It would be somewhat mortifying, we suspect, to many of those who are generally considered "accredited" authors, were they to step out of the circle in which their claims are either recognised or disputed, Let them lay aside periodicals, avoid everyone suspected of a taste for letters, hold no correspondence with literary friends or enemies, and to the rest of the community they will find themselves, to use an expressive phrase, "nobody." Those who are habitually in contact with the literary world can scarcely conceive, or are apt to forget, the amount of indifference and ignorance which prevails without. Mrs. Hemans complained of the oppressive weight of the popular ovations to which she was subjected; yet we have an idea that we could have introduced her to most respectable society, where she might have been quite at ease on that score. As for Elizabeth Barrett Browning, notwithstanding her prettily-bound volume being so common on drawingroom tables, greatest of female poets though she be, in the opinion of others besides Edgar Allan Poe, we think we could safely guarantee that she, as well as Messrs. Helps, Kingsley, Tennyson, and even the grim Carlyle himself, might appear almost anywhere without being troubled with any demonstration, respectful or otherwise.

The

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subject of our present article may be ranked with the latter class, whose names, familiar as household words in the literary world, are comparatively unknown out of that charmed circle. In "The Scarlet Letter," Mr. Haw. thorne bears humorous testimony to the truth of this, when describing his sudden change from literary habits and society to those of a house. Notwithstanding his good humoured philosophy on the subject, we suspect this discovery must have been rather tantalising, after waiting so long for public recognition; though, to be sure, as we have said, setting custom-houses aside, the general reputation he has acquired is as yet, to say the least, limited. We lately saw a critique on him, assuming that the popularity of his works re

quired that some voice should be raised against their deleterious influence. We hope the conscientious critic de

molished the obnoxious democrat to his own satisfaction; but to the majority of the respectable readers of his publication, we fear he would be denouncing a man of straw. Undoubtedly, however, this as yet limited reputation is slowly but surely extending, and a few years will greatly change his relation to many other writers more favoured at present. "The Scarlet Letter," which appears first to have procured for him a modicum of public attention, has been, in some measure, the means of drawing out of obscurity his other works those, too, on which we conceive much of his future reputation will rest. The fallen leaves of past years have kept their green through all seasons of neglect, and now begin to be visible, as other once flaunting, now withered, weeds are swept away.

With not a few points of resemblance to recent English and American authors, Hawthorne has yet many peculiarities of his own, so nicely cha racterised that we cannot think of anything like a complete prototype to him in literature. Now, the quaint, still humour of his thoroughly English style, reminds us of Washington Irving; now the delicate, imperceptible touches of Longfellow become apparent; now the calm, genial, effortless flow of Helps. We have often fancied, also, that we could detect a resemblance to John Foster, but we suspect, were we to attempt a comparison of parallel passages, it would turn out to be rather imaginary. There is a tendency, no doubt, in both, to pry into all the odd nooks, and corners, and dark places of the mind; but the firm, strong, practical nature of Foster never suffers him to carry this beyond a certain point, and always shapes his researches to some masterly conclusion, while Hawthorne often runs riot in the pursuit from mere apparent wantonness. Yet, undoubtedly, it is this ruling feature of Hawthorne's mind that invests his writings with much of their peculiar charm;-producing ex

travagant and overdrawn description in some; in others it is the zest and spirit of the whole. In reading the works of Macaulay or Bulwer Lytton, there is often a disagreeable consciousness that all is splendidly got up; but with Hawthorne all seems to flow from the heart, and apropos of this, we may remark, that it is a pretty fair test, in most cases, of an author's sincerity, if his reader recognises, or thinks he recognises, some thought of his own-some thought, probably, he could never adequately express in his own language that had flitted across his mind in casual mus. ings. We believe people are often unconsciously swayed by this feeling in the choice of an author for their favourite; feeling, if not seeing, with Alton Locke. Here is one who can put our own thoughts into language for us."

Like almost every original author, Hawthorne occasionally verifies our great dramatist's remark about vaulting ambition o'erleaping itself and falling on the other side, giving utterance to the veriest drivel, such as scribblers of the lowest order could hardly be guilty of perpetrating. It would be hard to say how many readers he has lost who have had the misfortune to take up, say the "Twice-Told Tales," and opened with "Tales of the Province House," or "The Threefold Destiny." Even in the "Mosses from an Old Manse," which abounds in unmistakable evidences of his genius, abundance of pieces might be cited which would require the utmost stretch of charity to pass by. To a critic of the Lord Jeffrey genus, in want of something to prey upon, Wordsworth's poems would hardly be more valuable in the way of affording scope for very piquant abuse. For our own part, we are inclined to be more good-natured, rather leaning to Poe's opinion, that the effusions of the mind of a man of genius may be compared to a series of ascents and descents, while those of one less highly gifted are more akin to a level, on which hypothesis we are disposed to forgive the descents in consideration of the ascents, and to be much better pleased with a book the half of which is nonsense, and the other half, as Christopher North would have said, "glorious," than with one which is all very good, and has nothing to fall

in raptures with from beginning to end.

