not of the sort that must find a voice. He seemed to feel that the "Twice-Told Tales," at least, which he described as "memorials of tranquil and not unhappy years," had contracted some faintness of life from their author's mind, as if a low vital tone characterized them, owing to his incapacity to yield himself with fullness of power even to this reflective or creative art:-- "They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade,--the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion there is sentiment; and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power, or an unconquerable reserve, the Author's touches have often an effect of tameness; the merriest man can hardly contrive to laugh at his broadest humor; the tenderest woman, one would suppose, will hardly shed warm tears at his deepest pathos. The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages." This is, of course, the natural overstatement of an author whose work has gone from him and seems less vital because he has outlived it; but nevertheless it contains sound judgment as to the limitations of his art.