The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

" made its appearance, and copies of it are now exceedingly rare, but we find the Hawthorne family in Salem reading the book in the

love of Nature to such a degree. Emerson's eye dilates as he looks upon the sunshine gilding the trunks of the balm of Gilead trees on his ave

ted an endless diversity of urns and vases, shallow or deep, scalloped or plain, molded in patte

ag

s circumference, until its ambitious heart often bursts asunder-is a matter to

nly humanizes whatever attracts his attention, but he looks through a refining medium of his own personality. He has the gift of Midas to bring back th

longer reminded of the plain unpainted house on Lake Sebago. His style is not only more graceful, but has acquired greater fulness of expression, and he is evidently working in a deeper and richer vein of thought. Purity of expression i

ies in this collection has a distinct individuality which appeals to the reader after a fashion of its own. Each has its moral, or rather central, idea to which all its component parts are related, and te

been an experiment, and which strangely enough is much more in the style of his son Julian. "Monsieur du Miroir" and "Sketches from Memory" are relics of his earlier wr

me light scientifically on the origin of consciousness. We see ourselves reflected not only in the mirror, but on the blade of a knife, or a puddle in the road; and, if we look sharply enough, i

the way Hawthorne develops the story) is a fearful satire on human nature. He may have intended this for an exposure of the inconsistency, and consequent hypocrisy, of Puritanism; but the name of Goodman Brown's wife i

parables. "The Birth Mark," "Rappacini's Daughter," "A Select Party," "Egotism," and "The Artist

ivisect dogs and rabbits; but why should we attempt the same course of procedure with those that are nearest and dearest to us? Such parables were not required in the time of Tiberius C?sar and men and women grew up in a natural,

ch to soften and temper the disposition, but the original material remains the same. The father who attempts to force his son into a mode of life for which Nature did not intend him, or the mother who quarrels with her daughter's friends, commits an error similar to that of Hawthorne's alchemist, who endeavors to remove the bir

different from all other girls. As a consequence, she was different,-could not assimilate herself to others. She had no admirers, or young friends of her own sex, for there were few points of contact between herself

Rappacini, an old botanist and necromancer, has trained up his daughter in the solitary companionship of this flower, from which she has acquired its peculiar properties. A handsome young student is induced to enter the garden, partly from curiosity and partly through the legerdemain of Rappacini. The student soon falls under the daughter's influence and finds himself being gradually poisoned.

one is simply a variation upon the last scene of the other. In one instance a beautiful daughter is sacrificed by her fath

m Serpent," this element serves, like the refrain of a Greek chorus, to give a sweet, penetrating undertone which reconciles us to much that would otherwise seem intolerable. The heroines in these pieces have such a close spiritua

ully, so that it is difficult to determine from the text whether there was a real serpent secreted under the man's clothing, or only an imaginary one,-although we presume the latter. Francis of Verulam says, "the best fortune for a husband is for his wife to consider

eptions, such as, the Clerk of the Weather, the Beau Ideal, Mr. So-they-say, the Coming Man, and other ubiquitous personages, whom we continually hear of, but never see. The Man of Fancy invites these and many others to a banquet in his cloud-castle, where they all converse and behave according to their special characters. A ripple of delicate humor, like the ripple made by a light summer breeze upon the

, is enormous. He understands law better than the lawyer, and medicine better than the physicians. He is never tired of settling the affairs of the country, and of proposing constitutional amendments. Is it not perfectly natural that Everybody should understand Everybody's business as well as o

windows of the soul. It was the same in Hawthorne's face, and may be observed in all good portraits of him. An immutable calmness overspread his features, but in and about his eyes there was a spring-like mirth

s best is more refined than Thackeray's, as well as of a more amiable quality, and reminds one (on Taine's principle) of those delicate Italian wines which have very little body, but a delightful bouquet. As a humorist, however, Hawthorne varies in different times and places more than in any other respect. He adapts himself to his subject; is light and playful in "The Select Par

it with a serious face. Don Quixote's Rosinante, Doctor Johnson's cat, Shelley's skylark, a live phoenix, Prospero's magic wand, the hard-ridden Pegasus, the dove which brought the olive branch, and many others appear in such rapid succession that the reader has no time to take breath, or to consider what will turn up next. Like an accomplished showman, Hawthorne enlivens the performance here and there

e catch some glimpses of Ha

ht mirth, the profound, pathetic humor of Cervantes, the all glorious Shakespeare, Spenser, meet guest for an allegoric structure, the severe divinity of Milton and Bunya

e and Swedenborg,

f transcendent imagi

evere treatment of that poet, in "P's Correspondence," he says in "Earth's Holoc

n almost any other productions of his day, contrasting beautifully with the fitful and luri

lame, Byron would stand that test equal to any. His real fault is to be found in his somewhat glaring diction, like the voix blanc in singing, and in an occasional st

on them than on Lowell and Longfellow, who read it in the original. Hawthorne appears to have taken lessons in German while at Brook Farm, for we fi

emptuous opposition of his acquaintances. He finally succeeds in making one which seems to be almost endowed with life, but only to be informed that it is no better than a toy, and that he has wasted his time on a thing which has no practical value. A child (who represents the thoughtlessness of the great world) crushes the exquisite piece of workmanship in

