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devout attentions of so many women would have been a trifle fatiguing. They wrote him letters as long as Clarissa Harlowe's. They poured out their sentiments on endless reams of paper. They told him how they walked up and down their rooms, shedding torrents of tears over his heroine's distress, unable to either go on with the book, or to put it resolutely down. They told him how, when "Clarissa" was being read aloud in a bedchamber, the maid who was curling her mistress's hair wept so bitterly she could not go on with her work, so was given a crown for her sensibility, and sent out of the room. They implored and entreated him to end his story happily; "a turn," wrote one fair enthusiast, "that will make your almost despairing readers mad with joy." Richardson purred complacently over these letters, like a sleek old cat, and he answered every one of them, instead of pitching them unread into the fire. Yet, nevertheless, true and great artist that he was, in spite of all his vanity, these passionate solicitations moved him not one hair's breadth from his path. "As well," says Mr. Birrell, "hope for a happy ending for King