creation, which only genius could have conceived amid the formal and narrow-motived circle which surrounded her. Clarissa is more domestic and pathetic; though in the whole range of our dramatic poetry, so fertile in touching situation, there is nothing more heart-rending than the visit of her cousin to her in the last volume. He finds the happy and blooming girl whom he left the idol of her home circle, accustomed to affection and attention, surrounded by cheerful pleasures and graceful duties—he finds her in a miserable lodging, among strangers, faded, heart broken, and for daily employ making her shroud. A French critic says: "Even Richardson himself did not dare hazard making Clarissa in love with his hero." Richardson had far too fine a perception of character to do any such thing. What was there in Lovelace that Clarissa should love him? He is witty; but wit is the last quality to excite passion, or to secure affection. Liberty is the element of love; and from the first he surrounds her with restraint, and inspires her with distrust. Moreover, he makes no appeal to the generosity of her nature; and to interest those generous feelings, so active in the feminine temperament, is the first step in gaining the citadel of her heart. To have loved, would not have detracted one touch from the delicate colouring of Clarissa's character; to have loved a man like Lovelace would. In nothing, more than in attachment is "the nature subdued to what it works in." But Lovelace is now an historical picture; it represents a class long since passed away, and originally of foreign importation. It belonged to the French regime, when the young men of birth and fortune had no sphere of activity but the camp; all more honourable and useful occupation shut, and when, as regarded his country, he was a civil cipher. The Lovelace or the Lauzun could never have been more than an exception in our stirring country, where pursuits and responsibility are in the lot of all. They may, however, be noted as proofs that where the political standard is low, the moral standard will be still lower.
Excepting, therefore, the impassioned Italian of Sir Charles Grandison, Flora M'lvor is the first female character of our novels in which poetry is the basis of the composition. She has all Clementine wants; picturescue accessories, and the strong moral purpose. Generally speaking, the mind of a woman is developed by the heart; the being is incomplete till love brings out either its strength or its weakness. This is not the case with the beautiful Highlander; and Scott is the first who has drawn a heroine, and put the usual master-passion aside. We believe few women go down to the grave without at some time or other feeling the full force of the affections. Flora, had not her career been cut short in the very fulness of its flower, would have loved, loved with all the force of a character formed before it loved. Scott's picture is, at the time when she is introduced, as full of truth as of beauty. The strong mind has less immediate need of an object than the weak one. Rose Bradwardine falls in love at once, compelled by "the sweet necessity of loving." Flora M'lvor feels no such necessity; her imagination is occupied; her on-lookings to the future, excited by the fortunes of the ill-fated House to which her best sympathies and most earnest hopes are given. The House of Stuart has at once her sense of justice and of generosity on its side; it is connected with the legends of her earliest years; she is impelled towards it with true female adherence to the unfortunate. Moreover, her affections have already an object in her
