NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

HOGARTH'S PAINTING-ROOM.HOGARTH'S PAINTING-ROOM.

We were invited to inspect Hogarth's painting-room—a mere loft, of most limited dimensions, over the stable, which the imagination could easily furnish with the necessary easel, or still less cumbrous graver's implements. It is situated at the furthest part of the garden from the house; a small door in the garden-wall leads into a little inclosure, one side of which is occupied by the stable. The painting-room is over the stable, and is reached by a stair; it has but one window which looks towards the road. It must have been sufficiently commodious for Hogarth's purposes; but possesses not the conveniences of modern painting-rooms. The house at Chiswick could only have been a place for recreation and repose, where relaxation was cared for, and where sketches were prepared to ripen into publication.

There are traditions about Chiswick of Hogarth having, while studying and taking notes, frequented a little inn by the roadside, and almost within sight of his dwelling. It has been modernized throughout—and supplies no subject for the pencil—yet it retains some indications, not without interest, of a remote date. The Painter must have been familiar with every class of character; and Chiswick was then enough of a country village to supply him amply with material. But, although a keen satirist, it is certain that he had as much tenderness for the lower orders of creation, as a young loving girl. In a corner of this quaint old garden, two tiny monuments are affixed to the wall, one chiselled perhaps by Hogarth's own hand, to the memory of his canary bird! Thethinkingcharacter of the painter's mind is evidenced in this as in every thing he did—the engraving on the tomb suggesting reflection. Charles Lamb said of him truly, that the quantity ofthoughtwhich he crowded into every picture, would alone "unvulgarize" every subject he might choose; and the refined Coleridge exclaims, "Hogarth! in whom the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet." There is something inexpressibly tender and touching in this memento of his affection for a little singing bird: the feeling must have been entirely his own, for he had no child to suggest the tribute to a feathered favorite. The tomb was afterwards accompanied with one to Mrs. Hogarth's dog. They are narrow, upright pieces of white stone laid against the brick-wall, but they are records of gentle and generous sympathies not to be overlooked. That Hogarth was more than on friendly terms with the canine race, the introduction of his own dog into his portrait clearly tells, and doubtless his bird often brought with its music visions of the country into the heat and dust of Leicester Square—soothing away much of his impatience. Men who have to fight the up-hill battle of life, must have energy and determination; and Hogarth was too out-spoken and self-confident not to have made many enemies. In after years his success (limited though it was, in a pecuniary point of view, for he died without leaving enough to support his widow respectably), produced its ordinary results—envy and enmity: and insults were heaped upon him. He was not tardy of reply, but Wilkes and Churchill were in strong health when nature was giving way with the great painter; an advantage they did not fail to use with their accustomed malignity. The profligate Churchill, turning the poet's nature into gall, infested the death-bed of Hogarth with unfeeling sarcasm, anticipating the grave, and exulting over a dying man.

TOMBS OF DOG AND BIRD.TOMBS OF DOG AND BIRD.

Hogarth, warned by the autumn winds, and suffering from the restlessness of approaching dissolution, left Chiswick on the 25th of October, 1764, and returned to his residence in Leicester Square. He was cheerful—in full possession of his mental faculties, but lacked the vigor to exert them. The very next day, having received an agreeable letter from Doctor Franklin, he wrote a rough copy of his answer, but exhausted with the effort, retired to bed. Seized by a sudden sickness, he arose—rung the bell with alarming violence—and within two hours expired!

Of all the villages in the neighborhood of London, rising from the banks of the Thames, (and how numerous and beautiful they are!) few are so well known as that of Chiswick. The horticultural fêtes are anticipated with anxiety similar to that our grandmothers felt for the fêtes of Ranelagh; thetoilettesof the ladies rival the flowers, and the only foe to the fascinating fair ones is the weather; but all which the crowd care about in Chiswick is confined to the "Duke's grounds" and the Society's Gardens. The Duke's beautiful little villa, erected by the last Earl of Burlington, is indeed a shrine worthy of deep homage; within its walls both Charles James Fox and George Canning breathed their last; and if, for a moment, we recall the times of Civil War, when each honest English heart fought bravely and openly for what was believed "the right," we may picture the struggle between Prince Rupert and the Earl of Essex, terminating with doubtful success, for eight hundred high born cavaliers were left dead on the plain that lies within sight of the gardens so richly perfumed by flowers, and echoing not to the searching trumpet or rolling drum, but to the gossamer music of Strauss and Jullien.

The Duke of Devonshire's grounds, containing about ninety acres, are filled with mementos, pleasant to the eye and suggestive to the imagination; but we must seek and find a more solemn scene, where the churchyard of Chiswick incloses the ashes of some whose names are written uponthe pages of History. Though the church is, in a degree, surrounded by houses, there is much of the repose of "a country churchyard" about it; the Thames belts it with its silver girdle, and when we visited its sanctuary, the setting sun cast a mellow light upon the windows of the church, touching a headstone or an urn, while the shadows trembled on the undulating graves. Like all church-yards it is crowded, and however reverently we bent our footsteps, it was impossible to avoid treading on the soft grass of the humble grave, or the gray stone that marks the resting-place of one of "the better order."

