desire for something more 'sentimental' shows itself in Young's 'Night Thoughts,' in Hervey's 'Meditations,' and appears in the religious domain as Methodism. The literary historian has to trace the rise of the same tendency in various places. In Germany, as we see from Mrs. Klopstock's enthusiasm, the flame was only waiting for the spark. Goethe, in his 'Wahrheit und Dichtung,' notices the influence of Richardson's novels in Germany. They were among the predisposing causes of Wertherism. In France, as I have said, Richardson found congenial hearers, and Clarissa's soul doubtless transmigrated into the heroine of the 'Nouvelle Heloise.' Even in stubborn England, where Fielding's masculine contempt for the whinings of 'Pamela' was more congenial, the students of Richardson were prepared to receive 'Ossian' with enthusiasm, and to be ecstatic over 'Tristram Shandy.' That Richardson would have agreed with Johnson in regarding Rousseau as fit only for a penal settlement, and that he actually considered Sterne to be 'execrable,' does not relieve him of the responsibility or deprive him of the glory. He is not the only writer who has helped to evoke a spirit which he would be the last to sanction. When he encouraged his admirably proper young ladies to indulge in 'sentimentalism,' he could not tell where so vague an impulse would ultimately land them. He was a sound Tory, and an accepter of all established creeds. Sentimentalism with him was merely a delight in cultivating the emotions, without any thought of consequences; or, later, of cultivating them with the assumption that they would continue to move, as he bade them, 'at the command of virtue.' Once set in motion, they chose to take paths of their own; they revolted against conventions, even those which he held most sacred; and by degrees set up 'Nature' as an idol, and admired the ingenuous savage instead of the respectable Clarissa, and denounced all corruption, including, alas, the British constitution, and even the Thirty-nine Articles, and put themselves at the disposal of all manner of revolutionary audacities. But the little printer was safe in his grave, and knew not of what strange developments he had been the ignorant accomplice.