had begun with her, with a view to the future saint in her character: and could she, but by sufferings, shine as she does?

Do you, my dear child, look upon me as
Your paternal friend

S. RICHARDSON.

Sept. 30, 1751.

I can't say, my dear Miss Mulso, but you have given a very pretty definition of love. I knew that the love you contended for must be a passion fit to be owned; and I am sorry you think there are very few, either men or women, that are capable of it. By the way, I had the generality of men and women in my eye, and not those few, those very few, that are capable of that true love which you call the highest kind and degree of friendship. But do not all men and women pretend to this sort of love? Do not the many, as well as the few, lay claim to this sort of love, and dignify it by the name of a noble passion? And do not all the boys and girls around them, when the passionates (forgive the word) break fences, leap from windows, climb walls, swim rivers, defy parents, say, Such a furiosa is in love; ay, and sit down, and form excuses from that single word for the mad-cap! though neither degree, duty, discretion, nor yet modesty, has been consulted in the rapture. Think you, madam, that a certain monodist did not imagine himself possessed by this purer flame, who, mourning a dead wife of exalted qualities, could bring her to his reader's imagination, on the bridal eve, the hymeneal torch lighted up,

Dearer to me, than when thy virgin charms
Were yielded to my arms?

How many soft souls have been made to sigh over the images here conveyed, and to pity the sensual lover, when they should have lamented with the widower or husband!

But the love you describe "cannot be call'd selfish, because it must desire the happiness of its object preferably to its own." Fine talking! Pretty ideas! - Well; and where this is the case we will not call it selfish, I think. And yet what means the person possessed, but to gratify self,-or self and proposed company? Is a man who enters into a partnership to be regarded, who declares that his ardent thirst after accumulation is not for himself, for his own thirst; but for his partner's, whom he loves better than himself? or his partner, on the other hand, when he declares the same thing by his partner? This cannot be selfishness, though they combine to cheat father and mother, renounce brother and sister; and having made themselves the world to each other, seek to draw every public and private duty into their own narrow circle. Dear madam, is not the object pretended to be preferred to self a single object? A part of self? And is it not a selfishness to propose to make all the world but two persons, and then these two but one; and, intending to become the same flesh as well as spirit, know no public, no other private?

Consider the matter over again, in this its best light. Supposing an opposition founded on reason, from parents or friends, be the flame ever so pure, as well as ardent. It cannot be called furious. Well then, we will not call it so; and yet constitution is a good deal to be considered in this case; the poet tells us,

Love various minds does variously inspire,
He stirs in gentle natures gentle fire,

Like that of incense on the altar laid;

But raging fires tempestuous souls invade,

A fire which ev'ry windy passion blows

opposition is to be considered: a furious opposition will make a furious resistance. Let passage be given to the gentle stream, and it will glide gently on, and in soft complainings only murmur. But seek to imbank, to confine it, the waters will rise, and carry away the opposing mound; an inundation follows, and then it will roar, and with difficulty be once more confined to its natural channel, a good deal of fair meadow having been overflowed by the attempt to restrain it. But "True love is all tenderness, gentleness, and kindness-" Yes to the object. -" Ever fearful of offending."Yes the object; but nobody else if withstood. -" And unbounded in the desire of obliging." -The object. -Yes, so it is, whomever else it happens to disoblige. - And this is not selfish!-I am glad of it, with all my heart. How can it ?My dear papa, my dear mamma, my good uncle, my worthy aunt, my loving cousins, and you my old friends, play-fellows, and intimates, I love not myself, though I can give you up, if you oppose my love; for it is Philander that I love; and nobody else. And he loves me, and only me; I for his sake, he for mine: not either for his or her own sake: and do I not give a convincing proof of my disinterestedness when I can throw off all the regards of duty, of interest, of natural affection, for the sake of a man (not for my own sake) whom perhaps I had never seen or known, had I not been at Ranelagh, at Vauxhall, at the Opera, at a certain critical hour, which is to determine the happiness of my whole life? And, as it may happen, your happiness my dear friends, if. your hearts are bound up in me, your grateful Philo-Philander.