HOGARTH'S TOMB.HOGARTH'S TOMB.

How like the world was that silent churchyard! High and low, rich and poor, mingled together, and yet avoiding to mingle. The dust of the imperious Duchess of Cleveland found here a grave; while here too, as if to contrast the pure with the impure, repose the ashes of Mary, daughter of Oliver Cromwell; Holland the actor, the friend of David Garrick, here cast aside his "motley." Can we wonder at the actor's love of applause?—posterity knows him not; present fame alone is his—the lark's song leaves no record in the air!—Lord Macartney, the famous ambassador to China, a country of which our knowledge was then almost as dim as that we have of the moon—the ambassador rests here, while a Chinese junk is absolutely moored in the very river that murmurs beside his grave! Surely the old place is worthy of a pilgrimage. Loutherbourg, the painter, found a resting-place in its churchyard. Ralph, the historian and political writer, whose histories and politics are now as little read as the Dunciad which held them up to ridicule, is buried here; and confined as is the space, it is rich in epitaphs,—three are from the pen of David Garrick, two from that of Arthur Murphy.

Hogarth's monument has been very faithfully copied by Mr. Fairholt.

It is remarkable among the many plainer "stones" with which the churchyard is crowded, but is by no means distinguished for that artistic character—which it might have received as covering the remains of so great an artist. A small slab, in relief, takes from it, however, the charge of insipidity; it contains a comic mask, an oak branch, pencils and mahl-stick, a book and a scroll, and the palette, marked with the "line of beauty."

It has been remarked, that "while he faithfully followed nature through all her varieties, and exposed, with inimitable skill, the infinite follies and vices of the world, he was in himself an example of many virtues." And the following poetical tribute by David Garrick is inscribed on the tomb:

"Farewell! great painter of mankind,Who reached the noblest point of Art;Whose pictured morals charm the mind,And through the eye correct the heartIf Genius fire thee, reader, stay;If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;If neither move thee, turn away,For Hogarth's honored dust lies here!"

Dr. Johnson also composed an epitaph, which Cunningham considers "more to the purpose, but still unworthy:"

"The hand of him here torpid lies,That drew the essential forms of grace;Here closed in death the attentive eyesThat saw the manners in the face."

The tributes—in poetry and prose—are just, examine the works of this great painter-teacher as closely and suspiciously as we may, we can discover nothing that will induce a momentary doubt of his integrity of purpose in all he did; his shafts were aimed at Vice,—in no solitary instance was he ever guilty of arraigning or assailing Virtue. Compare him with the most famous of the Dutch masters, and he rises into glory; coarseness and vulgarity in them had no point out of which could come instruction. If they picture the issues of their own minds, they must have been gross and sensual; they ransacked the muck of life, and the grovelling in character, for themes that one should see only by compulsion. But Hogarth's subjects were never without a lesson, and, inasmuch as he resorted for them to the open volume of humanity, like those of the most immortal of our writers, his works are "not for an age but for all time."

The author ofThe House of Seven Gablesis now about forty-five years of age. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and is of a family which for several generations has "followed the sea." Among his ancestors, I believe, was the "bold Hawthorne," who is celebrated in a revolutionary ballad as commander of the "Fair American." He was educated at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he graduated in 1825.

Probably he appeared in print before that time, but his earliest volume was an anonymous and never avowed romance which was published in Boston in 1832. It attracted little attention, but among those who read it with a just appreciation of the author's genius was Mr. S. G. Goodrich, who immediately secured the shrouded star forThe Token, of which he was editor, and through which many of Hawthorne's finest tales and essays were originally given to the public. He published in 1837 the first and in 1842 the second volume of hisTwice-Told Tales, embracing whatever he wished to preserve from his contributions to the magazines; in 1845 he editedThe Journal of an African Cruiser; in 1846 publishedMosses from an Old Manse, a second collection of his magazine papers; in 1850The Scarlet Letter, and in the last month the longest and in some respects the most remarkable of his works,The House of Seven Gables.

In the introductions to theMosses from an Old ManseandThe Scarlet Letterwe have some glimpses of his personal history. He had been several years in the Custom-House at Boston, while Mr. Bancroft was collector, and afterwards had joined that remarkable association, the "Brook Farm Community," at West Roxbury, where, with others, he appears to have been reconciled to the old ways, as quite equal to the inventions of Fourier, St. Simon, Owen, and the rest of that ingenious company of schemers who have been so intent upon a reconstruction of the foundations of society. In 1843, he went to reside in the pleasant village of Concord, in the "Old Manse," which had never been profaned by a lay occupant until he entered it as his home. In the introduction toThe Mosseshe says:

