It is thus not difficult to understand that, | can they be found to differ from the realities with all his power, he is hardly what can be seen when the glass is withdrawn, and yet termed a popular author. In the present with a subtle ethereal character and air of day, indeed, the popular taste has become unreality. It is a style admirably adapted so vitiated by unhealthy stimulus and coarse to his genius and proclivities, and seems sensational excitement, that anything so re- with snake-like ease and grace to curve itself fined as his flavour must be felt by all who round the quaintest forms, and to insinuate indulge in such debauchery (we can use no itself into the most tortuous convolutions milder term) to be cold, lifeless, vapid. of thought and sentiment. So far as mere He has nothing rough enough in the grain language is concerned, there are few writers to affect senses so exhausted and debased, that can produce effects of awe and terror and if he had, he is too true an Epicurean to use it. He is dainty in his tastes, and by the dainty reader alone will he be relished. Not only, therefore, in these days of demoralizing fiction and over-wrought incident, will he be generally found to be too reflective and deficient in excitement to be attractive; at any time his fame is not likely to be that of the well-thumbed and dog-eared page. But even now he is, and one day we believe will be still more, generally regarded by competent readers as one of the most refined, tender, powerful, and highly imaginative writers in the English language. His employment of that language in perfect adaptation to his purpose, is one of the most prominent charms of this author. We have said, he is dainty in his tastes. In nothing is he more dainty than in his use of words. He is a purist in style. It may, perhaps, be possible that scrutinizing eyes may detect here and there an expression that serves to mark his nationality. But his vocabulary is singularly choice and appropriate, and his style is a model of elegance. It is free from exaggeration or straining, and if it is generally unimpassioned, it is still more devoid of stiffness and dry ungeniality. It flows in a placid, gentle rill, always sweet and pellucid; sometimes in its clearness and purity, in its unobtrusive operation and quiet movement, it may and weird-like mystery with so simple means. He builds his magic edifice with small and plain materials, but disposed with such cunning art, that others more imposing and gorgeous would be felt to be vulgar and ostentatious in comparison. There are, however, many minds deeply thoughtful and full of generous sympathy, who find in his works neither the charm nor the high tone we would ascribe to them. His immense power - and that always exercised in the most temperate and unstrained manner - can hardly, we think, be denied; but he manifests a fondness for dealing with sides of our nature where assuredly the strength and cheerfulness of humanity do not lie, which by some is felt to be morbid. And we would admit at once that he often chooses subjects that are dangerous themes, and unfolds with curious scrutiny the working of emotions, the treatment of which in almost any other hands than his would degenerate into sickly sentimentalism or repulsive ugliness. In truth, he not only shows a certain preference for handling such subjects, he sometimes almost seems to play with them. He turns them over and over as if loth to dismiss them or to leave a single point unexamined; he never wearies trying on them the effect of various positions and points of view. But we maintain that his apparent toying with such topics is only apparent. It is the mode in which minds he rarely ventures to commit himself tobut, in anatomical phrase, demonstrated, by exhibiting the bearings, the workings, and consequences of the data, in concrete and living forms in many and various aspects. Given combinations of moral and spiritual forces are not judged of speculatively. He reduces them to experiment and illustration. He embodies them in the creatures of his imagination, in their character and circumstances, and with the unerring sympathy and instinct of genius he inspires them with life and evolves the results, leaving these to speak for themselves. rather be said to distil over upon its subject, like his question and investigate, and the and there to crystallize with curious refract- more cautious and thorough the research ing power, which reveals the image un- the more protracted the seeming dalliance. dimmed, but deflected from the direct line It is, in fact, after a certain fashion, an apof vision. Optics supply a parallel to an- plication to Ethics of the Baconian experiother of its qualities. It often acts like a mental method of inquiry. He does not reversed telescope, throwing objects back reason out his questions: he simply verifies into the distance, and imparting to them a them; and the experimental survey must fineness and delicacy and fairy-like aspect, be thorough and exhaustive to secure the so true and life-like that in no particular inclusion of all possible contingencies. Moral and psychological problems which by | natural beauty have a charm for him, not the abstract thinker would be analysed and less than the most intricate and complex acutely discussed, are by him - we shall tissue of strange and conflicting elements. not say solved, for positive solution is what Every reader must remember "The Old Manse," with its rich orchard, bounded by the sluggish waters of the Concord; its cobwebby library; the fishing excursion with Ellery Channing; the peaceful rest of its "near retirement and accessible seclusion; " its gentle joys "in those genial days of autumn, when Mother Nature, having perfected her harvests and accomplished every needful thing that was given her to do, overflows with a blessed superfluity of love, and has leisure