he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his
wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne
to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman,
and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides
neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his
tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.



RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER [From the Writings of Aubepine.]

We do not remember to have seen any translated specimens of the
productions of M. de l'Aubepine--a fact the less to be wondered
at, as his very name is unknown to many of his own countrymen as
well as to the student of foreign literature. As a writer, he
seems to occupy an unfortunate position between the
Transcendentalists (who, under one name or another, have their
share in all the current literature of the world) and the great
body of pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and sympathies
of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events too remote,
too shadowy, and unsubstantial in his modes of development to
suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too popular to
satisfy the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former,
he must necessarily find himself without an audience, except here
and there an individual or possibly an isolated clique. His
writings, to do them justice, are not altogether destitute of
fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation
but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest
his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in
the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his