them to carry it into her bed-chamber, she returned to us. 'They were
not to have brought it till after dark,' said she. 'Pray excuse me, Mr.
Belford; and don't you be concerned, Mrs. Smith. Why should you? There
is nothing more in it than the unusualness of the thing. Why may we not
be as reasonably shocked at going to the church where are the monuments
of our ancestors, as to be moved at such a sight as this.'

"How reasonable was all this. But yet we could not help being shocked at
the thoughts of the coffin thus brought in; the lovely person before our
eyes who is in all likelihood so soon to fill it."

Belford to Lovelace:

"_September 7._ I may as well try to write, since were I to go to bed I
should not sleep; and you may be glad to know the particulars of her
happy exit. All is now hushed and still. At four o'clock yesterday I was
sent for. Her cousin, Colonel Mordern, and Mrs. Smith were with her. She
was silent for a few minutes. Her breath grew shorter. Her sweet voice
and broken periods methinks still fill my ears, and never will be out of
my memory. 'Do you, sir,' turning her head towards me, 'tell your friend
that I forgive him, and I pray to God to forgive him. Let him know how
happily I die, and that such as my own I wish to be his last hour.'

"With a smile of charming serenity overspreading her face, she expired.

"Oh, Lovelace, but I can write no more."

* * * * *

Sir Charles Grandison

"Sir Charles Grandison, and the Honourable Miss Byron, in a
Series of Letters," published in 1753, was the third and last
of Samuel Richardson's novels. Like its predecessors, it is of
enormous length (it first appeared in seven volumes) and is
written in the form of a series of letters. The idea of the
author was to "present to the public, in Sir Charles
Grandison, the example of a man acting uniformly well through
a variety of trying scenes, because all his actions are
regulated by one steady principle--a man of religion and
virtue, of liveliness and spirit, accomplished and agreeable,
happy in himself and a blessing to others." Such a portrait of
"a man of true honour" provoked the highest enthusiasm in the
eighteenth century; but to-day we have little patience for the
faultless diction and exemplary conduct of Sir Charles, and,
of the two, Miss Byron, the heroine, is by far the more
inter