Were we particularly anxious to impress a reader favourably with Hawthorne at starting, we do not think we could succeed better than by directing him to take up the "Mosses from an Old Manse," and begin at the beginning, when, if he did not go the end of the first article, we should certainly pronounce him an incorrigible dullard. We remember our own first introduction to Hawthorne's works most vividly. We had just returned, in a very improper and contemptuous frame of mind, from hearing a dreary lecture on the mighty progress of this great scientific nineteenth century, addressed to a philosophical institution, and found the "Mosses" awaiting our critical opinion. We took it up carelessly, expecting to be further provoked by some vile Yankee twaddle, and cannot say how agreeably we were disappointed. How breezy and wholesome the picture of the old manse, the river, the woods, and the garden, compared with the sickening, rounded periods about the advancement of science and the improvement of the human race, the "jabber about education" (to use Mr. Helps expressive words) and moral trainings, which had been falling like lead on us so long! It was a renewal of the sensation we felt when first, in the calm of an autumn noon, reposing on a bank of moss, with a canopy of bright green leaves above, through which an occasional glimpse of the clear blue sky was caught, we turned over the magic pages of Tennyson, and fancied we saw the fairy-footed Olivia sporting by the tall oak beside us, or yonder little hillock to be where "Claribel low lieth."

To the merits of the "House of the Seven Gables," the most pleasing and complete of Hawthorne's tales, an adverse critic, in our opinion, unconsciously pays a high compliment, when he complains that the author seizes on the reader by the button, as it were, and, like the Ancient Mariner, compels him to hear the story to an end, which, after all, turns out to be no story at all that is to say, there is no grand denouement, no long a-missing marriagecertificate is discovered, nor is any hitherto supposed plebeian elevated to patrician rank. An original idea, truly, to censure an author for contriving so to rivet your attention that

you must read his book through, even though, as the saying is, there is nothing in it! What would we have given for such an attracting influence in the pages of some of those tales of stirring interest, thrilling incident, sparkling dialogue, masterly plot, &c., over which we have yawned in our conscientious wish to falsify the popular belief that critics read no farther than the title-page of the book they demolish? "The House of the Seven Gables" may be very faulty as a story, and we certainly would not recommend it as a model to apprentice fiction-mongers; but as we have abundance of good story-writers, and, judging from the past, will have till doomsday, we think such an author as Hawthorne may be allowed to let his genius find its own vent, and diverge as often as it pleases from any path it may ostensibly follow. "The House of the Seven Gables," we venture to say, would have wanted the best part of its attractions, had the author rigidly repressed the promptings of his luxuriant fancy, and closely pursued the even tenor of his narrative, even though the plot and winding-up had been exciting enough to please our fastidious censor.

As might be expected from Hawthorne's peculiar idiosyncrasy, he possesses, in a remarkable degree, `the faculty of indicating by imperceptible shades the approaching event long ere it is announced, like the hush becoming stiller and stiller as the noiseless battalia of clouds creep denser and denser together before the storm. Bulwer Lytton has often attempted this delicate descriptive feat, but has been little more successful than in writing verses (for the latter, see "The Pilgrim of the Rhine"). Only the pen that flung that strange, terrible gloom over the closing scenes of "Bleak House," could rival the incidental touches immediately antecedent to the death of Judge Pyncheon.

"The Scarlet Letter" (Hawthorne's most popular book, by the way) has the same button-seizing power; but as the narrative is made up of more excitable materials, its interest is of a much more intense and even feverish nature; and we would not say, but that if made acquaintance with at the witching hour of midnight, some of its principal characters might, to a very imagina tive reader's eyes, bleared with the

hissing gas or long-wick'd candle, appear squatted around in ghostly conference. It is, certainly, open to the charge of encouraging a taste for the "morbid and horrible;" and after fairly getting out of its weird fascinations, and entering on the introduction to which we have already alluded (and which, of course, falls to be read last) it is, to use Coleridge's style of comparison, like leaving a heated theatre for an open lawn on a breezy night in May.