"A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men, from time to time, had dwelt in it; and children, born in its chambers, had grown up to assume the priestly character. It was awful to reflect how many sermons must have been written there. The latest inhabitant alone—he, by whose translation to Paradise the dwelling was left vacant—had penned nearly three thousand discourses, besides the better, if not the greater number, that gushed living from his lips. How often, no doubt, had he paced to and fro along the avenue, attuning his meditations, to the sighs and gentle murmurs, and deep and solemn peals of the wind, among the lofty tops of the trees! In that variety of natural utterances, he could find something accordant with every passage of his sermon, were it of tenderness or reverential fear. The boughs over my head seemed shadowy with solemn thoughts, as well as with rustling leaves. I took shame to myself for having beenso long a writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon me with the falling leaves of the avenue; and that I should light upon an intellectual treasure, in the Old Manse, well worth those hoards of long-hidden gold, which people seek for in moss-grown houses. Profound treatises of morality—a layman's unprofessional, and therefore unprejudiced views of religion;—histories (such as Bancroft might have written, had he taken up his abode here, as he once purposed), bright with picture, gleaming over a depth of philosophic thought;—these were the works that might fitly have flowed from such a retirement. In the humblest event, I resolved at least to achieve a novel, that should evolve some deep lesson, and should possess physical substance enough to stand alone. In furtherance of my design, and as if to leave me no pretext for not fulfilling it, there was, in the rear of the house, the most delightful little nook of a study that ever offered its snug seclusion to a scholar. It was here that Emerson wrote 'Nature;' for he was then an inhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the Assyrian dawn and the Paphian sunset and moonrise, from the summit of our eastern hill. When I first saw the room, its walls were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of puritan ministers that hung around. These worthies looked strangely like bad angels, or, at least, like men who had wrestled so continually and so sternly with the devil, that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been imparted to their own visages. They had all vanished now; a cheerful coat of paint, and gold tinted paper hangings, lighted up the small apartment; while the shadow of a willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves, attempered the cheery western sunshine. In place of the grim prints there was the sweet and lovely head of one of Raphael's Madonnas, and two pleasant little pictures of the Lake of Como. The only other decorations were a purple vase of flowers, always fresh, and a bronze one containing graceful ferns. My books (few, and by no means choice; for they were chiefly such waifs as chance had thrown in my way) stood in order about the room, seldom to be disturbed."

In his home at Concord, thus happily described, in the midst of a few congenial friends, Hawthorne passed three years; and, "in a spot so sheltered from the turmoil of life's ocean," he says, "three years hasten away with a noiseless flight, as the breezy sunshine chases the cloud-shadows across the depths of a still valley." But at length his repose was invaded by that "spirit of improvement," which is so constantly marring the happiness of quiet-loving people, and he was compelled to look out for another residence.

"Now came hints, growing more and more distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for his native air. Carpenters next appeared, making a tremendous racket among the outbuildings, strewing green grass with pine shavings and chips of chesnut joists, and vexing the whole antiquity of the place with their discordant renovations. Soon, moreover, they divested our abode of the veil of woodbine which had crept over a large portion of its southern face. All the aged mosses were cleared unsparingly away; and there were horrible whispers about brushing up the external walls with a coat of paint—a purpose as little to my taste as might be that of rouging the venerable cheeks of one's grandmother. But the hand that renovates is always more sacrilegious than that which destroys. In fine, we gathered up our household goods, drank a farewell cup of tea in our pleasant little breakfast-room—delicately-fragrant tea, an unpurchasable luxury, one of the many angel-gifts that had fallen like dew upon us—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce while I am writing, from the old Manse into a Custom House! As a story-teller, I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but none like this. The treasure of intellectual gold which I had hoped to find in our secluded dwelling, had never come to light. No profound treatise of ethics—no philosophic history—no novel, even, that could stand unsupported on its edges—all that I had to show, as a man of letters, were these few tales and essays, which had blossomed out like flowers in the calm summer of my heart and mind."

TheMosses from an Old Mansehe declared the last offering of their kind he should ever put forth; "unless I can do better," he wrote in this Introduction, "I have done enough in this kind." He went to his place in the Custom House, in his native city, and if President Taylor's advisers had not been apprehensive that in his devotion to ledgers he would neglect the more important duties of literature, perhaps we should have heard no more of him; but those patriotic men, remembering how much they had enjoyed the reading of theTwice-Told Talesand theMosses, induced the appointment in his place of a whig, who had no capacity for making books, and in the spring of last year we hadThe Scarlet Letter.

Like most of his shorter stories, The Scarlet Letter finds its scene and time with the earlier Puritans. Its argument involves the analysis and action of remorse in the heart of a person who, himself unsuspected, is compelled to assist in the punishment of the partner of his guilt. This peculiar and powerful fiction at once arrested attention, and claimed for its author the eminence as a novelist which his previous performances had secured for him as a writer of tales. Its whole atmosphere and the qualities of its characters demanded for a creditable success very unusual capacities. The frivolous costume and brisk action of the story of fashionable life are easily depicted by the practised sketcher, but a work like The Scarlet Letter comes slowly upon the canvas, where passions are commingled and overlaid with the deliberate and masterly elaboration with which the grandest effects are produced in pictorial composition and coloring. It is a distinction of such works that while they are acceptable to the many, they also surprise and delight the few who appreciate the nicest arrangement and the most high and careful finish. The ScarletLetter will challenge consideration in the name of Art, in the best audience which in any age receives Cervantes, Le Sage, or Scott.