to caress her children." How fresh and touching in its extreme simplicity, mixed with one or two touches of quiet humour, and relieved here and there at the close of a paragraph by a That in the prosecution of such experimental Ethics through the instrumentality sudden turn of pleasantly quaint moralizing of the imagination, he evinces somewhat is "Little Annie's Ramble." What a genthe spirit and tendency of a casuist, must uine eye for, and unaffected love of, what perhaps be granted, in the sense that he gen- is purest, fairest in human nature, it re erally selects cases which are out of the ordinary run of daily life, which are delicate, fine, and intricate in the complexity and often in the contradictoriness of their elements, and which cannot be decided which he at least is too judicial, too conscientious to decide - in the rough-and-ready style, and by the sound, but not always nicely discriminating rules that prevail with salutary result in practical and busy life. The questions he raises are for the most part too complicated and difficult to be dealt with by so coarse though effective an instrument as the so-called strong common sense of the upright man of the world. Such a man would misjudge them, or if his conclusions were right, they would be so on false premisses, and irrespective of considerations that ought to obtain recognition. Hawthorne rests satisfied with no such haphazard and superficial treatment. He manipulates his combinations with the utmost care and precision, to make sure the good there is may not be lost sight of, or to impress on us with haunting iteration the baneful effects on it of that with which it is associated. An evidence of the general healthiness of his nature may be found in the scenes of sweet innocence and natural simplicity that abound in his works. The freshness of childhood and pictures of genial life and veals! How charming a half-dozen pages! and all about the commonest objects, some would say, the veriest trifles of daily life. Little Pearl in The Scarlet Letter in one of her more natural moods, playing by the sea-shore, while her mother converses with her outraged husband, is hardly less beautiful, if, in its connexion and collateral bearings, not quite so simple a picture of childhood: "At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and - as it declined to venture - seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and inattainable sky. Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made little boats out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snail-shells, and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in New England; but the larger part of them foundered near the shore. She seized a live horse-shoe by the tail, and made prize of several five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. Then she took up the white foam, that streaked the line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering after it, with winged footsteps, to catch the great snow-flakes ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds, that fed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creep ing from rock to rock after these small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. One little grey bird, with a white breast, Pearl was almost sure had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken wing. But then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport, because it grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the sea-breeze, or as wild as Pearl herself. ments in the Chemistry of Ethics; but if he deals with poisons, it is to make their real nature and effects known, even when they mingle with fair and good things, never to trifle with and disguise them. To the general soundness as well as fineness of moral feeling and judgment displayed in his works, we must admit, at at le least, "Her final employment was to gather seaone grave exception. His Life of Pierce weeds of various kinds, and make herself a scarf might perhaps be disposed of as an ephemor mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume eral production, which, if it served its more the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited immediate purpose, was never meant to do her mother's gift for devising drapery and cos- more; as unworthy, it may be, of his reputume. As the last touch to her mermaid's garb, tation and powers, but never put forth with Pearl took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best the intention or hope of its surviving its she could, on her own bosom, the decoration temporary aims, and therefore to count for with which she was so familiar on her mother's, nothing in an estimate of his literary capaca letter the letter A --but freshly green in- ity and character. Were it merely worth stead of scarlet! The child bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device with strange interest, even as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the world was to make out its hidden import." The heart that so sings in harmony with childhood's sweetest music can hardly be suspected of choosing and enjoying the delineation of horror or evil for its own sake. Even in his tales of darker shade and lurid less, this course might be followed. It were hard could one not help his friend to the Presidency by an electioneering pamphlet, without it being subjected to the same criticism as his more earnest and professedly artistic works. Such plea may be sustained for an innocent squib or jeu d'esprit. But how slight soever its proportions, how occasional soever its ostensible purpose, his Life of Pierce seeks to achieve that purpose light, these qualities are relieved, and their by a treatment, neither apparently frivolous real character attested, by the bright sunshine and winning beauty that form the broader features of the picture. In this lies the contrast and moral