fe to say that the large majority have read it in a certain
abridgment in three volumes which appeared some years ago.

[10] The _Eloge de Richardson_ is in Diderot's Works, v. 212-227.

Doctor Johnson made the answer of true criticism to some one who
complained to him that Richardson is tedious. "Why, sir," he said, "if
you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so
much frighted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for
the sentiment, and consider the story only as giving occasion to the
sentiment." And this is just what Diderot and the Paris of the middle of
the eighteenth century were eager to do. It was the sentiment that
touched and delighted them in _Clarissa_, just as it was the sentiment
that made the fortune of the great romance in their own tongue, which
was inspired by _Clarissa_, and yet was so different from _Clarissa_.
Rousseau threw into the _New Heloisa_ a glow of passion of which the
London printer was incapable, and he added a beauty of external
landscape and a strong feeling for the objects and movement of wild
natural scenery that are very different indeed from the atmosphere of
the cedar-parlour and the Flask Walk at Hampstead. But the sentiment,
the adoration of the _belle ame_, is the same, and it was the _belle
ame_ that fascinated that curious society, where rude logic and a stern
anti-religious dialectic went hand-in-hand with the most tender and
exalted sensibility.[11] It is singular that Diderot says nothing about
Rousseau's famous romance, and we can only suppose that his silence
arose from his contempt for the private perversity and seeming
insincerity of the author.

[11] The _belle ame_ was the origin of the _schoene Seele_ that has
played such a part in German literature and life. The reader will
find a history of the expression in an appendix to Dr. Erich
Schmidt's study. _Richardson, Rousseau, und Goethe_ (Jena, 1875).

Diderot made one attempt of his own, in which we may notice the
influence of the minute realism and the tearful pathos of Richardson.
_The Nun_ was not given to the world until 1796, when its author had
been twelve years in his grave. Since then it has been reproduced in
countless editions in France and Belgium, and has been translated into
English, Spanish, and German. It fell in with certain passionate
movements of the popular mind against some anti-social practices of the
Catholic Church. Perhaps it is no