ch a mansion and estate as this,
together with the revenue necessary to uphold it. I have succeeded
to the extent of my utmost wish. And this is the estate which I
have now concluded to dispose of.'

"'And your terms?' asked the Intelligencer, after taking down the
particulars with which the stranger had supplied him.

"'Easy--abundantly easy!' answered the successful man, smiling,
but with a stern and almost frightful contraction of the brow, as
if to quell an inward pang. 'I have been engaged in various sorts
of business--a distiller, a trader to Africa, an East India
merchant, a speculator in the stocks--and in the course of these
affairs have contracted an encumbrance of a certain nature. The
purchaser of the estate shall merely be required to assume this
burden to himself.

"'I understand you,' said the man of intelligence, putting his pen
behind his ear. 'I fear that no bargain can be negociated on these
conditions. Very probably, the next possessor may acquire the
estate with a similar encumbrance, but it will be of his own
contracting, and will not lighten your burden in the least.'"

Mr Hawthorne is by no means an equal writer. He is perpetually giving
his reader, who, being pleased by parts, would willingly think well of
the whole, some little awkward specimen of dubious taste. We confess,
even in the above short extract, to having passed over a sentence or
two, whose absence we have not thought it worth while to mark with
asterisks, and which would hardly bear out our Addisonian compliment.

"But again the door is opened. A grandfatherly personage tottered
hastily into the office, with such an earnestness in his infirm
alacrity that his white hair floated backward, as he hurried up to
the desk. This venerable figure explained that he was in search of
To-morrow.

"'I have spent all my life in pursuit of it,' added the sage old
gentleman, 'being assured that To-morrow has some vast benefit or
other in store for me. But I am now getting a little in years, and
must make haste; for unless I overtake To-morrow soon, I begin to
be afraid it will finally escape me.'

"'This fugitive To-morrow, my venerable friend,' said the man of
intelligence, 'is a stray child of Time, and is flying from his
father into the region of the infinite. Continue your pursuit and
you will doubtless come u