his requiem, and in which there is the suggestion of Dickens not in the best phase of his art, the jubilation is somewhat diabolic; it affects one as if Hawthorne's thoughts were executing a dance upon a grave. The character is too plainly hated by the author, and it fails to carry conviction of its veracity. Yet in certain external touches and aspects it suggests the hypocrite who everywhere walks the streets, placid, respectable, sympathetic in salutations, but bearing within a cold, gross, cruel, sensual, and selfish nature which causes a shudder at every casual glimpse that betrays its lurking hideousness. The character is thoroughly conceived, but being developed by description instead of action, seems overdone; prosperity has made him too flabby to act, and kills him with a fit as soon as he works himself up to play the role.
After all, the story in its contemporary phase is but a small part of the novel, which does not much suffer even if the Judge in his youthful, hard-hearted, cowardly crime and the victim in his aesthetic delicacy are both ineffective in making the impression the author aimed at. The real scene is the singularly trivial and barren life of the old house, where nothing takes place but the purchase of a Jim Crow, a breakfast of mackerel, a talk about chickens, gossip with Uncle Venner, and the passing of a political procession in the street; and one too easily forgets the marvelous art which could make such a life interesting and stimulating