But, "true love, you say, cannot be called a sanctifier of bad actions and a debaser of good; or a Moloch deity, which requires duty, discretion, all that is most valuable, to be sacrificed to it; because (love being the highest kind of friendship) there can be no such thing as true love, any more than true friendship, that has not virtue for its basis." -In virtue, I will presume that you include duty; and not only duty, but prudence; and then I will admit that love, such a love, shall be called noble. But you say, my dear, in your former, that very few are capable of such a sort of love. And I, arguing generally, and not to the few exceptions, am not willing that love, indiscriminately taken, should be called noble; because those persons will then shield a passion under the word, of which they ought to be ashamed, when it becomes the Moloch deity, and requires our children to pass through its fires.

"And now, if friendship," infers my Miss Mulso, "may be dignified by the word noble, why may not love be allowed an equal claim to the epithet?" I will not, without discussion, without examination, allow it an equal claim, for this plain

reason.

Sense may predominate in the one; it cannot in the other. Those will be found to be the most noble friendships which either flame between persons of the same sex; or where the dross of the passion is thrown out, and the ore purified by the union of minds in matrimony. And I am of opinion that love is but the harbinger to such a friendship; and that friendship therefore is the perfection of love, and superior to love: it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship.

Love is a blazing, crackling, green-wood flame, as much smoke as flame; friendship, married friendship particularly, is a steady, intense, comfortable fire. Love, in courtship, is friendship in hope; in matrimony, friendship upon proof. "Cannot all the natural and right affections of the heart," ask you, "subsist together?" They can. "Must one absorb and swallow up the rest?" It often does in the green-wood evaporates in its own smoke, or dies away in embers, warming only its own sticks, and offending every one's eyes and head that sits near it.

"Cannot the same man be at the same time, an effective husband (that is, a married lover), a good son, father, friend, and neighbour?"-He can. "If he can," ask you, "what means your question?" This, my dear Miss Mulso, means my question; that I had before me, love in hope, and not love in proof; love opposed, with reason opposed; and the lovers determined against reason determined. The married lover is an exalted character: but of him we were not debating. We had before us, "two vehement souls, preferring the gratification of each other, often to a sense of duty, always to the whole world, without them;" and was I so very great a bamboozler, when I put the question upon the selfishness of souls so narrow and so vehement?

"You did not," you say, "mean to exclude gratitude, &c."I know you did not; and there I own myself to be designedly a caviller; but in pleasantry too, to make you rise upon me,

and say right things in your usual beautiful manner. And my end is answered. I suffer.- You shine.

As to the severe things I say of the conduct of "unhappy silly women who have married unworthy men," and all that depends upon these severe things; were not my indignation founded in love of the sex; and had I not an opinion that the cause of virtue and the sex is one; and that such persons betray that of both, I should not be so severe. And these motives make me write so ludicrously sometimes, so angrily at others, on the subject of love; which is really made too generally, nay almost universally the sanctifier of bad actions. As to my health-I write, I do anything I am able to do, on purpose to carry myself out of myself; and am not quite so happy, when, tired with my peregrinations, I am obliged to return home. Put me not therefore in mind of myself. My disorder is a chronical one. I am not so bad as I have been.

Adieu, my dear Miss Mulso, child of my heart!
S. RICHARDSON.

"Sir Charles Grandison" was published in 1753, and Richardson enjoyed the worship of many women with susceptible hearts until his death in July 1761. One of the pleasantest illustrations of this, very touching in its close, is in the correspondence established with Richardson by the young enthusiastic wife of the German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, who had loved him for the verse of his Messiah. As the girls of Richardson's native village did in his boyhood, when they poured their confidences into his ears, so now does the good tender-hearted young Frau Klopstock, whose artless attempts at English may not be literature, but have that in their nature which it would take a good artist to show by way of imitation. Perhaps we should illustrate the development of sentiment

that became, after the middle of the eighteenth century, a feature of German life and literature, by giving a translation of an Ode founded on Richardson's "Clarissa” which was written by the Major Hohorst, of whose death by fever Mrs. Klop stock will be found to speak:

ODE ON THE DEATH OF CLARISSA.