superiority of his tales, even of most thrilling awe, to those of his wild, erratic countryman, Edgar Allan Poe, whose productions derive their chief fascination from the depth of unredeemed and unnatural horror they reveal. It may be, that what is strange and unusual in humanity has for Hawthorne rather more than a due share of attractiveness, but he never chooses evil for his study from a love of it; and delicate themes he always treats nor uncandid, of a question of the deepest import; and it would seem difficult to escape the dilemma, that either the opinions it sets forth are seriously entertained and advocated by the author, or the success of General Pierce was more to him than truth or falsehood in regard to a question as sacred as it is momentous. When General Pierce offered himself as a candidate for the Presidency, the repeal or the maintenance of the Fugitive Slave Act was the question of the day. Pierce was a declared proslavery man; and it is with extreme pain that we find Hawthorne advocating his with the utmost delicacy. Nothing could claims as those of a" man who dared to exceed the purity, tenderness, and, at the love that great and grand reality - his same time, harrowing truthfulness, with whole united native country -better than which the sin of the "Scarlet Letter" and the mistiness of a philanthropic theory." its fruits are portrayed. We regret we can Still we are reluctant to allow ourselves to extract no passage for illustration. Quotation here is of no avail. It is a delicacy, not of any one scene, but pervading the entire story, with a sustained tone that could be achieved only by a mind in which the highest delicacy of feeling is native and inherent. Very different results would such materials have yielded in the hands of a George Sand, or of a Victor Hugo. Even in those of not a few of our popular English novelists we should have seen over all "the trail of the serpent." It may be that Hawthorne exhibits too great a predilection for what may be considered curious experi think that he was, in defiance of nobler convictions, basely prostituting his pen for electioneering purposes. We are rather disposed to believe that he distrusted the wisdom and ability as well as the moderation of the extreme Abolition party, - that he doubted whether violent effort to achieve promptly great social changes might not result in worse disaster. The gradual progress, the natural growth of the body social and politic, was one of the soundest lessons our own great statesman Burke taught. It may be easy for us now, with the result so far accomplished, to read the past in a different light. But we should not forget of the universe in general, on the other. how little, at one stage of the great strug- It were assuredly unjust to assume that the gle, many even of the most generous and opinions expressed by any of his characters, philanthropic among ourselves sympathized with or had faith in the professions or the cause of the North. The heroic is born of intensity rather than of breadth and comprehension, and a man may see things on too many sides, unless he sees them all fully and in their just relations. With limited faculties activity may be paralysed by even those that by any preference or general approval or other token seem to lie nearest the personality of the author, represent the author's own sentiments; and full account must be taken of the fact, that in what we now quote, the speaker is represented as undergoing a process of gradual but thorough deterioration alike moral increased knowledge and breadth of view, - ly and intellectually. Still, as that speaker not by the calls to action appearing less, is also portrayed as a man of indomitable but by the objections to any particular action appearing greater. Some spirits are "framed Too subtly pondering for mastery," or, indeed, for any independent action at all. The following reads less like a wise and humble distrust of human foresight and scheming, than a renunciation of enlightened moral agency and of free human aim and effort, - less like a submission to Providence than an acquiescence in Fate: "One view, and probably a wise one, looks upon slavery as one of those evils which Divine Providence does not leave to be remedied by human contrivances, but which, in its own good time, by some means impossible to be anticipated, but by the simplest and easiest operation, when all its uses shall have been fulfilled, shall vanish like a dream. There is no instance in all history of the human will and intellect having perfected any great moral reform by methods which it adapted to that end; but the progress of the world at every step leaves some evil or wrong on the path behind it, which the wisest of mankind, of their own set purpose, could never have found the way to rectify." * While, however, we recognise a source of weakness and timidity in this scrupulous anxiety to discriminate and to balance, a shrinking from responsibility that tends to issue in a system almost of indifferentism, in forgetfulness of the fact that the responsibility of laissez-faire decision is quite as great as that of one of interference, it is well we should not confound this with deliberate pandering of clear and honest convictions to lower motives. An inclination to a fatalistic view of the world and human affairs crops out in other parts of his writings, and perhaps it might form an interesting question how far this tendency may be due to his training in a school of mystic idealism, on the one hand, and to his experience of an attempt to realize a specious but unsound commun will and self-reliance, and therefore presents no special appropriateness at least no clear call or apology - for such views as he is made to utter, the expression of opinion, especially taken in connexion with the deliverance above given by the author in propria persona, is not without significance ""Peace, Hester, peace!' replied the old man, with gloomy sternness, it is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man.''"