be gone."

"For the love of God, Montresor!"

"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"

But to these words I harkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I
called aloud: "Fortunato!"

No answer. I called again: "Fortunato!"

No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and
let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the
bells. My heart grew sick--on account of the dampness of the
catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last
stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I
reerected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no
mortal has disturbed them. _In pace requiescat!_

II

OF HAWTHORNE AND THE SHORT STORY[3]

The reputation of the author of "Twice-Told Tales" has been confined,
until very lately, to literary society; and I have not been wrong,
perhaps, in citing him as the example, par excellence, in this
country, of the privately admired and publicly-unappreciated man of
genius. Within the last year or two, it is true, an occasional critic
has been urged, by honest indignation, into very warm approval. Mr.
Webber,[4] for instance (than whom no one has a keener relish for that
kind of writing which Mr. Hawthorne has best illustrated), gave us, in
a late number of _The American Review_, a cordial and certainly a full
tribute to his talents; and since the issue of the "Mosses from an Old
Manse" criticisms of similar tone have been by no means infrequent in
our more authoritative journals. I can call to mind few reviews of
Hawthorne published before the "Mosses." One I remember in _Arcturus_
(edited by Matthews and Duyckinck[5]) for May, 1841; another in the
_American Monthly_ (edited by Hoffman[6] and Herbert) for March, 1838;
a third in the ninety-sixth number of _The North American Review_.
These criticisms, however, seemed to have little effect on the popular
taste--at least, if we are to form any idea of the popular taste by
reference to its expression in the newspapers, or by the sale of the
author's book. It was never the fashion (until lately) to speak of
him in any summary of our best authors....

[Footnote 3: From a review of Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales" and
"Mosses from an Old Manse," published in _Godey's Magazine_ in 1846.
Except for an earlier notice by Longfellow in _The North American
Review_, this was the first notable recognition Hawthorne's stories
received from a contemporary criti