(Translated from the German of Major Hohorst.)

Flower, tho' transplanted, still blooming: fairest associate of Eden's flowers. O! may'st thou not close in obscuring shades. May no swift decay invade thy bloom.

Gentle zephyrs, like those which cherish the earth, for thee are too rough. Ah! a storm arises. Alas! it blasts thee in its first onset.

Sweet flower, blighted in thy full-blown glories; beautiful in ruin: we view thee with tears of admiration,

How amiable was the living Clarissa! In her shone each attractive grace: and even now, in the sleep of death, a more placid red covers her hollow cheeks.

Now separated, her exalted soul hastened to the celestial spirits: the kindred spirits joyfully received her.

The Empyrean Olympus, through its whole extent, immediately resounded, rest, glory, and refulgent crowns, to thy transcendent beauty.

Thus triumphs untainted merit. Come, Caroline, let us together keep a festival to the hour of her removal; the hour when she left us her divine pattern.

Bring cypress boughs, that I may wreathe the lugubrious garland: whilst thou, affectionate sister, bedewest it with a flood of tears.

Here follows the

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MR. RICHARDSON AND MRS. KLOPSTOCK.

TO MR. RICHARDSON.

Hamburg, Nov. 29, 1757.

HONOURED SIR, - Will you permit me to take this opportunity, in sending a letter to Dr. Young, to address myself to you? It is very long ago, that I wished to do it. Having finished your Clarissa, (oh! the heavenly book!) I would have pray'd you to write the history of a manly Clarissa, but I had not courage enough at that time. I should have it no more to-day, as this is only my first English letter-but I have it! It may be, because I am now Klopstock's wife, (I believe you know my husband by Mr. Hohorst ?) and then I was only the single young girl. You have since written the manly Clarissa, without my prayer: oh you have done it, to the great joy and thanks of all your happy readers! Now you can write no more, you must write the history of an Angel.

Poor Hohorst! he is gone. Not killed in the battle, (he was present at two,) but by the fever. The Hungarian hussards have taken your works, with our letters, and all what he was worth, a little time before his death. But the King of Prussia recompensed him with a company of cavalry. Poor friend! he did not long enjoy it!

He has made me acquainted with all your lovely daughters. I kiss them all with my best sisterly kiss; but especially Mrs. Martha, of whom he says, that she writes as her father. Tell her in my name, dear sir, if this be true, that it is an affair of conscience, not to let print her writings. Though I am otherwise of that sentiment, that a woman, who writes not thus, or as Mrs. Rowe, should never let print her works. Will you pardon me this first long letter, sir? Will you tell me, if I shall write a second? I am,

Honoured Sir,

Your most humble servant, M. KLOPSTOCK.

TO MRS. KLOPSTOCK.

London, Salisbury Court, Fleet Street,
Dec. 22, 1757.

Thanks to you, my dear Mrs. Klopstock, for your exceeding kind and exceeding pretty letter; the first, you tell me, you have written in English. I felicitate you upon it; and also your dear Mr. Klopstock on so precious an acquisition as he has made in such a wife!

Good Mr. Hohorst! How much was he respected by all mine, as well as by me! And how greatly did the news of his death afflict us! Few such soldiers as Mr. Hohorst, I doubt! Pious as brave, had life and opportunity been lent him, he must have shone out the true hero. He used to speak with reverence of his mother. Poor lady! how, if living, does she support the loss of such a son?

