as all the rest of them, I have forgotten; but this was in the days when I did not choose my own books, for there was no part of my life in which I loved romances.' This censure of romances, ancient or modern, is not more severe than it is just. With scarcely an exception, the business of romances is to make good bad, and bad good; to misplace and misstate events, falsify characters, and mislead readers. They are full of grave lies, well told, to an ill end. These are the Will o' Wisps of the mind. Something of importance is stated, where Miss Mulso says, that she read romances, volume upon volume, in the days when she did not choose her own books; and when, therefore, she could not avoid this infantile course of reading. She was not then permitted to go in her own way. Superadded to the disadvantages then attending female education, she struggled under domestic discouragements. Maternal vanity set itself against her advances in literature; and it was not till the death of her mother took place, that Miss Mulso, liberated from all impediments, felt herself free to pursue the cultivation of her own understanding. 'I believe,' she writes, referring to her new situation, early in 1750, 'there are few people who are better pleased and contented with their lot than I; for I am qualified to feel my present happiness; by having early experienced very different sensations.' Here then is one marked era in the life of Miss Mulso. Being now mistress of herself, as to the disposal of her time, she rapidly compassed the circle of intellectual improvement. Notwithstanding that she was self-instructed, she soon became mistress of the French and Italian languages, and made some proficiency even in the Latin. Attached thus to literature, she was also careful to select her acquaintance from among persons who were likely to improve her own taste. It was in this way that she cultivated an intimacy with the celebrated Richardson; and that, in 1750, when she was twenty-three years of age, she ventured to controvert his opinions on 'Filial Obedience.'[1] Richardson delighted to stimulate female talents to honourable and persevering exertions. Perhaps his partiality for epistolary intercourse, in which he successively engaged his fair friends, eventually decided Mrs. Chapone as to the mode of communicating her instructions to a beloved niece. About this time, 1749 to 1752, she wrote some poems. Her 'Ode to Peace,' and that to Miss Carter, prefixed to Epictetus, were the first fruits of her muse. Her verse comes up to what she thought of verse, and this seems as much as can with truth be said of it. 'As fond as I am of the works of fancy,' says she, 'of the bold imagery of a Shakspeare, or a Milton, and the delicate landscapes of Thomson, I receive much greater and more solid pleasure from their poetry, as it is the dress and ornament of wisdom and morality, than all the flowers of fancy, and the charms of harmonious numbers, can give