volumes,
"Clarissa Harlowe" in eight, and sometimes an heroic romance reached
twelve. Jules Janin puts Richardson on Shakespeare's level, and modern
French readers appreciate "Clarissa" more than English--but they get it
abridged. Mr. Dallas, following Janin, has abridged the famous novel
with care for English readers, too, and a more recent editor likewise
aims to evade its monotony by striking out "tediously unnecessary
passages and unimportant details," though old-fashioned readers may
still like to take "Clarissa" in all its prolixity. As to the romances
that preceded it, they seem to our age duller than any ever
written--"huge folios of inanity," said Sir Walter, "over which our
ancestors yawned themselves to sleep." I warrant their descendants
never yawned over "Guy Mannering."

Still, modern novels as a class are more apt to be voluble than prolix.
Story-writers like Trollope, Mrs. Edwards, and McCarthy amaze us at the
ductility which the English tongue assumes for them. They seem less to
compose than to _reel off_ their pages. To Trollope's free-and-easy
flow is there any stop? None, surely, through mental exhaustion. His
bright loquacity and productiveness remind one of that bewitched salt
mill in the story of Nicholas, which ground on for ever, without effort
or wearying, until it had salted the whole sea.

PRIMOGENITURE AND PUBLIC BEQUESTS.

SOMETHING was said, in a former "Driftwood" essay, regarding the
frequent dedications of private fortunes, in America, to public uses.
We see a philanthropic millionaire stripping himself, even in hale
life, of all his wealth save a slender annuity and the portions
reserved for his heirs and legatees; or we see the bulk of a great
fortune given to charities in a testamentary bequest.

Certainly Americans, though often overreaching in making a fortune, are
proverbially lavish in distributing it. New England, the home of
'cuteness in trade, is extraordinary for the number and extent of its
charitable bequests. Americans may do things that an Englishman will
not in getting the best of a bargain, but quite as quickly as the
average Englishman, they give the whole fruits of the sharp trade to
some sufferer. Unscrupulous in a contest of wits, they yet have bowels
of compassion beyond many other nations, are perhaps the least cruel of
all, and have made American private endowments of educational and
charitable institutions famous the world over.

But can we put al