* So again in that terrible interview by the brook-side in the forest, when Hester Prynne, in obedience to the requirement of her child, again fastens on her breast the stigma of her sin and shame, with the removal of which she had felt as if the burden of her life and its anguish had departed from her spirit, we read: "Hopefully, but a moment ago, as Hester had spoken of drowning it in the deep sea, there was a sense inevitable doom upon her, as she thus received back the deadly symbol from the hand of fate. She had flung it into infinite space! She had drawn an hour's free breath! and here again was the scarlet misery glittering on the old spot! So it ever is, whether thus typified or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom." † A reflection made by the author in his own name at the end of The Scarlet Letter, in taking leave of two of the principal characters, affords less doubtful evidence of the transcendental influence of Emerson. As usual, his strongly undogmatic tendency restrains him from any positive assertion; ism and social scheme for the amelioration • Life of Franklin Pierce, pp. 113, 114. * The Scarlet Letter, p. 161. † Ibid. p. 198. but the negation of any fundamental and more striking instance could be found of ineradicable distinction between right and how little he depends on the interest of wrong, good and evil, is more than nibbled at: "Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the appearance and demeanour of the old man known as Roger Chillingworth. All his strength and energy. all his vital and intellectual force - seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge; and when by its completest triumph and consummation, that evil principle was left with no further material to support it, when, in short, there was no more Devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his Master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But to all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances, -as well Roger Chillingworth as his companions, we would fain be merciful. It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each in its utmost development supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. In the spiritual world, the old physician and the minister mutual victims as they have been may unawares have found their earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love." * The view we have taken of his writings, as aiming before all else to be an embodiment of the operation and results of strange, involved, and conflicting combinations of moral and spiritual data, is quite in keeping with the very sparing use he makes of eventful incident. Perhaps no novelist so little depends on plot, or on the interest of outward circumstance. If the crucial merit suspense, of doubt to be solved, of difficulty to be overcome, than is presented in the chapter of Transformation entitled "The Spectre of the Catacomb." The separation of one from the other members of a party visiting the Catacombs of Rome would seem to afford an occasion for a most natural, almost unavoidable scene of highpitched interest and excitement. The reality of the danger; its magnitude and horror; the confusion of the searchers, themselves ignorant of the labyrinth, and each in imminent risk of being lost in the gloom and enravelment of the intersecting narrow passages; their proneness to rush hither and thither without plan; their eagerness and anxiety only multiplying the difficulties and the hazard; their hasty movements, now extinguishing their tapers, now carrying them past marks that are important for retracing their own steps; their flashing hopes and crushing disappointments; - all the details of such an event are what many writers of fiction would make a considerable digression to introduce - what hardly one would spurn. Yet Hawthorne, when Miriam is separated from her companions in the dismal corridors of St. Calixtus, after mentioning that the guide assured them that there was no possibility of rendering assistance unless by shouting at the top of their voices, quietly disposes of the crisis in "Accordingly they all began a sentence: to shriek, halloo, and bellow, with the utmost force of their lungs. And, not to prolong the reader's suspense (for we do not particularly seek to interest him in this scene, telling it only on account of the trouble and strange entanglement which followed), they soon heard a responsive call in a female voice." He dwells chiefly on the develop ment of the results on the inner life of such or its circumstantial details, and not unfre events as are narrated - or implied; for often the event is already passed, and only inferred, quently its actual nature, left vague and undefined. Sometimes even-so little is made of mere outward actualities a suggestion is offered of several possible cases, of such a form of literary composition be, and the reader invited to make his choice. as some are disposed to hold, the continu- The actual facts of outward life, considered ous movement of a well-told story, few merely as facts, are held quite subordinate claims can be made in his favour. There to the intellectual and moral influences with which they are charged; and these he sets ing scrutiny as if he suspected they might yet present some new aspect, or were afraid to close the record uncompleted. is no romantic adventure; no gathering complications disentangled by sudden un- forth with a patient minuteness and lingerdreamt-of disclosures; no development of events in strict causal sequence, leading ultimately to startling unsuspected results, not even stirring movement of life. No * The Scarlet Letter, pp. 248, 249. It must not, however, be understood that we would imply that he is to be described |