sank again, not so low as before, but, on the other hand, they never again rose to their normal level. It was in this saddened mood that he once more took up the Roman romance and finished it; it is a sad book, and when there is a ray of sunshine across the page, it has a melancholy gleam. After we returned to Concord, his apprehensions concerning Una's unsound condition were confirmed; and, in addition, the bitter cleavage between North and South inspired in him the gloomiest forebodings. A wasting away of his whole physical substance ensued; and he died, almost suddenly, while in years he might be considered hardly past the prime of his life. A sensitive eye can trace the effects of the death-blow all through The Marble Faun, and still more in Septimius and Grimshawe, published after his death. In The Dolliver Romance fragment, which was the last thing he wrote, there is visible once more some reminiscence of the old sunshine of humor that was so often apparent in his time of youth and vigor; but it, too, has a sad touch in it, such as belongs to the last rays of the star of day before it sinks below the horizon forever. Night follows, and the rest is silence. XV The Roman carnival in three moods--Apples of Sodom--Poor, battered, wilted, stained hearts--A living protest and scourge--Dulce est desipere in loco--A rollicking world of happy fools--Endless sunshine of some sort--Greenwich Fair was worth a hundred of it--They thundered past, never drawing rein--"Senza moccolo!"--Nothing more charming and strange could be imagined--Girls surprised in the midst of dressing themselves--A Unitarian clergyman with his fat wife--Apparent license under courteous restraint--He laughed and pelted and was pelted--William Story, as vivid as when I saw him last--A too facile power--A deadly shadow gliding close behind--Set afire by his own sallies--"Thy face is like thy mother's, my fair child!"--Cleopatra in the clay-- "War nie sein Brod mit thranen ass."