our to another, which mark the modern writer of sentimental
fiction. As the title warns us, it is a story of a youthful tutor and
a too fair disciple, straying away from the lessons of calm philosophy
into the heated places of passion. The high pride of Julie's father
forbade all hope of their union, and in very desperation the unhappy
pair lost the self-control of virtue, and threw themselves into the
pit that lies so ready to our feet. Remorse followed with quick step,
for Julie had with her purity lost none of the other lovelinesses of a
dutiful character. Her lover was hurried away from the country by the
generous solicitude of an English nobleman, one of the bravest,
tenderest, and best of men. Julie, left undisturbed by her lover's
presence, stricken with affliction at the death of a sweet and
affectionate mother, and pressed by the importunities of a father whom
she dearly loved, in spite of all the disasters which his will had
brought upon her, at length consented to marry a foreign baron from
some northern court. Wolmar was much older than she was; a devotee of
calm reason, without a system and without prejudices, benevolent,
orderly, above all things judicious. The lover meditated suicide, from
which he was only diverted by the arguments of Lord Edward, who did
more than argue; he hurried the forlorn man on board the ship of
Admiral Anson, then just starting for his famous voyage round the
world. And this marks the end of the first episode.

Rousseau always urged that his story was dangerous for young girls,
and maintained that Richardson was grievously mistaken in supposing
that they could be instructed by romances. It was like setting fire to
the house, he said, for the sake of making the pumps play.[41] As he
admitted so much, he is not open to attack on this side, except from
those who hold the theory that no books ought to be written which may
not prudently be put into the hands of the young,--a puerile and
contemptible doctrine that must emasculate all literature and all art,
by excluding the most interesting of human relations and the most
powerful of human passions. There is not a single composition of the
first rank outside of science, from the Bible downwards, that could
undergo the test. The most useful standard for measuring the
significance of a book in this respect is found in the manners of the
time, and the prevailing tone of contemporary literature. In trying to
appreciate the meaning of the N