THE SCARLET LETTER.

HAWTHORNE is, we think, the ablest writer of pure fiction in the language. There is nothing commonplace about him. Unlike most novelists, he deals less with accidental manifestations than with universal principles. His characters are not mere shadowy abstractions, but "veritable human souls, though dwelling in a far-off world of cloudland." He is a purist in style, and is at all times as scrupulously exact in his choice of words as if he were writing a complete and perfect poem. All his works, from his earliest productions, the "Twice Told Tales," to his later efforts, the "Marble Faun" and "Our Old Home," bear upon them the ineffaceable stamp of genius, and ever awaken ideas of beauty, of solemnity, and of grandeur. The SCARLET LETTER is perhaps his greatest creation.

There is a suggestiveness and an originality about it for which we may search in vain for a parallel outside of the writings of Shakspeare. In it he penetrates into the recesses of the heart, and touches the secret springs of our inmost passions and desires. It is a deep, a strange, a profound and an awful tragedy, in which the severest and most appalling sufferings known to man are not only depicted with wonderful naturalness and intensity, but laid bare as it were to the gaze even of persons of the dullest and most unimaginative sensibilities. Hawthorne is said to have derived his first conception of this story from

reading a sentence written upon an old yellow parchment, accidentally found among some rubbish in the Customhouse at Boston, decreeing that a woman convicted of adultery should stand upon the platform of a pillory in front of the market-place with the letter "A" written on her breast. A friend who saw him read it remarked to a gentleman standing near: "We shall hear, I am sure, of the letter 'A' again." HAWTHORNE, in the introductory chapter to the romance, not only relates the story of reading the sentence, but says that he actually found a piece of fine red cloth, much worn and faded by time and wear, in the shape of the letter "A," and that he involuntarily put it upon his breast, and seemed to experience a sensation of burning heat, as if the letter were not of scarlet cloth but of red-hot iron, and that he shuddered and let it fall upon the floor. He added that it was the subject of meditation for many an hour while pacing to and fro across his room, or traversing with a hundred-fold repetition the long extent from the front door of the Custom-house to the side entrance and back again. He felt there was a mystic and a terrible meaning in it most worthy of interpretation.

The interpretation he gave will endure forever. He has portrayed, as no one else could portray, the religious faith of the Puritans. In depicting it in all its hideous deformity, he does not exaggerate anything or conceal anything. Its victim, Hester Prynne, whether whether or not a true type of her class, must forever be associated with the intolerance, narrow prejudices and vindictive feelings of the bigoted sect who thought themselves especially chosen by Heaven to punish the guilty with the most damnable instruments of torture. The author, in discoursing upon the hard and unyielding severity of their laws, never allows his indignation to overmaster his

judgment. In the very whirlwind of passion he begets a temperance which gives it smoothness. It has been urged as an objectionable feature in his writings that he does not solve moral and psychological problems, "but exhibits. their bearings and workings in concrete and living forms, for experiment and illustration." Now this is exactly what we most admire in him. It is a part of the peculiarity of genius not to be decisive, to raise questions rather than to settle them. HAWTHORNE seems to care more for giving his readers an opportunity of discovering truth themselves than to point it out to them. But sometimes, we admit, he abuses this power; for instance, when he refuses to tell us in the "Marble Faun" whether Donatello has pointed and furry ears or not, or where he excites our curiosity by concealing the cause of the influence of the ill-omened Capuchin over the courageous and noble-hearted Miriam; or in the following comparison of hatred and love in the SCARLET LETTER: "It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry whether hatred or love be not the same thing at bottom. Each in its utmost development supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow."

There is something about HAWTHORNE'S children that affects us with singular love and admiration. They are not prodigies, like Paul Dombey and Elinor Trench, but have all the natural bloom, freshness and simplicity of childhood. They are imbued with a spell of infinite

variety. They breathe an atmosphere of love and beauty, of enchanting hopes and dreams. We feel that theirs is the only flowery path, the golden period of existence, the unclouded dawn of life. We do not find anything inconsistent even in the conduct of little Pearl, one of the most shadowy, ethereal and mystical of all his creations, when we recollect that "she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment," and that "the child's nature had something wrong in it, which continually betokened that she had been born amiss, the effluence of her mother's lawless passion ;" indeed, we except the terrible scene at the brook side, where she refused to come to her mother, though called in accents of honeyed sweetness, until she placed the scarlet letter upon her breast, but stood motionless, pointing with her finger where she was accustomed to see it. The author, however, endeavors to reconcile her conduct in the following: "Children will not abide any, the slightest change in the accustomed aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Pearl misses something which she has always seen me wear."

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We know of nothing in the whole range of literature that equals the sufferings of the mother when she again fastens the letter on her breast, feeling that she must bear the torture a while longer. 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 this 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 not, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom."

We have a hint at the conclusion of this mystical romance that little Pearl grew to womanhood, and that her

wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued, and made capable of the gentlest happiness. The description. of Hester's repentance is so full of divine philosophy that no one can rise from its perusal without a purer and deeper sympathy for the failings of humanity.

“But there was more real life for Hester Prynne, here in New England, than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed, of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it — resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Woman, more especially,- in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion,- or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought, came to Hester's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counseled them, as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life,