He spoke to me of several of his worthy German friends: but from you, dear madam, I would hope the brief history of your attachments, your pursuits, your alliances.-Happy may you be in all of them!-I was told by two worthy young gentlemen from Göttenburg, who favoured me with visits when in England, of a sister one of them had, and prided himself in her, because of her many fine qualities, and improving genius. The kind brother of that young lady once wished to introduce me to her: but I never had that happiness. Were you ever in England? If so, were you the single young girl you so prettily describe, who since has made M. Klopstock one of the happiest of men?

Let me know everything a relation would wish to know of my dear Hamburg kindred.

Good Dr. Young, who with great concern first gave me an account of Mr. Hohorst's death, has been indisposed for two or three months past; and has been at Bath for four weeks, for the recovery of his health. God succeed to him the use of the waters there! which we hold to be so lenient and salutary. I have transmitted to him the letter you inclosed in that you favoured me with.

You do me honour, madam, in your approbation of my Clarissa and Grandison.

My daughters receive in the kindest manner, and return with affectionate respect, the sisterly kiss you are so good as to send them;-my daughter Martha most particularly. “0 the good Mr. Hohorst!" exclaimed she, (in reading what you mention of the high favour she stood in with him) "How partial to me was he, in the account he gave of me to this good lady! Thank her, dear sir, in my name, for her opinion, so kindly given in relation to our sex's being ready to make an appearance in print. I am doubly secured from such presumption, by the consciousness of my own want of talents, and by being entirely in this lady's way of thinking in this particular."

You will favour me, madam, with your farther notice, as above requested. Make my best respects acceptable to your dear gentleman: and allow me to be

Your affectionate friend and humble servant,
S. RICHARDSON.

TO MR. RICHARDSON,

Hamburg, March 14, 1758.

You are very kind, sir, to wish to know everything of your Hamburg kindred. Then I will obey, and speak of nothing but myself in this letter.

I was not the lady who hath been with two gentlemen from Göttenburg in England. If I had, never would I have waited the cold ceremony of introducing you to me. In your house I had been before you knew that I was in England. That I shall, if ever I am so happy as to come there. We had a pretty project to do it in the spring to come, but I fear that we cannot execute it. The great fiend of friendship, war, will also hinder this, I think. I fear your Antigallicans exceedingly, more than the Gallicans themselves; they, I must confess it, are at least more civil with neutral ships. I pray to God to preserve you and Dr. Young till peace

comes.

We have a short letter of Dr. Young, in which he complains of his health. How does he yet? And you, who are a youth for him, how do you do yourself?

You will know all what concerns me. Love, dear sir, is all what me concerns! and love shall be all what I will tell you in this letter.

In one happy night I read my husband's poem, the Messiah. I was extremely touched with it. The next day I

hopes ever to see him, when quite unexpectedly I heard that he should pass through Hamburg. I wrote immediately to the same friend, for procuring by his means that I might see the author of the Messiah, when in Hamburg. He told him that a certain girl at Hamburg wished to see him, and, for all recommendation, showed him some letters, in which I made bold to criticise Klopstock's verses. Klopstock came, and came to me. I must confess, that, though greatly prepossessed of his qualities, I never thought him the amiable youth whom I found him. This made its effect. After having seen him two hours, I was obliged to pass the evening in a company, which never had been so wearisome to me. I could not speak, I could not play; I thought I saw nothing but Klopstock. I saw him the next day, and the following, and we were very seriously friends. But the fourth day he departed. It was a strong hour the hour of his departure! He wrote soon after, and from that time our correspondence began to be a very diligent one. I sincerely believed my love to be friendship. I spoke with my friends of nothing but Klopstock, and showed his letters. They rallied at me, and said I was in love. I rallied them again, and said that they must have a very friendshipless heart, if they had no idea of friendship to a man as well as to a woman, Thus it continued eight months, in which time my friends found as much love in Klopstock's letters as in me. I perceived it likewise, but I would not believe it. At the last Klopstock said plainly, that he loved; and I startled as for a wrong thing. I answered that it was no love, but friendship, as it was what I felt for him; we had not seen one another enough to love (as if love must have more time than friendship!). This was sincerely my meaning, and I had this meaning till Klopstock came again to Hamburg. This he did a year after we had seen one another the first time. We saw, we were friends, we loved; and we believed that we loved; and a short time after I could even tell Klopstock that I loved; but we were obliged to part again, and wait two years for our wedding. My mother would not let marry me a stranger. I could marry then without her consentment, as by the death of my father my fortune depended not on her; but this was an horrible idea for me; and thank heaven that I have prevailed by prayers! At this time knowing Klopstock, she loves him as her lifely son, and thanks God that she has not persisted. We married, and I am the happiest wife in the world. In some few months it will be four years that I am so happy, and still I dote upon Klopstock as if he was my bridegroom.

