ity upon poor Clifford, Hawthorne gives the prettiest
description, and then, breaking off suddenly, renounces the attempt in
language which, while pleading its inadequacy, conveys an exquisite
satisfaction to the reader. I quote the passage for the sake of its
extreme felicity, and of the charming image with which it concludes.

"But we strive in vain to put the idea into words. No
adequate expression of the beauty and profound pathos with
which it impresses us is attainable. This being, made only
for happiness, and heretofore so miserably failing to be
happy--his tendencies so hideously thwarted that some
unknown time ago, the delicate springs of his character,
never morally or intellectually strong, had given way, and
he was now imbecile--this poor forlorn voyager from the
Islands of the Blest, in a frail bark, on a tempestuous sea,
had been flung by the last mountain-wave of his shipwreck,
into a quiet harbour. There, as he lay more than half
lifeless on the strand, the fragrance of an earthly rose-bud
had come to his nostrils, and, as odours will, had summoned
up reminiscences or visions of all the living and breathing
beauty amid which he should have had his home. With his
native susceptibility of happy influences, he inhales the
slight ethereal rapture into his soul, and expires!"

I have not mentioned the personage in _The House of the Seven Gables_
upon whom Hawthorne evidently bestowed most pains, and whose portrait is
the most elaborate in the book; partly because he is, in spite of the
space he occupies, an accessory figure, and partly because, even more
than the others, he is what I have called a picture rather than a
character. Judge Pyncheon is an ironical portrait, very richly and
broadly executed, very sagaciously composed and rendered--the portrait
of a superb, full blown hypocrite, a large-based, full-nurtured
Pharisee, bland, urbane, impressive, diffusing about him a "sultry"
warmth of benevolence, as the author calls it again and again, and
basking in the noontide of prosperity and the consideration of society;
but in reality hard, gross, and ignoble. Judge Pyncheon is an elaborate
piece of description, made up of a hundred admirable touches, in which
satire is always winged with fancy, and fancy is linked with a deep
sense of reality. It is difficult to say whether Hawthorne followed a
model in describing Judge Py