roots in the innermost folds of her heart. Her young master thinks of marrying her now, and wishes to be sure that she loves him. She dares not say so, being afraid to give him a hold upon her. She is greatly troubled by his kindness, and yet she must answer. Religion comes to veil love in a sublime half-confession : "I fear not, sir, the grace of God supporting me, that any acts of kindness would make me forget what I owe to my virtue; but my nature is too frank and open to make me wish to be ungrateful; and if I should be taught a lesson I never yet learnt, with what regret should I descend to the grave, to think that I could not hate my undoer; and that, at the last great day, I must stand up as an accuser of the poor unhappy soul, that I could wish it in my power to save!"* He is softened and vanquished, descends from that vast height where aristocratic customs placed him, and thenceforth, day by day, the letters of the happy child record the preparations for their marriage. Amidst this triumph and happiness she continues humble, devoted, and tender; her heart is full, and gratitude fills it from every source: "This foolish girl must be, after twelve o'clock this day, as much his wife as if he were to marry a duchess." She "had the boldness to kiss his hand." "My heart is so wholly yours, that I am afraid of nothing but that I may be forwarder than you wish."§ Shall the marriage take place Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday? She dare not say Yes; she blushes and trembles: there is a delightful charm in this timid modesty, these restrained effusions. For a wedding present she obtains the pardon of the wicked creatures who have ill-treated her: "I c.asped my arms about his neck, and was not ashamed to kiss him once, and twice, and three times, once for each forgiven person." Then they talk over their plans: she shall remain at home; she will not frequent grand parties; she is not fond of cards; she will keep the "family accounts," and distribute her husband's charities; she will help the housekeeper in * Pamela, i. 290. Į Ibid. ii. 78. | Ibid. ii. 194. "the ↑ Ibid. ii. 167. § Ibid. ii. 148. making jellies, comfits, sweetmeats, marmalades, cordials, and to pot, and candy, and preserve," to get up the linen; she will look after the break fast and dinner, especially when there are guests; she knows how to carve ; she will wait for her husband, who perhaps will be so good as now and then to give her an hour or two of his |“ agreeable conversation," "and will be indulgent to the impertinent overflowings of my grateful heart." In his absence she will read "that will help to polish my mind, and make me worthier of your company and conversation;" and she will pray to God, she says, in order "that I may be enabled to discharge my duty to my hus band."§ Richardson has sketched here the portrait of the English wife-a good housekeeper and sedentary, studious and obedient, loving and pious-and Fielding will finish it in his Amelia. Pamela's adventures describe a contest: the novel of Clarissa Harlowe represents one still greater. Virtue, like force of every kind, is proportioned according to its power of resist ance; and we have only to subject it to more violent tests, to give it its greatest prominence. Let us look in passions of the English for foes capable of assailing virtue, calling it forth, and strengthening it. The evil and the good of the English character is a too strong will. When tenderness and lofty reason fail, the native energy be comes sternness, obstinacy, inflexibl tyranny, and the heart a den of malevo lent passions, eager to rave and tea each other. Against a family, having such passions, Clarissa Harlowe has t struggle. Her father never would b "controuled, nor yet persuaded." Hi never "did give up one point be thought he had a right to carry." ** Hi has broken down the will of his wife, and degraded her to the part of dumb servant: he wishes to breal down the will of his daughter, and t give her for a husband a coarse and heartless fool. He is the head of the family, master of all his people, des- | knees, faints, makes them weep. It is all useless. The indomitable, crushing will oppresses her with its daily increasing mass. There is no example of such a varied moral torture, so incessant, so obstinate. They persist in it, as if it were a task, and are vexed to find that she makes their task so long. They refuse to see her, forbid her tc write, are afraid of her tears. Her sister Arabella, with the venomous bitterness of an offended, ugly woman, tries to make her insults more stinging: ... 666 'What, not speak yet? Come, my sullen, silent dear, speak one word to me. You must say two very soon to Mr. Solmes, I can tell you that. Well, well (insultingly wiping my averted face with her handkerchief). Then you think you may be brought to speak the two, words."" potic and ambitious as a Roman patrician, and he wishes to found a house. He is stern in these two harsh resolves, and inveighs against the rebellious daughter. Above the outbursts of his voice we hear the loud wrath of his son, a sort of plethoric, over-fed bull-dog, excited by his greed, his youth, his fiery temper, and his premature authority; the shrill outcry of the eldest daughter, a coarse, plain-looking girl, with "a plump, high-fed face,' exactingly jealous, prone to hate, who, being neglected by Lovelace, revenges herself on "The witty, the prudent, nay the dutiful, her beautiful sister; the churlish word) Clarissa Harlowe, should be so strangely and pi-ous (so she sneeringly pronounced the growling of the two uncles, narrow- fond of a profligate man, that her parents were minded old bachelors, vulgar, pig-forced to lock her up, in order to hinder her from running into his arms.' 