AND TRANSC

German people manifested itself at that time was Immanuel Kant. Without discrediting the revelations of Hebrew tradition, he taught the doctrine that instead of looking for evidence of a Supreme Being in the external world, we should seek him in our own hearts; that every man could find a revelation in his own conscience,-in the consciousness of good and evil, by

say I k

ay, I kno

ble, in this reverence for absolute purity, wisdom

nates, though we hear of it in Taine and a few other writers; but in Great Britain, although the English universities repudiated it, Transcendentalism became so influential that Gladstone has spoken of it, in his Romanes lecture, as the dominant philosophy of the nineteenth century. Every notable English writer of t

ts; Alcott was a Neo-Platonist, a vegetarian, and a non-resistant; while Emerson sympathized largely with Thoreau, and from his poetic exaltation of Nature was looked upon as a pantheist by those who were not accustomed to nice discriminations. Thus it happened that Transcendentalism came to be associated in the public mind with any exceptional mo

as a sort of natural amphitheatre, a small oval plane, more than half surrounded by a low wooded ridge; a sheltered and sequestered sp

ed agreement. Margaret Fuller was first on the ground, and Hawthorne found her seated on the hill-side-his gravestone now overlooks the spot-reading a book with a peculiar name, which he

race. He could not even look at a group of turkeys without seeing a dramatic situation in them. In addition to this, as a true artist, he was possessed of a strong dislike for everything eccentric and abnormal; he wished for symmetry in all things, and above all in human actions; and those restless, unbalanced spirits, who attached themselves to the transcendental movement and the anti-slavery cause, were particularly objectionable to him. It has been rightly affirmed that no revolutionary m

ophical discussions of George Ripley and his friends, and took to walking in the country lanes, where he could contemplate and philosophize in his own fashion,-which after all proved to be more fruitful than theirs. Having exchanged his interest in the West Roxbury Association for the Old Manse at Concord (truly a poetic bargain), he wrote the most keenly humorous of his shorter

oots of childhood mythology, and Hawthorne replies, "I could show you quite as curious a pair of cowhide boots at the transcendental community of Brook Farm." Yet there could have been no malice in his satire, for Mrs. Hawthorne's two sisters, Mrs. Mann and Miss Peabo

icent that what happened in the depths of it was never indicated by more than a few bubbles at the surface. He was emphatically an idealist, as every truly great artist must be, and Transcendentalism was the local costume which ideality wore in Hawthorne's time. He was a philosopher after a way of hi

exists in man, and for man, and has no place in the external world? In fact, it only exists by divisions of time, and it is man who makes the divisions. The rising of the sun does not constitute time; for the sun is always rising-somewhere. The positivists and Herber

y sight or sound or touch, but by an inward co

hom the Scriptures tell us that they are in the habit of straining at gnats; but Hawthorne believed consciousness to be a trustworthy guide. Why should he not?

Show-Box" we meet

will guilty thoughts,-of which guilty deeds are no more than shadows,-will these d

Goethe in writing "Elective Affinities" designed to show that an evil thought may have consequences as serious and irremediable as an evil action-in addition to the well-known homily that evil thoughts lead to evil a

is something truer and more real than what we c

ss within its portals, they would have recognized the truth that the dominions which the spirit conquers for itself among unrealities become

House of the Seven Gables." It is a sister's love which, like a cord stronger than steel, binds together the various incidents of the story, while the avaricious Judge Pyncheon, "with his landed estate, public honors, offices of trust and other solid unrealities," has after all only succeeded in building a card castle for himself, which may be dissipated by a single breath. Holgrave,

ndencies; in his magnanimous zeal for man's welfare, and his recklessness of whatever the ages had established in man's behalf; in his faith, and in his

to hear Emerson and supported Charles Sumner. In the story, Holgrave achieves the reward of a v

e be blamed for this, for Ripley, Thoreau, Alcott and other like visionary spirits have so vitiated the sign

n as Kantists or Hegelians, and outside of the uni