Following this romance came new editions ofTrue Stories from History and Biography, a volume for youthful readers, and of theTwice-Told Tales. In the preface to the latter, underrating much the reputation he has acquired by them, he says:

"The author ofTwice-Told Taleshas a claim to one distinction, which, as none of his literary brethren will care about disputing it with him, he need not be afraid to mention. He was for a good many years the obscurest man of letters in America. These stories were published in magazines and annuals, extending over a period of ten or twelve years, and comprising the whole of the writer's young manhood, without making (so far as he has ever been aware) the slightest impression on the public. One or two among them, theRill from the Town Pump, in perhaps a greater degree than any other, had a pretty wide newspaper circulation; as for the rest, he has no grounds for supposing that on their first appearance they met with the good or evil fortune to be read by any body. Throughout the time above specified he had no incitement to literary effort in a reasonable prospect of reputation or profit; nothing but the pleasure itself of composition—an enjoyment not at all amiss in its way, and perhaps essential to the merit of the work in hand, but which, in the long run, will hardly keep the chill out of a writer's heart, or the numbness out of his fingers. To this total lack of sympathy, at the age when his mind would naturally have been most effervescent, the public owe it (and it is certainly an effect not to be regretted, on either part), that the author can show nothing for the thought and industry of that portion of his life, save the forty sketches, or thereabouts, included in these volumes. Much more, indeed, he wrote; and some very small part of it might yet be rummaged out (but it would not be worth the trouble) among the dingy pages of fifteen or twenty year old periodicals, or within the shabby morocco covers of faded Souvenirs. The remainder of the works alluded to had a very brief existence, but, on the score of brilliancy, enjoyed a fate vastly superior to that of their brotherhood, which succeeded in getting through the press. In a word, the author burned them without mercy or remorse, and, moreover, without any subsequent regret, and had more than one occasion to marvel that such very dull stuff as he knew his condemned manuscripts to be, should yet have possessed inflammability enough to set the chimney on fire!..."As he glances over these long-forgotten pages, and considers his way of life while composing them, the author can very clearly discern why all this was so. After so many sober years, he would have reason to be ashamed if he could not criticise his own work as fairly as another man's; and, though it is little his business and perhaps still less his interest, he can hardly resist a temptation to achieve something of the sort. If writers were allowed to do so, and would perform the task with perfect sincerity and unreserve, their opinions of their own productions would often be more valuable and instructive than the works themselves. At all events, there can be no harm in the author's remarking that he rather wonders how theTwice-Told Talesshould have gained what vogue they did, than that it was so little and so gradual. They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade—the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion, there is sentiment; and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power or an unconquerable reserve, the author's touches have often an effect of tameness; the merriest man can hardly contrive to laugh at his broadest humor, the tenderest woman, one would suppose, will hardly shed warm tears at his deepest pathos. The book, if you would see any thing in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages...."The author would regret to be understood as speaking sourly or querulously of the slight mark made by his earlier literary efforts on the public at large. It is so far the contrary, that he has been moved to write this preface, chiefly as affording him an opportunity to express how much enjoyment he has owed to these volumes, both before and since their publication. They are the memorials of very tranquil, and not unhappy years. They failed, it is true—nor could it have been otherwise—in winning an extensive popularity. Occasionally, however, when he deemed them entirely forgotten, a paragraph or an article, from a native or foreign critic, would gratify his instincts of authorship with unexpected praise,—too generous praise, indeed, and too little alloyed with censure, which, therefore, he learned the better to inflict upon himself. And, by-the-by, it is a very suspicious symptom of a deficiency of the popular element in a book, when it calls forth no harsh criticism. This has been particularly the fortune of theTwice-Told Tales. They made no enemies, and were so little known and talked about, that those who read, and chanced to like them, were apt to conceive the sort of kindness for the book, which a person naturally feels for a discovery of his own. This kindly feeling (in some cases, at least) extended to the author, who, on the internal evidence of his sketches, came to be regarded as a mild, shy, gentle, melancholic, exceedingly sensitive, and not very forcible man, hiding his blushes under an assumed name, the quaintness of which was supposed, somehow or other, to symbolize his personal and literary traits. He is by no means certain that some of his subsequent productions have not been influenced and modified by a natural desire to fill up so amiable an outline, and to act in consonance with the character assigned to him; nor, even now, could he forfeit it without a few tears of tender sensibility. To conclude, however,—these volumes have opened the way to most agreeable associations, and to the formation of imperishable friendships; and there are many golden threads, interwoven with his present happiness, which he can follow up more or less directly, until he finds their commencement here; so that his pleasant pathway among realities seems to proceed out of the Dream-Land of his youth, and to be bordered with just enough of its shadowy foliage to shelter him from the heat of theday. He is therefore satisfied with what theTwice-Told Taleshave done for him, and feels it to be far better than fame."