'Let me ask headed, through their notions of male you, my dear,' said she, 'how you now keep authority; the grievous importunities your account of the disposition of your time? of the mother, the aunt, the old nurse, How many hours in the twenty-four do you depoor timid slaves, reduced one by one vote to your needle? How many to your to become instruments of persecution. how many to love? I doubt, I doubt, my little prayers? How many to letter-writing? And The whole family have bound them- dear, the latter article is like Aaron's rod, and selves to favor Mr. Solmes' proposal to swallows up all the rest. You must therefore bend or break, that is all, child.' * marry Clarissa. They do not reason, they simply express their will. By dint of repetition, only one idea has fixed itself in their brain, and they become furious when any one endeavors to oppose it. "Who at the long run must submit?" asks her mother; of us to you, or you to all of us?" Clarissa offers to remain single, never "This, Clary, is a pretty pattern enough. to marry at all; she consents to give up But this is quite charming?-And this, were I her property. But her family answered: you, should be my wedding night-gown.-But, Clary, won't you have a velvet suit? It would They had a right to her obedience cut a great figure in a country church, you upon their own terms; her proposal know. Crimson velvet suppose? Such a fine was an artifice, only to gain time; noth-complexion as yours, how it would be set off ing but marrying Mr. Solmes should do; .. they should not be at rest till it was done." It must be done, they have promised it; it is a point of honor with them. A girl, a young, in- Then, when Arabella is reminded that, experienced, insignificant girl, to resist three months ago, she did not find men, old men, people of position and Lovelace so worthy of scorn, she zonsideration, nay, her whole family- nearly chokes with passion; she wants nonstrous! So they persist, like brutes to beat her sister, cannot speak, and as they are, blindly, putting on the says to her aunt, "with great vio screw with all their stupid hands to-lence;" "Let us go, madam; let us gether, not seeing that at every turn, they bring the child nearer to madness, dishonor, or death. She begs them, implores them, one by one, with every argument and prayer; racks herself to discover concessions, goes on her * Clarissa Harlowe, i. Letter xx. 125. ↑ Ibid. i. Letter xxxix. 253. "all She continues thus: by it! And do you sigh, love? Black velvet, so fair as you are, with those charming eyes, gleaming through a wintry cloud, like an April sun. Does not Lovelace tell you they are charming eyes?'"' ‡ leave the creature to swell till she Ibid. i. Letter xlv. 308. ... wounded; whilst the pack grow more | friend of Lovelace, “tricked a farmer's eager and more ferocious, because they daughter, a pretty girl, up to town, have tasted blood. drank her light-hearted, then to the play, then to the bagnio, ... At the last moment, when she thinks tc escape them, a new chase begins, ruined her; kept her on a fortnight or more dangerous than the other, Love- three weeks; then left her to the mercy lace has all the evil passions of Har- of the people of the bagnio (never pay lowe, and in addition a genius which ing for any thing), who stript her of all sharpens and aggravates them. What her cloaths, and because she would not a character! How English! how take on, threw her into prison, where diferent from the Don Juan of Mozart she died in want and in despair." or of Molière ! Before every thing he The rakes in France were only rascals, † wishes to have the cruel fair one in his here they were villains; wickednes power: then come the desire to bend with them poisoned love. Lovelace others, a combative spirit, a craving for hates Clarissa even more than he loves triumph, only after all these come the her. He has a book in which he sets senses. He spares an innocent, young down, he says, "all the family faults girl, because he knows she is easy to and the infinite trouble she herself has conquer, and the grandmother "has given me. When my heart is soft, and besought him to be merciful to her." all her own, I can but turn to my mem"The Debellare superbos should be my oranda, and harden myself at once." motto," he writes to his friend Bel- He is angry because she dares to deford; and in another letter he says, "Ifend herself, says that he'll teach her to always considered opposition and re- vie with him in inventions, to make sistance as a challenge to do my plots against and for her conqueror. It worst." † At bottom, pride, infinite, is a struggle between them without insatiable, senseless, is the mainspring, truce or halting. Lovelace says of him. the only motive of all his actions. He self: "What an