"The next that entered was a man beyond the middle age, bearing the look of one who knew the world and his own course in it. He had just alighted from a handsome private carriage, which had orders to wait in the street while its owner transacted his business. This person came up to the desk with a quick determined step, and looked the Intelligencer in the face with a resolute eye, though at the same time some secret trouble gleamed from it. "'I have an estate to dispose of,' said he with a brevity that seemed characteristic. "'Describe it,' said the Intelligencer. "The applicant proceeded to give the boundaries of his property, its nature, comprising tillage, pasture, woodland, and pleasure ground, in ample circuit; together with a mansion-house replete with gorgeous furniture and all the luxurious artifices that combined to render it a residence where life might flow onward in a stream of golden days. "'I am a man of strong will,' said he in conclusion, 'and at my first setting out in life as a poor unfriended youth, I resolved to make myself the possessor of such 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.