of homely commonplace people leading calm domestic lives and amusingly unconscious of the political and intellectual storms which were raging outside. Richardson himself was the typical industrious apprentice. He was the son of a London tradesman who had witnessed with due horror the Popish machinations of James II. Richardson, born just after the Revolution, had been apprenticed to a printer, married his master's daughter, set up a fairly successful business, was master of the Stationers' Company in 1754, and was prosperous enough to have his country box, first at North End and afterwards at Parson's Green. He never learned any language but his own. He had taken to writing from his infancy; he composed little stories of an edifying tendency and had written love-letters for young women of his acquaintance. From his experience in these departments he acquired the skill which was afterwards displayed in 'Pamela' and his two later and superior novels. We hear dimly of many domestic trials: of the loss of children, some of whom had lived to be 'delightful prattlers,' of 'eleven affecting deaths in two years.' Who were the eleven remains unknown. His sorrows have long passed into oblivion, unless so far as the sentiment was transmuted into his writings. We do not know whether it was from calamity or constitutional infirmity that he became a very nervous and tremulous little man. He never dared to ride, but exercised himself on a 'chamber-horse,' one of which apparently wooden animals he kept at each of his houses. For years he could not raise a glass to his lips without help. His dread of altercations prevented him from going often among his workmen. He gave his orders in writing that he might not have to bawl to a deaf foreman. He gave up 'wine and flesh and fish.' He drew a capital portrait of himself, for the benefit of a lady still unknown to him, who recognised him by its help at a distance of 'above three hundred yards.' His description is minute enough: 'Short; rather plump than emaciated, notwithstanding his complaints; about 5 foot 5 inches; fair wig, lightish cloth coat, all black besides; one hand generally in his bosom, the other, a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when attacked by sudden tremors or startings and dizziness, which too frequently attack him, but, thank God, not so often as formerly; looking directly foreright, as passers by would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand of him without moving his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a light-brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him; smoothish-faced and ruddy cheeked; at some times looking to be about sixty-five, at others much younger' (really sixty); 'a regular even pace stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey eye, too often overclouded by mistinesses from the head; by chance lively--very