"He stood still with his grief; and, as Mr. Wellon pressed his honest, hard hand, he lifted to his pastor one of those childlike looks that only come out on the face of the true man, that has grown, as oaks grow, ring around ring, adding each after-age to the childhood that has never been lost, but has been kept innermost. This fisherman seemed like one of those that plied their trade, and were the Lord's disciples, at the Sea of Galilee, eighteen hundred years ago. The very flesh and blood inclosing such a nature keep a long youth through life. Witness the genius, (who is only the more thorough man,) poet, painter, sculptor, finder-out, or whatever; how fresh and fair such an one looks out from under his old age! Let him be Christian, too, and he shall look as if--shedding this outward--the inward being would walk forth a glorified one." * * * * * "As he mentioned his fruitless visits, a startling, most repulsive leer just showed itself in Ladford's face; but it disappeared as suddenly and wholly as a monster that has come up, horrid and hideous, to the surface of the sea, and then has sunk again, bodily, into the dark deep, and is gone, as if it had never come, except for the fear and loathing that it leaves behind. This face, after that look, had nothing repulsive in it, but was only the more subdued and sad." The author's mind so teems with images, that he does not always discriminate between the good and the bad. Occasionally we find some that are manifestly faulty and overstrained. "It is one on which the tenderness of the deep heart of the Common Mother breaks itself; over which _the broad, dark, silent wings of a dread mystery are stretched_." * * * * * "Her voice had in it that tender _touch_ which _lays itself, warm and loving_, on the heart." * * * * * "And then her voice began _to drop down_, as it were, _from step to step_,--and _the steps seemed cold and damp, as it went down them lingeringly_:--'or for trial,--disappointment,--whatever comes!'--and at the last, _it seemed to have gone down into a sepulchral vault_." We do not admire any one of the above,--least of all the last, in which the human voice is embodied as a sexton going down the steps of a tomb. Why, too, as a matter of verbal criticism, should the author use such words as "tragedist," "exhibitress," and "cheaty?"