industrious spirit have acknowledges "that he only wanted I! Nobody can say that I eat the Cæsar's outsetting to make a figure bread of idleness; certainly, with among his contemporaries," and that this active soul, I should have made a he only stoops to private conquests out very great figure in whatever station I of mere whim. He declares that he had filled." He assaults and be would not marry the first princess on sieges her, spends whole nights outside earth, if he but thought she balanced a her house, gives the Harlowes servants minute in her choice of him or of an of his own, invents stories, introduces Emperor. He is held to be gay, personages under a false name, forges brilliant, conversational; but this petu- letters. There is no expense, fatigue, lance of animal vigor is only external; plot, treachery which he will not underhe is cruel, jests savagely, in cool take. All weapons are the same to blood, like a hangman, about the harm him. He digs and plans even when which he has done or means to do. He away, ten, twenty, fifty saps, which all reassures a poor servant who is troubled meet in the same mine. He provides at having given up Clarissa to him in against every thing; he is ready for the following words: "The affair of every thing; divines, dares every thing, Miss Betterton was a youthful frolick. against all duty, humanity, common I went into mourning for her, sense, in spite of the prayers of his thongh abroad at the time, a distinc- friends, the entreaties of Clarissa, his tion I have ever paid to those worthy own remorse. Excessive will, here as creacures who died in childbed by me. with the Harlowes, becomes an iron Why this squeamishness, then, wheel, which twists out of shape and honest Joseph ?"§ The English roy-breaks to pieces what it ought to bend, sterers of those days threw the human so that at last, by blind impetuosity, it Dody in the sewers. One gentleman, a * Clarissa Harlowe, i. Letter xxxiv. 223. Ibid. i. Letter xii. 65. * Ibid. vii. Letter xxxviii. 122. ↑ See the Memoires of the Marshal de Rich elieu. Clarissa Harlowe, ii. Letter xxxix 354- is broken by its own impetus, over the | life, has fortified herself on every poin ruins it has made with maxims, distinctions, and argu ments. She has set round her, like bristling and multiplied ramparts, numberless army of inflexible precepts We can only reach her by turning over her whole mind and her whole past. This is her force, and also her weak ness; for she is so carefully defended by her fortifications, that she is a prisoner; her principles are a snare o her, and her virtue destroys her. She wishes to preserve too much decorum She refuses to apply to a magistrate, for it would make public the family quarrels. She does not resist hei father openly; that would be agains filial humility. She does not repe Solmes violently, like a hound, as he is; it would be contrary to feminine delicacy. She will not leave home with Miss Howe; that might injure the character of her friend. She reprove Lovelace when he swears,* a goo Christian ought to protest agains: scandal. She is argumentative and pedantic, a politician and a preacher she wearies us, she does not act like a woman. When a room is on fire, a young girl flies barefooted, and does not do what Miss Clarissa does-ask for her slippers. I am very sorry for it, but I say it with bated breath, the sublime Clarissa had a little mind; her virtue is like the piety of devotees, literal and over-nice. She does not carry us away, she has always her guide of deportment in her hand; she does not discover her duties, but follows instructions; she has not the audacity of great resolutions, she possesses more conscience and firmness than enthusiasm and genius. † This is the dis advantage of morality pushed to an ex. treme, no matter what the school or the aim is. By dint of regulating man we narrow him. Against such assaults what resources has Clarissa? A will as determined as Lovelace's. She also is armed for war, and admits that she has much of her father's spirit as of her mother's gentleness. Though gentle, though readily driven into Christian humility, she has pride; she "had hoped to be an example to young persons" of her sex; she possesses the firmness of a man, and above all a masculine reflection.* What self-scrutiny! what vigilance! what minute and indefatigable observation of her conduct, and of that of others! No action, or word, involuntary or other gesture of Lovelace is unobserved by her, uninterpreted, unjudged, with the perspicacity and clearness of mind of a diplomatist and a moralist! We must read these long conversations, in which no word is used without calculation, genuine duels daily renewed, with death, nay, with dishonor before her. She knows it, is not disturbed, remains ever mistress of herself, never exposes herself, is not dazed, defends every inch of ground, feeling that all the world is on his side, no one for her, that she loses ground, and will lose more, that she will fall, that she is falling. And yet she bends not. What a change since Shakspeare! Whence comes this new and original idea of woman? Who has encased these yielding and tender innocents with such heroism and calculation? Puritanism transferred to the laity. Clarissa " never looked upon