drawing-room, and we can only laugh at the studied propriety of his faultless intercourse with Miss Byron: He kissed my hand with fervor, dropped down on one knee; again kissed it--You have laid me, madam, under everlasting obligation; and will you permit me before I rise--loveliest of women, will you permit me to beg an early day?-- He clasped me in his; arms with an ardor--that displeased me not on reflection. But at the time startled me. He then thanked me again on one knee. I held out the hand he had not in his, with intent to raise him; for I could not speak. He received it as a token of favor; kissed it with ardor; arose; _again_ pressed my cheeks with his lips. I was too much surprised to repulse him with anger; but was he not too free? Am I a prude, my dear? Restrain, check me, madam, whenever I seem to trespass on your goodness. Yet how shall I forbear to wish you to hasten the day that shall make you wholly mine? You will the rather allow me to wish it, as you will then be more than ever your own mistress; though you have always been generously left to a discretion that never was more deservedly trusted to. Your will, madam, will ever comprehend mine. The verisimilitude of Richardson's novels, which is made so striking by his feminine attention to detail, may seem destroyed to modern readers by the apparent improbability of the narrative itself. It appears strange that young girls like Pamela or Clarissa should be so entirely in the power of their seducers, that incidents should be repeated with impunity which the existence of a police force would seem to make impossible. But the reader whose sense of probability is shocked by the unpunished and uninterrupted villanies of Mr. B. and of Lovelace, can find evidence of the security with which such crimes could be committed by the rich and influential in the Newgate calendar. The forcible detention in his own house, by Lord Baltimore, of a young girl, his atrocious treatment of her, and his escape from punishment, are incidents in real life not more remarkable than the fictions of the novelist.