"The Blithedale Romance," one of Hawthorne's most recent publications, lies more open than any other to unsparing and well-deserved ridicule in the characters especially: one being inflated to bursting with about as much success as the frog of old; another insipid; another wofully wishywashy; and the hero of the tale himself, who tells the story in the first person, an impertinent sort of eavesdropper. Perhaps the very undignified character of the latter, Mr. Miles Coverdale, may be accounted for on the supposition, that as the author evidently intends him to be understood as his mouthpiece, his anxiety to avoid anything like egotism may have led him astray. Yet, with all drawbacks, there is hardly one of his works we could read over with more pleasure than this eccentric production, which professes to be a romance founded on the author's own youthful experience, setting forth how, as one of a band of Socialists, he attempted to commence the work of regenerating the world by labouring with his "brothers and sisters" on a model farm. The mode of life at this new Arcadia is the great charm of the book, for Hawthorne can hardly fail to delight when he catches a glimpse of nature. To use his own words, he speaks of her "like the very spirit of earth imbued with a scent of freshly-turned soil." In his sketches and essays, American scenery comes before us in all its rich luxuriance and unfettered gladness-no trim shaven lawns and hedges, and as little of that intolerable sublimity so tiresome in Alpine and classic scenery; but the forest-paths, and slow-sailing river, with trees standing up to their knees in its waters, and rivulets dancing with wayward round and babble amid tangled underwood. The farm-house at Blithedale, and its surrounding fields and woods, linger in our recol

lection as a picture of perfect seclusion, combining something of the quiet stillness of English scenery with the untrammelled freedom of the woods, though we miss that feature of the former alluded to by our great master of landscape:

An English home-grey twilight pour'd On dewy pasture, dewy trees, Softer than sleep-all things in order stored; A haunt of ancient peace."

The rest of Hawthorne's works consist principally of tales and sketches; and in these, notwithstanding his filial love for the pleasant, tangible realities of earth, and the shafts he occasionally aims at transcendentalism and mysticism, allegory is frequently employed, with masterly effect, to His give life to his conceptions.

Our

most brilliant and finished effort of this kind is "The Celestial Railroad," in which the mantle of Bunyan appears to have descended on him with a dou ble portion of his spirit-the quaint, nervous simplicity of the prince of dreamers blending with his own rich vividness of descriptive power, and quiet under-current humour. worthy philosophical institution-lec. turer could hardly have supposed the science, even of the nineteenth century, capable of achieving such a com modious and comfortable mode of transit to the celestial city, in which, instead of trudging along the road, the pilgrim is borne on the breath of steam, with the memorable burden stowed away in the luggage van. in most other railways, a tunnel is necessary, and the reader may compare the following account of the modern pilgrim's passage through the Dark Valley, with Christian's terror-struck gropings among satyrs and hobgoblins:

As

"Even while we were yet speaking, the train shot into the entrance of this dreaded valley. Though I plead guilty to some foolish palpitations of the heart, during our headlong rush over the causeway here constructed, yet it were unjust to withhold the highest encomiums on the boldness of its original conception, and the ingenuity of those who executed it. It was gratifying, likewise, to observe how much care had been taken to dispel the everlasting gloom, and supply the defect of cheerful sunshine; not a ray of which has ever penetrated among these awful shadows. For this purpose the inflammable gas, which exudes plentifully from the soil, is collected by means of

pipes, and thence communicated to a quadruple row of lamps along the whole extent of the passage. Thus, a radiance has been created even out of the fiery and sulphurous curse that rests for ever upon the valleya radiance, however, hurtful to the eyes, and somewhat bewildering, as I discovered by the changes which it wrought in the visages of my companions. In this respect, as compared with natural daylight, there is the same difference as between truth and falsehood; but if the reader ever travelled through the Dark Valley, he will have learned to be thankful for any light that he could get; if not from the sky above, then from the blasted soil beneath. Such was the red brilliancy of these lamps, that they appeared to build walls of fire on both sides of the track, between which we held our course at lightning speed, while a reverberating thunder filled the valley with its echoes. Had the engine run off the track-a catastrophe, it is whispered, by no means unprecedented— the bottomless pit, if there be any such place, would undoubtedly have received us. Just as some dismal fooleries of this nature had made my heart quake, there came a tremendous shriek careering along the valley, as if a thousand devils had burst their lungs to utter it; but it proved to be merely the whistle of the engine on arriving at a stopping-place. The spot where we had now paused is the same that our friend Bunyan, truthful man, but infected with many fantastic notions, has designated, in terms plainer than I like to repeat, as the mouth of the infernal regions. This, however, must have been a mistake, as Mr. Smooth-it-away, while we remained in the smoky and lurid cavern, took occasion to prove that Tophet has not even a metaphorical existence. The place, he assured us, is no other than the crater of a half-extinct volcano, in which the directors had caused forges to be set up for the manufacture of railroad iron. Hence, also, is obtained a plentiful supply of fuel for the use of the engines. Whoever had gazed into the dismal obscurity of the broad cavern-mouth, whence ever and anon darted huge tongues of dusky flame, and had seen the strange, half-shaped monsters, and visions of faces, horribly grotesque, into which the smoke seemed to wreath itself,and had heard the awful murmurs, and shrieks, and deep, shuddering whispers of the blast, sometimes forming themselves into words almost articulate would have seized upon Mr. Smoothit-away's comfortable explanation as greedily as we did.

