t 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 any thing 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....

"The author would regret to be understood as speaking sourly or
querulously of the slight mark made by his earlier literary
efforts on the public at large. It is so far the contrary, that
he has been moved to write this preface, chiefly as affording
him an opportunity to express how much enjoyment he has owed to
these volumes, both before and since their publication. They
are the memorials of very tranquil, and not unhappy years. They
failed, it is true--nor could it have been otherwise--in
winning an extensive popularity. Occasionally, however, when he
deemed them entirely forgotten, a paragraph or an article, from
a native or foreign critic, would gratify his instincts of
authorship with unexpected praise,--too generous praise,
indeed, and too little alloyed with censure, which, therefore,
he learned the better to inflict upon himself. And, by-the-by,
it is a very suspicious symptom of a deficiency of the popular
element in a book, when it calls forth no harsh criticism. This
has been particularly the fortune of the _Twice-Told Tales_.
They made no enemies, and were so little known and talked
about, that those who read, and chanced to like them, were apt
to conceive the sort of kindness for the book, which a person
naturally feels for a discovery of his own. This kindly feeling
(in some cases, at least) extended to the author, who, on the
internal evidence of his sketches, ca