"As he glances over these long-forgotten pages, and considers his way of life while composing them, the author can very clearly discern why all this was so. After so many sober years, he would have reason to be ashamed if he could not criticise his own work as fairly as another man's; and, though it is little his business and perhaps still less his interest, he can hardly resist a temptation to achieve something of the sort. If writers were allowed to do so, and would perform the task with perfect sincerity and unreserve, their opinions of their own productions would often be more valuable and instructive than the works themselves. At all events, there can be no harm in the author's remarking that he rather wonders how theTwice-Told Talesshould have gained what vogue they did, than that it was so little and so gradual. They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade—the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion, there is sentiment; and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power or an unconquerable reserve, the author's touches have often an effect of tameness; the merriest man can hardly contrive to laugh at his broadest humor, the tenderest woman, one would suppose, will hardly shed warm tears at his deepest pathos. The book, if you would see any thing in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages....

"The author would regret to be understood as speaking sourly or querulously of the slight mark made by his earlier literary efforts on the public at large. It is so far the contrary, that he has been moved to write this preface, chiefly as affording him an opportunity to express how much enjoyment he has owed to these volumes, both before and since their publication. They are the memorials of very tranquil, and not unhappy years. They failed, it is true—nor could it have been otherwise—in winning an extensive popularity. Occasionally, however, when he deemed them entirely forgotten, a paragraph or an article, from a native or foreign critic, would gratify his instincts of authorship with unexpected praise,—too generous praise, indeed, and too little alloyed with censure, which, therefore, he learned the better to inflict upon himself. And, by-the-by, it is a very suspicious symptom of a deficiency of the popular element in a book, when it calls forth no harsh criticism. This has been particularly the fortune of theTwice-Told Tales. They made no enemies, and were so little known and talked about, that those who read, and chanced to like them, were apt to conceive the sort of kindness for the book, which a person naturally feels for a discovery of his own. This kindly feeling (in some cases, at least) extended to the author, who, on the internal evidence of his sketches, came to be regarded as a mild, shy, gentle, melancholic, exceedingly sensitive, and not very forcible man, hiding his blushes under an assumed name, the quaintness of which was supposed, somehow or other, to symbolize his personal and literary traits. He is by no means certain that some of his subsequent productions have not been influenced and modified by a natural desire to fill up so amiable an outline, and to act in consonance with the character assigned to him; nor, even now, could he forfeit it without a few tears of tender sensibility. To conclude, however,—these volumes have opened the way to most agreeable associations, and to the formation of imperishable friendships; and there are many golden threads, interwoven with his present happiness, which he can follow up more or less directly, until he finds their commencement here; so that his pleasant pathway among realities seems to proceed out of the Dream-Land of his youth, and to be bordered with just enough of its shadowy foliage to shelter him from the heat of theday. He is therefore satisfied with what theTwice-Told Taleshave done for him, and feels it to be far better than fame."

That there should be any truth in this statement that the public was so slow to recognize so fine a genius, is a mortifying evidence of the worthlessness of a literary popularity. But it may be said of Hawthorne's fame that it has grown steadily, and that while many who have received the turbulent applause of the multitude since he began his career are forgotten, it has widened and brightened, until his name is among the very highest in his domain of art, to shine there with a lustre equally serene and enduring.

Mr. Hawthorne's last work isThe House of Seven Gables, a romance of the present day. It is not less original, not less striking, not less powerful, than The Scarlet Letter. We doubt indeed whether he has elsewhere surpassed either of the three strongly contrasted characters of the book. An innocent and joyous child-woman, Phœbe Pyncheon, comes from a farm-house into the grand and gloomy old mansion where her distant relation, Hepzibah Pyncheon, an aristocratical and fearfully ugly but kind-hearted unmarried woman of sixty, is just coming down from her faded state to keep in one of her drawing-rooms a small shop, that she may be able to maintain an elder brother who is every moment expected home from a prison to which in his youth he had been condemned unjustly, and in the silent solitude of which he has kept some lineaments of gentleness while his hair has grown white, and a sense of beauty while his brain has become disordered and his heart has been crushed and all present influences of beauty have been quite shut out. The House of Seven Gables is the purest piece of imagination in our prose literature.

The characteristics of Hawthorne which first arrest the attention are imagination and reflection, and these are exhibited in remarkable power and activity in tales and essays, of which the style is distinguished for great simplicity, purity and tranquillity. His beautiful story of Rappacini's Daughter was originally published in the Democratic Review, as a translation from the French of one M. de l'Aubépine, a writer whose very name, he remarks in a brief introduction, (in which he gives in French the titles of some of his tales, asContes deux foix racontées,Le Culte du Feu,etc.) "is unknown to many of his countrymen, as well as to the student of foreign literature." He describes himself, under thisnomme de plume, as one who—

"Seems to occupy an unfortunate position between the transcendentalists (who under one name or another have their share in all the current literature of the world), and the great body of pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and sympathies of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events too remote, too shadowy and unsubstantial, in his mode of development, to suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too popular to a satisfy the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must necessarily find himself without an audience, except here and there an individual, or possibly an isolated clique."

