toil, and freshen our weary minds with the dewy flowers of his undying spring.

Again, to those of us to whom the more delicate emanations of his brain would have no special attraction, there would still remain the more real part of his genius. The works of one who has shown himself to be so wondrous a depicter of varied character, so profound a student of the human soul, could never fail to be recognized at their full value by a great majority of English readers. Many, perhaps, might not feel any responsive chord struck within them by the ethereal loveliness of the variations which he knew so well how to construct upon the melodies that live to a poet in every natural sight and sound, who might not be able to comprehend his subtle imagery and the fairy flowers of his phantasy, would not fail to acknowledge the hand of the great master in the striking figures that stand out, in such profusion, from his canvas. The versatility of his genius is as striking an attribute of the man as its beauty. No thinker can ignore the creative mind that could give us, at one time, the heartsearing agony of "The Scarlet Letter," at another "The Tender Beauty," shaded here and there with gloom, of "The House of the Seven Gables;" at one time, the half-playful, half-earnest mysticism of "The Blithedale Romance," and at another the sombre horrors of some of his legends. His latest romance, by many considered his greatest work, "Transformation," opens up to us a field of fiction, which no writer, before Hawthorne, has worked in so entirely original and felicitous a manner. The way in which he indicates the subtle change in the mind of "Donatello," the weird transition from an utterly sensuous life to the development of a higher though pain-purchased intelligence, produced by the entrance upon the stage of his existence of a new and sinful agency through whose constraining influence his happy, careless, sunny joyance merges into the reserved and somewhat gloomy gravity of a being conscious of the awful truths of immortality and the heavy responsibilities of an undying soul, is unsurpassable. There is scarcely a character in the whole range of fiction which can compare with it. The whole book, besides, is a mine of beauty. In contrast with the increasing gloom that shadows over the two principal characters, stands out, in grateful relief, the exquisite figure of Hilda, as lovely in its delicate beauty and its cold and stainless purity as "The Sea-born Venus" of another gifted American, Mr. Fraiken. The minor personages of the story are all sketched in with consummate art, and the completed picture is set in a flower-fringed frame of most delightful fancies and imagery, in which the old classical, mythical fictions are interwoven with modern romance in an exquisitely delicate and beautiful manner.

In his study of character, Hawthorn did not think it beneath him to notice the least details, the humblest links of domestic circumstance, when by so doing he could more fully and

artistically exhibit the growth of an embryo intelligence. Indeed, he sometimes probes the wounds that have been left by great trials or great sins so far and so minutely, in his search after the hidden germ of psychical development, that he has often been accused of a morbid craving for the sensational laying open of revolting details, for word-dissection, to an extent almost painful.

His "Scarlet Letter" is generally chosen as the weak point on this ground; but it seems scarcely possible to an intelligent reader that any one, who does not make his own faults, can study that most wonderful picture without observing how-though the subject is painful and almost revolting, and the details of the sufferings of Hester and the young minister would be unbearable if depicted by a mediocre writer-the light genius of the author has enabled him to make beautiful these deformities with the veiling embellishment of his poetic thought, and to etherealize the grosser interests and struggles of mortals into some diviner essence, the secret of which is known only to himself.

Old Roger Chillingworth, certainly, is a demon of unrelenting malignity in his thirst for vengeance, and his deliberate hourly, nay, momentary, re-awakening of the most cruel tortures in the young minister's breast; but much horror is removed from the sketch by the manner in which it is treated, and by the remembrance of how deeply the once kindly and gentle scholar had been wronged. Indeed, his Mephistophelian impersonation seems almost grateful to us, as a necessary and apropos foil to the weird and dazzling brightness of little Pearl's elfin figure. This latter character, again, with her strange, half-uncanny, all bright and beautiful ways and actions, illuminates the sombre ground of the drama with a fitful and capricious light, giving no relief to the gloom, but, like a fleeting meteor in a cloud-obscured sky, causing the shadow to seem doubly dark beside the brilliant ray. Very touching and beautiful, in its simple pathos, is the death-scene of the young minister, when he conquers the cowardly silence in which he has veiled so long his association in criminality with Hester, and lays open the blackness of his sin before that congregation, who have learned to look upon him as something almost more than mortal. A wonderful effect, too, have the weird suggestions of the future witch-mania and the temptation of the minister by the hag, that chequer the black canvas of the story with their lurid flashes of furnace flame. But we should require far more space and time than we can possibly at present occupy, if we attempted to point out a tithe of these inimitable beauties. They have been already, and will, doubtless, often again be discoursed of, by pens much more capable.

