secured in "Washington Square," though that effect is as remote as
possible from the terror of "The House of Usher" or the vindictive
triumph of "The Cask of Amontillado."

Farewell, farewell, thou sombre and solitary spirit: a genius
tethered to the hack-work of the press, a gentleman among canaille,
a poet among poetasters, dowered with a scholar's taste without a
scholar's training, embittered by his sensitive scorn, and all
unsupported by his consolations.



LETTER--To Sir Walter Scott, Bart.



Rodono, St. Mary's Loch:
Sept. 8, 1885.

Sir,--In your biography it is recorded that you not only won the
favour of all men and women; but that a domestic fowl conceived an
affection for you, and that a pig, by his will, had never been
severed from your company. If some Circe had repeated in my case
her favourite miracle of turning mortals into swine, and had given
me a choice, into that fortunate pig, blessed among his race, would
I have been converted! You, almost alone among men of letters,
still, like a living friend, win and charm us out of the past; and
if one might call up a poet, as the scholiast tried to call Homer,
from the shades, who would not, out of all the rest, demand some
hours of your society? Who that ever meddled with letters, what