any duty, much less a voluntary vowed one, with indifference." She has passed her whole life in looking at these duties. She has placed certain principles before her, has reasoned upon them, applied them to the various circumstances of * See (vol. vii. Letter xlix.) among other things her last Will. † She makes out statistics and a classification of Lovelace's merits and faults, with subdivisions and numbers. Take an example of this positive and practical English logic: "That such a husband might unsettle me in all my own principles, and hazard my future hopes. That he has a very immoral character to women. That knowing this, it is a high degree of impurity to think of joining in wed ock with such a man. She keeps all her writ.ngs, her memorandums, summaries or analyses of her own letters. Poor Richardson, unsuspiciously, has been at pains to set the thing fortb in broad light, and has created Si Charles Grandison " a man of true * "Swearing is a most unmanly vice, and cursing as poor and low a one, since it pro claims the profligate's want of power and his wickedness at the same time; for could such a one punish as he speaks, he would be a fiend." -Vol. ii. Letter xxxviii. 282. The contrary is the case with the heroines of George Sand's novels. honor." I cannot say whether this happy couple. Tears abound; Hai model has converted many. There is riet bemoans the fate of Sir Hargrave nothing so insipid as an edifying hero. Pollexfen, whilst Sir Charles "in a This Sir Charles is as correct as an soothing, tender, and respectful manautomaton; he passes his life in weigh- ner, put his arm round me, and taking ing his duties, and "with an air of my own handkerchief, unresisted, wiped gallantry."* When he goes to visit a away the tears as they fell on my sick person, he has scruples about cheek. Sweet humanity! Charming going on a Sunday, but reassures his sensibility! Check not the kindly conscience by saying, "I am afraid I gush. Dewdrops of heaven! (wiping nust borrow of the Sunday some hours away my tears, and kissing the handen my journey; but visiting the sick is kerchief), dew-drops of heaven, from a an act of mercy."t Would any one mind like that heaven mild and gra. believe that such a man could fall in cious? "* It is too much; we are surlove? Such is the case, however, but feited, we say to ourselves that these in a manner of his own. Thus he phrases should be accompanied by a writes to his betrothed: "And now, mandoline. The most patient of morloveliest and dearest of women, allow tals feels himself sick at heart when he me to expect the honor of a line, to let has swallowed a thousand pages of this me know how much of the tedious sentimental twaddle, and all the milk month from last Thursday you will be and water of love. To crown all, Sir so good to abate. My utmost Charles, seeing Harriet embrace her gratitude will ever be engaged by the rival, sketches the plan of a little tem condescension, whenever you shall dis-ple, dedicated to Friendship, to be tinguish the day of the year, distin- built on the very spot; it is the triumph guished as it will be to the end of my of mythological bad taste. At the end, life that shall give me the greatest bouquets shower down as at the blessing of it and confirm me-forever opera; all the characters sing in unison yours, Charles Grandison." A wax a chorus in praise of Sir Charles, and figure could not be more proper. All his wife says: "But could he be otheris in the same taste. There are eight wise than the best of husbands, who wedding-coaches, each with four horses; was the most dutiful of sons, who is the Sir Charles is attentive to old people; most affectionate of brothers; the most at table, the gentlemen, each with a faithful of friends: who is good upon napkin under his arm, wait upon the principle in every relation of life!"t ladies; the bride is ever on the point He is great, he is generous, delicate, of fainting; he throws himself at her pious, irreproachable; he has never feet with the utmost politeness: "What, done a mean action, nor made a wrong my love! In compliment to the best gesture. His conscience and his wig of parents resume your usual presence are unsullied. Amen! Let us canonof mind. I, else, who shall glory be- ize him, and stuff him with straw. fore a thousand witnesses in receiving the honor of your hand, shall be ready to regret that I acquiesced so cheerfully with the wishes of those parental friends for a public celebration."§ Courtesies begin, compliments fly about; a swarm of proprieties flutters around, like a troop of little love-cherabs, and their devout wings serve to sanctify the blessed tendernesses of the Nor, my dear Richardson, have you, great as you are, exactly all the wit which is necessary in order to have enough. By seeking to serve morality, you prejudice it. Do you know the effect of these edifying advertisements which you stick on at the beginning or end of your books? We are repelled, feel our emotion diminish, see the black gowned preacher come snuffling out of the worldly dress which he had as sumed for an hour; we are annoyed by the deceit. Insinuate morality, but do not inflict it. Remember there is a substratum of rebellion in the human Ibid. vi. Letter xxxi. 233. ↑ Ibid. vii. Letter lxi. 336. |