His writings, to do them justice, he says—

"Are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his conceptions. His fictions are sometimes historical, sometimes of the present day, and sometimes, so far as can be discovered, have little or no reference either to time or space. In any case, he generally contents himself with a very slight embroidery of outward manners,—the faintest possible counterfeit of real life,—and endeavors to create an interest by some less obvious peculiarity of the subject. Occasionally a breath of nature, a rain-drop of pathos and tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will find its way into the midst of his fantastic imagery, and make us feel as if, after all, we were yet within the limits of our native earth. We will only add to this cursory notice, that M. de l'Aubépine's productions, if the reader chance to take them in precisely the proper point of view, may amuse a leisure hour as well as those of a brighter man; if otherwise, they can hardly fail to look excessively like nonsense."

Hawthorne is as accurately as he is happily described in this curious piece of criticism, though no one who takes his works in the "proper point of view," will by any means agree to the modest estimate which, in the perfect sincerity of his nature, he has placed upon them. He is original, in invention, construction, and expression, always picturesque, and sometimes in a high degree dramatic. His favorite scenes and traditions are those of his own country, many of which he has made classical by the beautiful associations that he has thrown around them. Every thing to him is suggestive, as his own pregnant pages are to the congenial reader. All his productions are life-mysteries, significant of profound truths. His speculations, often bold and striking, are presented with singular force, but with such a quiet grace and simplicity as not to startle until they enter in and occupy the mind. The gayety with which his pensiveness is occasionally broken, seems more than any thing else in his works to have cost some effort. The gentle sadness, the "half-acknowledged melancholy," of his manner and reflections, are more natural and characteristic.

His style is studded with the most poetical imagery, and marked in every part with the happiest graces of expression, while it is calm, chaste, and flowing, and transparent as water. There is a habit among nearly all the writers of imaginative literature, of adulterating the conversations of the poor with barbarisms and grammatical blunders which have no more fidelity than elegance. Hawthorne's integrity as well as his exquisite—taste prevented him from falling into this error. There is not in the world a large rural population that speaks its native language with a purity approaching that with which the English is spoken by thecommon people of New England. The vulgar words and phrases which in other states are supposed to be peculiar to this part of the country are unknown east of the Hudson, except to the readers of foreign newspapers, or the listeners to low comedians who find it profitable to convey such novelties into Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont. We are glad to see a book that is going down to the next ages as a representative of national manners and character in all respects correct.

Nathaniel Hawthorne is among the first of the first order of our writers, and in their peculiar province his works are not excelled in the literature of the present day or of the English language.

The Rev. Mr.Kingsley, author ofAlton Locke, has collected into a book the series of vehement and yeasty papers which have appeared from his pen inFraser's Magazineunder the above title, and a new impulse is thus given in England to the discussion of the Problem of Society. The declared object of the work—which is of the class of philosophical novels—is to exhibit the miseries of the poor; the conventionalisms, hypocrisies, and feebleness of the rich; the religious doubts of the strong, and the miserable delusions and superstitions of the weak; the mammon-worship of the middling and upper classes, and the angry humility of the masses. The story is very slight, but sufficient for the effective presentation of the author's opinions. The best characters are an Irish parson, a fox-hunting squire and his commonplace worldly wife, and a thoughtless and reckless but not unkind man of the world. Here is a sketch of a commonplace old English vicar, such as has been familiar in the pages of novels and essays time out of mind:

"He told me, hearing me quote Schiller, to beware of the Germans, for they were all Pantheists at heart. I asked him whether he included Lange and Bunsen, and it appeared that he had never read a German book in his life. He then flew furiously at Mr. Carlyle, and I found that all he knew of him was from a certain review in theQuarterly. He called Boëhmen a theosophic Atheist. I should have burst out at that, had I not read the very words in a High Church review, the day before, and hoped that he was not aware of the impudent falsehood which he was retailing. Whenever I feebly interposed an objection to any thing he said (for, after all he talked on), he told me to hear the Catholic Church. I asked him which Catholic Church? He said the English. I asked him whether it was to be the Church of the sixth century, or the thirteenth, or the seventeenth, or the eighteenth? He told me the one and eternal Church, which belonged as much to the nineteenth century as to the first. I begged to know whether, then, I was to hear the Church according to Simeon, or according to Newman, or according to St. Paul; for they seemed to me a little at variance? He told me, austerely enough, that the mind of the Church was embodied in her Liturgy and Articles. To which I answered, that the mind of the episcopal clergy might, perhaps, be; but, then, how happened it that they were always quarreling and calling hard names about the sense of those very documents? And so I left him, assuring him that living in the nineteenth century, I wanted to hear the Church of the nineteenth century, and no other; and should be most happy to listen to her, as soon as she had made up her mind what to say."

English travellers in America give very minute accounts of the bad grammar and questionable pronunciation they sometimes hear among our common people: with what advantage they might go into the rural neighborhoods of their own country for exhibitions in this line is shown by the following description of a scene in a booth, which one of the characters of Mr. Kingsley enters at night:

"Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the conversation of the men around him. To his astonishment he hardly understood a word of it. It was half articulate, nasal, guttural, made up almost entirely of vowels, like the speech of savages. He had never before been struck with the significant contrast between the sharp, clearly-defined articulation, the vivid and varied tones of the gentleman, or even of the London street-boy, when compared with the coarse, half-formed growls, as of a company of seals, which he heard round him. That single fact struck him perhaps more deeply than any; it connected itself with many of physiological fancies; it was the parent of many thoughts and plans of his after-life. Here and there he could distinguish a half sentence. An old shrunken man opposite him was drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipestem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war, 'when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than there hands.' 'Poor human nature,' thought Lancelot, as he tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which ended, as usual, in more swearing and more quarreling, and more beer to make it up: 'poor human nature! always looking back, as the German sage says, to some fancied golden age, never looking forward to the real one which is coming."