ness, grim faces, that bore the aspect and impression of individual sins or evil passions, seemed to thrust themselves through the veil of light, glaring upon us, and stretching forth a great dusky hand, as if to impede our progress. I almost thought that they were my own sins that appalled me there. These were freaks of imagination-nothing more, certainly-mere delusions, which I ought to be heartily ashamed of; but all through the Dark Valley I was tormented, and pestered, and dolefully bewildered, with the same kind of waking dreams. The mephitic gases of that region intoxicate the brain. As the light of natural day, however, began to struggle with the glow of the lanterns, these vain imaginations lost their vividness, and finally vanished with the first ray of sunshine that greeted our escape from the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Ere we had gone a mile beyond it, I could wellnigh have taken my oath that this whole gloomy passage was a dream."

Most of Hawthorne's other allegorical compositions sound as incomplete half utterances, hinting but vaguely at the meaning intended to be conveyed, though we are not sure if we should call this indefiniteness a defect-the power of negative suggestion thus displayed being often perfectly magical. Yet we cannot say that allegory is made much more attractive to us by Hawthorne than by his predecessors; and, as with them, the degree of pleasure corresponds in great measure to that in which the sense of allegory is lost. We remember when our worthy pastor broke up our childish enthusiasm for starting direct on Christian's pilgrimage; by "explaining" the "Pilgrim's Progress" in connexion with the notes, our interest sensibly diminished; and so with the Faëry Queen," when we found that Sir Guyon was a mere emblem of holiness. We must confess a preference for an humbler vehicle of instruction, the idea of which, probably suggested by Æsop's pithy apothegms, appears to be of German origin, and has been employed with the happiest effect by some of our own writers. We need only instance Bulwer Lytton's inimitable sketch in "The Pilgrims of the Rhine," showing how the fox lost his tail; and Helps' fable of the lions, who made an attempt at Socialism in "Friends in Council." It is pleasant enough now and then to step out of the material world; but we do not like to be incessantly reminded that all is unreal, mist and shadow. The mind craves a firmer

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foothold, and prefers swallowing downright impossibilities, if presented with. an unblushing air of veracity, and imbued with a sufficient tinge of the vraisemblable. This has not escaped Hawthorne; and he has very happily embodied ideas in this form in one or two papers, telling his tale as if perfectly prepared to vouch for the authenticity of the whole. "The Artist of the Beautiful" is a fine instance of this; and the moral conveyed loses none of its effect, that the reader is left to find it out for himself. In another narrative on this principle, however, as might be expected from Hawthorne's constant tendency to overleap his object, he goes too much astray, we fear, for the most devoted idealist.

Perhaps, on the whole, the walk in which Hawthorne most excels is in that blending of the essay, sketch, and tale, for which we have no definite term as yet a style which seems so careless and easy, but which is perhaps the most difficult of all, and one we would defy any of our artificial writers to acquire Macaulay, for instance, notwithstanding all his brilliance and nerve. One of Hawthorne's dreamy reveries, clothed in the glittering array of Macaulay's rounded, nicely ba lanced sentences, would be as supremely ridiculous as an idyl of Tennyson's "done into" Popeian heroic measure. A volume of Hawthorne's compositions of this nature, selected from his works, and cleared from all surrounding rubbish, would be a perfect chef-d'œuvre of its kind, worthy to take its place beside" Companions of my Solitude.” There is one paper in his "Mosses from an Old Manse" which would have made the fortune of any ordinary literary aspirant-original, so far as our memory serves us, in conception, and rivalling the happiest efforts of Goldsmith and Irving in execution. "P.'s Correspondence," as it is styled, purports to be a letter from a friend of the author's, whose intellect being partially disordered, jumbles together past and present, living and dead, and is a great traveller, without stirring from the white-washed, iron-grated room to which he is confined, meeting in his imaginary wanderings a variety of personages who have long ceased to be visible to any eye save his own. Thus, in this letter, Mr. P. imagines himself in London, and gives his friend a most interesting and edifying account of the