently with the high idea which we have previously entertained of her purity of character, imagine her surviving the contamination. On the whole, as Richardson himself pleaded, Clarissa has, as the narrative presently stands, the greatest of triumphs even in this world-the greatest, even in and after the outrage, and because of the outrage, that any woman ever had.

It has often been observed, that the extreme severity of the parents and relatives in this celebrated novel does not belong to our day, or perhaps even to Richardson's; and that Clarissa's dutiful scruples at assuming her own estate, or extricating herself by Miss Howe's means, are driven to extremity. Something, no doubt, must be allowed for the license of an author, who must necessarily, in order to command interest and attention, extend his incidents to the extreme verge of probability; but, besides, it is well known, that at least within the century, the notions of the patria potestas were of a much severer nature than those now entertained; that forced marriages have actually taken place, and that in houses of considerable rank; that the voice of public opinion had then comparatively little effect upon great and opulent families, inhabiting their country-seats, and living amid their own dependants, where strange violences were sometimes committed, under the specious pretext of enforcing domestic discipline. Each family was a little tribe within itself; and the near relations, like the elders among the Jews, had their Sanhedrim, where resolutions were adopted, as laws to control the free will of each individual member. It is upon this family compact that the Harlowes ground the rights which they assert with so much tyranny; and before the changes