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unreality. It is a style admirably adapted to his genius and proclivities, and seems with snake-like ease and grace to curve itself round the quaintest forms, and to insinuate itself into the most tortuous convolutions of thought and sentiment. So far as mere language is concerned, there are few writers that can produce effects of awe and terror 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.

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| can they be found to differ from the realities with all his power, he is hardly what can be seen when the glass is withdrawn, and yet termed a popular author.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 so vitiated by unhealthy stimulus and coarse sensational excitement, that anything so refined as his flavour must be felt by all who indulge in such debauchery (we can use no milder term) to be cold, lifeless, vapid. He has nothing rough enough in the grain to affect senses so exhausted and debased, 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 rather be said to distil over upon its subject, and there to crystallize with curious refracting power, which reveals the image undimmed, but deflected from the direct line of vision. Optics supply a parallel to another of its qualities. It often acts like a reversed telescope, throwing objects back into the distance, and imparting to them a fineness and delicacy and fairy-like aspect, so true and life-like that in no particular

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 like his question and investigate, and the more cautious and thorough the research the more protracted the seeming dalliance. It is, in fact, after a certain fashion, an application to Ethics of the Baconian experimental method of inquiry. He does not reason out his questions: he simply verifies them; and the experimental survey must be thorough and exhaustive to secure the 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 he rarely ventures to commit himself to Manse," with its rich orchard, bounded by but, in anatomical phrase, demonstrated, by the sluggish waters of the Concord; its exhibiting the bearings, the workings, and cobwebby library; the fishing excursion consequences of the data, in concrete and with Ellery Channing; the peaceful rest of living forms in many and various aspects. its "near retirement and accessible secluGiven combinations of moral and spiritual sion; " its gentle joys "in those genial days forces are not judged of speculatively. He of autumn, when Mother Nature, having reduces them to experiment and illustration. perfected her harvests and accomplished He embodies them in the creatures of his every needful thing that was given her to imagination, in their character and circum- do, overflows with a blessed superfluity of stances, and with the unerring sympathy and love, and has leisure to caress her chilinstinct of genius he inspires them with life dren." How fresh and touching in its exand evolves the results, leaving these to treme simplicity, mixed with one or two speak for themselves. touches of quiet humour, and relieved here and there at the close of a paragraph by a sudden turn of pleasantly quaint moralizing is "Little Annie's Ramble." What a genuine eye for, and unaffected love of, what is purest, fairest in human nature, it reveals! 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:

That in the prosecution of such experimental Ethics through the instrumentality of the imagination, he evinces somewhat the spirit and tendency of a casuist, must perhaps be granted, in the sense that he generally 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 "At first, as already told, she had flirted fanpart too complicated and difficult to be dealt cifully with her own image in a pool of water, with by so coarse though effective an instru- beckoning the phantom forth, and -as it dement as the so-called strong common sense clined to venture -seeking a passage for herof the upright man of the world. Such a self into its sphere of impalpable earth and unman would misjudge them, or if his conclu- attainable sky. Soon finding, however, that sions were right, they would be so on false either she or the image was unreal, she turned premisses, and irrespective of considerations elsewhere for better pastime. She made little that ought to obtain recognition. Haw-boats out of birch-bark, and freighted them with thorne rests satisfied with no such haphaz- snail-shells, and sent out more ventures on the ard and superficial treatment. He manipu- mighty deep than any merchant in New Englates his combinations with the utmost care | land; but the larger part of them foundered 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

near the shore. She seized a live horse-shoe by and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. the tail, and made prize of several five-fingers, 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.

"Her final employment was to gather seaweeds of various kinds, and make herself a scarf or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devising drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's, a letter- the letter A- but freshly green instead 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."

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,
to trifle with and disguise them.

- never

To the general soundness as well as fineness of moral feeling and judgment displayed in his works, we must admit, at least, one grave exception. His Life of Pierce might perhaps be disposed of as an ephemeral production, which, if it served its more immediate purpose, was never meant to do more; as unworthy, it may be, of his reputation and powers, but never put forth with the intention or hope of its surviving its temporary aims, and therefore to count for nothing in an estimate of his literary capacity and character. Were it merely worthless, 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 The heart that so sings in harmony with artistic works. Such plea may be sustained childhood's sweetest music can hardly be for an innocent squib or jeu d'esprit. But suspected of choosing and enjoying the de- how slight soever its proportions, how oclineation of horror or evil for its own sake. casional soever its ostensible purpose, his Even in his tales of darker shade and lurid 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 sun- nor uncandid, of a question of the deepest shine and winning beauty that form the import; and it would seem difficult to esbroader features of the picture. In this cape the dilemma, that either the opinions lies the contrast and moral superiority of it sets forth are seriously entertained and his tales, even of most thrilling awe, to advocated by the author, or the success of those of his wild, erratic countryman, Ed- General Pierce was more to him than truth gar Allan Poe, whose productions derive or falsehood in regard to a question as satheir chief fascination from the depth of un- cred as it is momentous. When General redeemed and unnatural horror they reveal. Pierce offered himself as a candidate for the It may be, that what is strange and unusual Presidency, the repeal or the maintenance in humanity has for Hawthorne rather more of the Fugitive Slave Act was the question than a due share of attractiveness, but he of the day. Pierce was a declared pronever chooses evil for his study from a love slavery man; and it is with extreme pain of it; and delicate themes he always treats 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. Quota- think that he was, in defiance of nobler tion here is of no avail. It is a delicacy, convictions, basely prostituting his pen for not of any one scene, but pervading the electioneering purposes. We are rather entire story, with a sustained tone that could disposed to believe that he distrusted the be achieved only by a mind in which the wisdom and ability as well as the moderahighest delicacy of feeling is native and in- tion of the extreme Abolition party, that herent. Very different results would such he doubted whether violent effort to achieve materials have yielded in the hands of a promptly great social changes might not reGeorge Sand, or of a Victor Hugo. Even sult in worse disaster. The gradual proin those of not a few of our popular Eng-gress, the natural growth of the body social lish novelists we should have seen over all and politic, was one of the soundest les"the trail of the serpent." It may be that sons our own great statesman Burke taught. Hawthorne exhibits too great a predilection It may be easy for us now, with the result for what may be considered curious experi- 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 even those that by any preference or with or had faith in the professions or the general approval or other token seem to cause of the North. The heroic is born of lie nearest the personality of the author,intensity rather than of breadth and com- represent the author's own sentiments; and prehension, and a man may see things on full account must be taken of the fact, that too many sides, unless he sees them all in what we now quote, the speaker is repfully and in their just relations. With lim-resented as undergoing a process of gradited faculties activity may be paralysed by ual but thorough deterioration alike moralincreased 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 ac- will and self-reliance, and therefore presents tion appearing greater. Some spirits are no special appropriateness at least no clear call or apology

