A Modern Mephistopheles. (Sampson Low.)—The idea of this story is
a sentence quoted from Nathaniel Hawthorne, which speaks of "the want of love and reverence for tho human soul, which makes a man pry into its mysterious depths, not with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a cold, philosophical curiosity," as being the "un- pardonable sin." Jasper Helwyze, a wealthy man who has exhausted life, finds one Felix Canaria, an unsuccessful aspirant to fame, in the very act of suicide, and buys him, so to speak, as a human soul on which to experiment. The process becomes, as such processes are apt to do, somewhat complicated. Gladys, a young girl, becomes an in- mate of the house in which live Helwyze and his protege; with a certain Olivia, whose position is not very clearly defined. She falls in love with Canaria, and he marries her, at the command of his patron, who thus hopes to give a keen additional interest to tho drama which he is working out. Then Helwyze himself loves her. But the rest of the story the reader may, if he chooses, discover for himself. There is a certain force about it, but it is certainly not attractive, and it strikes us as being in the last degree unreal.
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