The descriptive powers of the author are illustrated in many fine passages, of which this delineation of an English day in March will serve as a specimen:

"A silent, dim, distanceless, steaming, rotting day in March. The last brown oak-leaf, which had stood out the winter's frost, spun and quivered plump down, and then lay, as if ashamed to have broken for a moment the ghastly stillness, like an awkward guest at a great dumb dinner-party. A cold suck of wind just proved its existence, by toothaches on the north side of all faces. The spiders, having been weather-be-witched the night before, had unanimously agreed to cover every brake and brier with gossamer-cradles, and never a fly to be caught in them; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the teeth of 'no demand.' The steam crawled out of the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nostrils of the shivering horses, and clung with clammy paws to frosted hats and dripping boughs. A soulless, skyless, catarrhal day, as if that bustling dowager, old motherEarth—what with match-making in spring, andfêtes champetresin summer, and dinner-giving in autumn—was fairly worn out, and put to bed with the influenza, under wet blankets and the cold-water cure."

"Yeast," says theSpectator, "may be looked at as a series of sketches, loosely strung together, descriptive of palpable social evils in the mass, and of metaphysical broodings among the more thoughtful youth; a struggle which perhaps is always taking place, and which is no further distinctive of the present age than the form that is given by our intellectual and religious activity. The origin of evil, its presence in the world, what man was made for, what he struggles for, what becomes of him, have been questions that excited the speculative of all ages, taking various channels according to the circumstances of the time. Considered from this point of view, as a life-like picture of the heavings of the mass, and the mental fermentation going on among individuals—of theyeastof society—the book displays great ability, and challenges careful attention. It is powerful, earnest, feeling, and eloquent; the production of a man acquainted with society, who has looked closely upon its various classes, and has the power of reading the signs of the times. He has a truthful vigor of description, a rhetorical rather than a dramatic power; or he sacrifices the latter to his habit of expressing his opinions in dialogue, where the author talks rather than the dramatis personæ. There is a genial warmth of feeling in the book, and wide human sympathies, but with a tendency to extremes in statement and opinion—a disposition to deepen the shadows of English life; for go where the author would, pictures quite as bad or worse may be drawn of the condition of mankind, from the 'noble savage,' the beau ideal of Rousseau, to the educated 'Prussian,' who was within a little while the model man of a certain school of philosophers."

The future historians of this age will have to record no more mortifying illustration of the difficulties which in a republic prevent the success of great ideas than that which is presented in the case of Mr. Whitney, who early in the last month sailed for England. We transcribe with especial approval the following paragraphs respecting him and his labors, from theTribune:

"If we are not mistaken, it is now nearly ten years since Mr. Whitney first devoted himself to his great project, and he has pursued it with a force of purpose, an intelligent apprehension of all its bearings and consequences upon the world, a nobility of ambition, and a sustained, intellectual enthusiasm which belongs to the rarest and most admirable characters. We do not know in any country a man in whom great intellectual and practical elements are more happily combined. It is not with the warm partiality of private friendship that we thus speak of Mr. Whitney, for, like all men of ideas, and all of nature positive and deep enough to have a special mission in the world, he puts others into relation with the thoughts which engage him rather than with his own personality, and you become intimate with them, not with him. A native, as we believe, of Connecticut, brought up to business in this city, where he acquired a competence, having conceived the idea of a vaster and more inspiring enterprise than the political and industrial world had ever attempted, he quitted the pursuits of trade, and the certain wealth they promised him, to perfect and realize his conception. He studied the great routes of the world, and the causes of their adoption. In a residence in Europe and by voyages in the East he made himself acquainted with the facts relating to the trade and productive capacities of Asia. He thoroughly surveyed and mastered the whole subject before beginning its discussion. Then he proposed the scheme to his countrymen, and for many years has sought exclusively to commend it to their favor. He has travelled in every direction, addressing public bodies and meetings of citizens, writing newspaper articles and pamphlets, and sparing no occasion to bring the idea and the facts connected with it to the knowledge of all. Wherever he has gone he has left some sparks of his own genial enthusiasm. The plan has found advocates in every section; many state legislatures have formally endorsed it, and a large party in Congress have been in its favor. Dependent altogether on his own pecuniary resources, Mr. Whitney, without compensation or assistance, has labored with a constancy and fidelity which could only proceed from a great purpose. But after this period of arduous exertion he has failed to carry his plan through Congress, while a great part of the lands on which he must depend for its execution, have already passed from the control of the federal Legislature. Accordingly, though he would greatly prefer that his own country should reap the splendid harvest of honor and substantial power which the building of this world's highway would assure, he has no choice but to consider the means which may be offered him for making it through British America. To the world at large the consequences would be the same, though to the United States very different."The route through British America is, in some respects, even preferable to that through our own territory. By the former, the distance from Europe to Asia is some thousand miles shorter than by the latter. Passing close to the northern shore of Lake Superior, traversing the watershed which divides the streams flowing toward the Arctic Sea from those which have their exit southward, and crossing the Rocky Mountains at an elevation some three thousand, feet less than at the South Pass, the road could here be constructed with comparative cheapness, and would open up a region abounding in valuable timber and other natural products, and admirably suited to the growth of grain and to grazing. Having its Atlantic seaport at Halifax, and its Pacific Depot near Vancouver's Island, it would inevitably draw to it the commerce of Europe, Asia, and the United States. Thus British America, from a mere colonial dependency, would assume a controlling rank in the world. To her other nations would be tributary, and in vain would the United States attempt to be her rival; for we could never dispute with her the possession of the Asiatic commerce, or the power which that confers."But the matter reaches beyond the suggestions of national interest, and has a wider scope than the mere sentiment of patriotism. We have hoped that this republic might make the easy effort necessary to grasp a prize so magnificent, but we shall hail with satisfaction the actual commencement of such a work, wherever and by whomsoever it is undertaken.