"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 communism and social scheme for the amelioration

* Life of Franklin Pierce, pp. 113, 114.

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

666

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 sion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illu

Let the black flower blossom as it may! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder

a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate.

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 of 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 char

acters, affords less doubtful evidence of the transcendental influence of Emerson. As usual, his strongly undogmatic tendency restrains him from any positive assertion;

The Scarlet Letter, p. 161. ↑ Ibid. p. 198.

but the negation of any fundamental and ineradicable distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, is more than nibbled

at:

more striking instance could be found of how little he depends on the interest of suspense, of doubt to be solved, of difficulty to be overcome, than is presented in the "Nothing was more remarkable than the chapter of Transformation entitled "The change which took place, almost immediately after Spectre of the Catacomb." The separation Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the appearance and of one from the other members of a party demeanour of the old man known as Roger Chill- visiting the Catacombs of Rome would ingworth. All his strength and energy-all his seem to afford an occasion for a most natuvital and intellectual force-seemed at once to de- ral, almost unavoidable scene of highsert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, pitched interest and excitement. The reshrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal ality of the danger; its magnitude and horsight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in ror; the confusion of the searchers, themthe sun. This unhappy man had made the very selves ignorant of the labyrinth, and each principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and in imminent risk of being lost in the gloom systematic exercise of revenge; and when by its and enravelment of the intersecting narrow completest triumph and consummation, that evil principle was left with no further material to and thither without plan; their eagerness passages; their proneness to rush hither support it, when, in short, there was no more and anxiety only multiplying the difficulties Devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake and the hazard; their hasty movements, himself whither his Master would find him tasks now extinguishing their tapers, now carryenough, and pay him his wages duly. But to ing them past marks that are important for all these shadowy beings, so long our near ac- retracing their own steps; their flashing quaintances, as well Roger Chillingworth as hopes and crushing disappointments; -all his companions, -we would fain be merciful. the details of such an event are what many It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, writers of fiction would make a considerable whether hatred and love be not the same thing digression to introduce - what hardly one at bottom. Each in its utmost development sup- would spurn, Yet Hawthorne, when Mirposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowl- iam is separated from her companions in edge; each renders one individual dependent for the dismal corridors of St. Calixtus, after the food of his affections and spiritual life upon mentioning that the guide assured them another; each leaves the passionate lover, or that there was no possibility of rendering the no less passionate hater, forlorn and deso-assistance unless by shouting at the top of late by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions their voices, quietly disposes of the crisis in seem essentially the same, except that one hapAccordingly they all began pens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the to shriek, halloo, and bellow, with the utmost other in a dusky and lurid glow. In the spirit- force of their lungs. And, not to prolong ual world, the old physician and the minister - the reader's suspense (for we do not particmutual victims as they have been-may una- ularly seek to interest him in this scene, wares have found their earthly stock of hatred telling it only on account of the trouble and and antipathy transmuted into golden love."* strange entanglement which followed), they voice." He dwells chiefly on the developsoon heard a responsive call in a female

a sentence:

66

The view we have taken of his writings, as aiming before all else to be an embodiment of the results on the inner life of such ment 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 of such a form of literary composition be, as some are disposed to hold, the continuous movement of a well-told story, few claims can be made in his favour. There is no romantic adventure; no gathering complications disentangled by sudden undreamt-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.

events as are narrated-or implied; for often the event is already passed, and only inferred, or its circumstantial details, and not unfrequently 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, and the reader invited to make his choice. The actual facts of outward life, considered merely as facts, are held quite subordinate which they are charged; and these he sets forth with a patient minuteness and lingering scrutiny as if he suspected they might yet present some new aspect, or were afraid to close the record uncompleted.

to the intellectual and moral influences with

It must not, however, be understood that we would imply that he is to be described

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