If you knew my husband, you would not wonder. If you knew his poem, I could describe him very briefly, in saying he is in all respects what he is as a poet. This I can say with all wifely modesty But I dare not to speak of my husband; I am all raptures when I do it. And as happy as I am in love, so happy am I in friendship, in my mother, two elder sisters, and five other women. How rich I am!

Sir, you have willed that I should speak of myself, but I fear I have done it too much. Yet you see how it interests

TO MR. RICHARDSON

Hamburg, May 6, 1758.

It is not possible, sir, to tell you what a joy your letters give me. My heart is very able to esteem the favour that you, my dear Mr. Richardson, in your venerable age, are so condescending good, to answer so soon the letters of an unknown young woman, who has no other merit than a heart full of friendship-and of all those sentiments which a reasonable soul must feel for Richardson, though at so many miles of distance. It is a great joyful thought, that friendship can extend herself so far, and that friendship has no need of seeing, though this seeing would be celestial joy to hearts like ours, (shall I be so proud to say as ours?) and what will it be, when so many really good souls, knowing or not knowing in this world, will see another in the future, and be ther

friends!

It will be a delightful occupation for me, to make you more acquainted with my husband's poem. Nobody can do it better than I, being the person who knows the most of that which is not yet published; being always present at the birth of the young verses, which begin always by fragments here and there, of a subject of which his soul is just then filled. He has many great fragments of the whole work ready. You may think that persons who love as we do, have no need of two chambers; we are always in the same. I, with my little work, still, still, only regarding sometimes my husband's sweet face, which is so venerable at that time! with tears of devotion and all the sublimity of the subject. My husband reading me his young verses and suffering my criticisms. Ten books are published, which I think probably the middle of the whole. I will, as soon as I can, translate you the arguments of these ten books, and what besides I think of them. The verses of the poem are without rhymes, and are hexameters, which sort of verses my husband has been the first to introduce in our language; we being still closely attached to rhymes and iambics.

I suspect the gentleman who has made you acquainted with the Messiah, is a certain Mr. Kaiser, of Göttingen, who has told me at his return from England what he has done; and he has a sister like her whom you describe in your first

letter.

And our dear Dr. Young has been so ill? But he is better, I thank God along with you. Oh that his dear instructive life may be extended! if it is not against his own wishes. I read lately in the newspapers, that Dr. Young was made Bishop of Bristol; I must think it is another Young. How could the king make him only Bishop! and Bishop of Bristol while the place of Canterbury is vacant! I think the king knows not at all that there is a Young who illustrates his reign.

And you, my dear, dear friend, have not hope of cure of a severe nervous malady? How I trembled as I read it! I pray to God to give you at the least patience and alleviation. I thank you heartily for the cautions you gave me and my dear Klopstock on this occasion. Though I can read very well your handwriting, you shall write no more if it is incommodious to you. Be so good to dictate only to Mrs. Patty; it will be very agreeable to me to have so amiable a correspondent. And then I will, still more than now, preserve the two of your own hand-writing as treasures.

I am very glad, sir, that you will take my English as it is. I knew very well that it may not always be English, but I thought for you it was intelligible: my husband asked, as I was writing my first letter, if I would not write French? No, said I, I will not write in this pretty but fade language to Mr. Richardson (though so polite, so cultivated, and no longer fade in the mouth of a Bossuet). As far as I know, neither we, nor you, nor the Italians have the word fade. How have the French found this characteristic word for their nation? Our German tongue, which only begins to be cultivated, has much more conformity with the English than the French.