"The route through British America is, in some respects, even preferable to that through our own territory. By the former, the distance from Europe to Asia is some thousand miles shorter than by the latter. Passing close to the northern shore of Lake Superior, traversing the watershed which divides the streams flowing toward the Arctic Sea from those which have their exit southward, and crossing the Rocky Mountains at an elevation some three thousand, feet less than at the South Pass, the road could here be constructed with comparative cheapness, and would open up a region abounding in valuable timber and other natural products, and admirably suited to the growth of grain and to grazing. Having its Atlantic seaport at Halifax, and its Pacific Depot near Vancouver's Island, it would inevitably draw to it the commerce of Europe, Asia, and the United States. Thus British America, from a mere colonial dependency, would assume a controlling rank in the world. To her other nations would be tributary, and in vain would the United States attempt to be her rival; for we could never dispute with her the possession of the Asiatic commerce, or the power which that confers."

But the matter reaches beyond the suggestions of national interest, and has a wider scope than the mere sentiment of patriotism. We have hoped that this republic might make the easy effort necessary to grasp a prize so magnificent, but we shall hail with satisfaction the actual commencement of such a work, wherever and by whomsoever it is undertaken.

A few days ago, a man of various genius and acquirement, with whose writings people of many countries have been delighted, entered an office, holding in his hand two black-bordered notes, inviting him to funerals.

So—other friends have gone! who now?

Two persons very unlike each other. Truly I have never known more striking contrasts. I was meditating of popular prejudices by which their lives were more or less affected, by which their reputations were certainly much affected: one was a Jew, and the other a Christian.

Proceed with your morality.

I was very poor when I came to this country. I sought occupation in the pursuits for which I was best fitted by my education: for a time with little success; and at length I was offered for the translation of two wretched French novels, the meager sum of fifty dollars. I sold some of my wife's trinkets to purchase paper and ink, and worked diligently, you can guess how many weeks, until they were in English as readable as the French of their author. The task accomplished, I went to my patron, expecting of course to have the pittance counted down in current notes or gold; but——the market for such literature was by this time over stocked; he had supplied it too liberally; and with some insulting excuse he refused the manuscripts.

You have an invitation to his funeral?

Yes—he was rich—always speculating in the sweat of brains—and we had business relations afterward.

The other history?

I chanced one day to meet a gentleman, with whom I had no personal acquaintance, though our names were known to each other, and conversing of a subject with which I was familiar he inquired if I would write something upon it for his journal. I replied that I would be very happy to do so, and as we shook hands, at parting, he left in my palm two twenty-dollar notes. He would gladly have avoided a word of explanation, but seeing my surprise he said, "It is merely a retainer, as the lawyers have it; consider it upon account of the articles you will write me." I wrote the articles; it was but an evening's work; and wrote frequently afterward for the same person, always receiving a liberal reward—always more than I asked—though my employer was himself by no means rich. You will think that in the first place he expected a profit for the money he gave me, but I knew better: he cared not a fig for the papers I was to prepare; he simply suspected that I was in need of money, and took that delicate way to relieve me, as, in his time, he relieved hundreds of men.

A noble characteristic of a man perhaps in all respects deserving of admiration: But what of the prejudice you were meditating?

It is this—that even in this land, where many an old world superstition has found life impossible—the community regard aJewas an incarnation of all selfishness, meanness and dishonor. A hundred to one, being told that the hero of one of these two histories was an Israelite, would swear instantly that the name of him who swindled me was Moses. But it was not: that person will to-morrow have Christian burial, and the other—one of the most sincere and generous men of the age, was an officer of the synagogue. You know—we both know—that the Hebrew race are not only before the other races in all fine intelligence, but that in defiance of prejudices and disabilities which might turn any other people into hordes of robbers, they are of the most honorable portion of mankind.

There are not many subjects for poetry or romance in American history more suggestive than that furnished in the following incidents, translated from Restrepo'sHistoria de la Revolucion de la Colombia:

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