[29] This, perhaps, is typically the _novella_; but Boccaccio will not fix the term: “intendo di raccontare cento _novelle, o favole o parabole o istorie, che dire le vogliamo_ ... nelle quali _novelle_....”--_Preface to Decameron._ [30] For reference in more detailed study of mediæval forms, this tentative classification of the _Decameron_ may be tabulated as follows:-- _anecdote_ 55 (a) _simple anecdote_ 34 I, all but nov. 4; III, nov. 4; V, nov. 4; VI, entire; VIII, all but nov. 7 & 8; IX, nov. 1 & 7–10. (b) _anecdote more artistically elaborated_ 21 III, nov. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6; V, nov. 10; VII, entire; VIII, nov. 7; IX, nov. 2–5. _scenario or summary romance_ 40 II, nov. 3–10; III, nov. 7–10; IV, entire; V, all but nov. 4 & 10; X, entire. _approaching short story_ 3 I, nov. 4; II, nov. 1; VIII, nov. 8. _short story_ 2 II, nov. 2; IX, nov. 6. ---- 100 [31] E. Gilbert, _Le roman en France pendant le xix^e siècle_, page 65; A. France, _La vie littéraire_, _I^{re} série_, page 47. [32] Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the Short-Story_, page 65. [33] _Colomba_ has one hundred and fifty pages. [34] See an essay on _The Literary Influence of Sterne in France_, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, volume xvii, pages 221–236. [35] It would be interesting, for instance, to determine whether Mérimée learned anything in form from Poushkin. [36] Vide the excellent discourse of G. C. Verplanck, Esq., before the New York Historical Society. [37] Not in the first edition. [38] In New Hampshire. [39] In the original publication the name is Patience. [40] [“In place of this clause the first edition has: “Her figure, her air, her features,--all, in their very minutest development were those--were identically (I can use no other sufficient term) were identically those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling of stupor,” etc.] [41] Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Llandaff. See Chemical Essays, vol. v. [42] The season of peach-blossoms was the only season of marriage in ancient China. [43] The most common decorations of rooms, halls, and temples, in China, are ornamental scrolls or labels of colored paper or wood, painted and gilded, and hung over doors or windows, and inscribed with a line or couplet conveying some allusion to the circumstances of the inhabitant, or some pious or philosophical axiom. For instance, a poetical one recorded by Dr. Morrison:-- “From the pine forest the azure dragon ascends to the milky way,”--