I wish, sir, I could fulfil your request of bringing you acquainted with so many good people as you think of. Though I love my friends dearly, and though they are good, I have however much to pardon, except in the single Klopstock alone. He is good, really good, good at the bottom, in all his actions, in all the foldings of his heart. I know him; and sometimes I think if we knew others in the same manner, the better we should find them. For it may be that an action displeases us which would please us, if we knew its true aim and whole extent. No one of my friends is so happy as I am; but no one has had courage to marry as I did. They have married, -as people marry; and they are happy, -as people are happy. Only one as I may say, my dearest friend, is unhappy, though she had as good a purpose as I myself. She has married in my absence: but had I been present, I might, it may be, have been mistaken in her husband, as well as she.

How long a letter this is again! but I can write no short ones to you. Compliments of my husband, and compliments to all yours, always, even though I should not say it.

M. KLOPSTOCK.

The last letter is made touching by the fact that the flattering hopes of the young wife looked to the event that was really to take her from the earthly to the heavenly joy. She died in childbirth.

TO MR. RICHARDSON.

Hamburg, Aug. 26, 1758.

Why think you, sir, that I answer so late? I will tell you my reasons. But before all, how does Miss Patty and how do yourself? Have not you guessed that I, summing up all my happinesses, and not speaking of children, had none ? Yes, sir, this has been my only wish ungratified for these four years. I have been more than once unhappy with disappointments: but yet, thanks to God! I am in full hope to be mother in the month of November. The little preparations for my child and child-bed (and they are so dear to me!) have taken so much time, that I could not answer your letter, nor give you the promised scenes of the Messiah. This is likewise the reason wherefore I am still here, for properly we dwell in Copenhagen. Our staying here is only a visit (but a long one) which we pay my family. I not being able to travel yet, my husband has been obliged to make a little voyage alone to Copenhagen. He is yet absent -a cloud over my happiness! He will soon return. But what does that help? he is yet equally absent! We write to each other every post. But what are letters to presence? but I will speak no more of this little cloud; I will only tell my happiness! but I cannot tell how I rejoice! A son of my dear Klopstock! Oh, when shall I have him! It is long since that I have made the remark, that geniuses do not engender geniuses. No children at all, bad sons, or, at the most, lovely daughters, like you and Milton. But a daughter or a son, only with a good heart, without genius, I will nevertheless love dearly.

I think that about this time a nephew of mine will wait on you. His name is von Winthem, a young rich merchant, who has no bad qualities, and several good, which he has still to cultivate. His mother was, I think, twenty years older than

I, but we other children loved her dearly like a mother. She had an excellent character, but is long dead.

This is no letter, but only a newspaper of your Hamburg daughter. When I have my husband and my child, I will write you more (if God gives me health and life). You will think that I shall be not a mother only, but nurse also; though the latter (thank God! that the former is not so too) is quite against fashion and good-breeding, and though nobody can think it possible to be always with the child at home! M. KLOPSTOCK.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE III. TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.-A.D. 1760 TO A.D. 1789.

FREDERICK Prince of Wales, the son of George II., having died in 1751, the Prince's son became King George III. upon the death of his grandfather in October, 1760. The old king died in his seventyseventh year; his successor, well-disposed but illeducated and without natural ability, was not yet twenty-three. About a year after his accession, the young king married the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. John Stuart, Earl of Bute, who had been Lord of the Bedchamber to the Prince Frederick, retained the confidence of the Princess Dowager. He used his influence after the death of George II. to drive William Pitt from office, and reverse his policy, which then triumphed in Europe. Pitt became a private member of the House of Commons, Bute Secretary of State, and, in May, 1762, First Lord of the Treasury. He at once gave places to Scotch friends, and displeased the nation by making a peace with France and Spain, of which the prelimi