We have now before us a tiny book, of some forty pages, that contains the last ideas which the mighty magician conceived and recorded. But the short first chapter of an unfinished story, to be called the "Dolliver Romance," bears so exquisitely the impress of Hawthorne's

master-hand, that we read it with even more than the old eagerness, and when we arrive at the break which can never be remedied, the void which can now never be bridged over, find fresh cause to lament the loss of the writer. It is the opening sketch of the declining age of an old New England apothecary, upon whose trembling limbs life has scarcely any hold, and for whom earth has no retaining link except the beloved presence of his little grandchild "Pansie." With one foot in the grave, and the blood in his veins frozen by the wintry breath of age, he has nothing in common with the new generation, and lives in a state of continual abstraction, from which only a child's voice can recall him. This latter, a little tottering creature of 3 years, a faint indication of a beautiful figure, is the revivifying influence of the old man's life, his perpetual revisiting of spring, the one only thing that remains to him here below to prevent his weary soul from passing away.

This preliminary outline is drawn with exquisite tenderness and delicacy of hand, and we can perceive in it the promise of a more perfect and beautiful work than any he had as yet given to the world. All Hawthorne's charming peculiarities are perceptible in it. His quaint conceits and half-humours, half-pathetic turns of thought, are as thickly strewn over these few pages as in many of his productions, and perhaps they are touched off with a more loving and delicate care. Some of the ideas are full of so tenderly lovely and mournful a fancy, that one cannot but think that approaching death must have given to his inward vision some clearer insight into sights and secrets beyond mortal ken. One passage, in which he describes the way in which the old man, on whom the greeting and business of the outside world fall with jarring and painful strangeness, is soothed and comforted by the innocent companionship of his tiny granddaughter, is of such unequalled beauty that we cannot resist the temptation of quoting it.

"Walking the streets seldom and reluctantly, he felt a dreary impulse to elude the people's observation, as if with a sense that he had gone irrevocably out of fashion, and broken his connecting links with the network of human life; or else it was that nightmare-feeling which we sometimes have in dreams, when we seem to find ourselves wandering through a crowded avenue, with the noonday sun upon us, in some wild extravagance of dress or nudity. He was conscious of estrangement from his townspeople, but did not always know how or wherefore, nor why he should be thus groping through the twilight mist in solitude. If they spoke loudly to him, with cheery voices, the greeting translated itself faintly and mournfully to his cars; if they shook him by the hand, it was as if a thick insensible glove absorbed the kindly pressure and the warmth. When little Pansie was the companion of his walk, her childish gaiety and freedom did not avail to bring him into closer relationship with men, but seemed to follow him to that region of indefinable remoteness, that dismal Fairyland of aged fancy, into which old Grandsire Dolliver had so strangely crept away. Yet there were moments, as many persons had noticed, when the

great-grandpapa would suddenly take stronger hues of life. It was as if his faded figure had been coloured over anew, or at least, as he and Pansio moved along the street, as if a sunbeam had fallen across him, instead of the grey gloom of an instant touched and quickened by the warm contiguity of before. His chilled sensibilities had probably been his little companion through the medium of her hand, as it stirred within his own, or some inflection of her voice that set bis memory ringing and chiming with forgotten sounds. While that music lasted, the old man was alive and happy. And there were seasons, it might be, even happier than these, when Pansie had been kissed and put to bed, and Grandsire Dolliver sat by his fireside, gazing in among the massive coals and above their glow into those Hence come angels or fiends into our twilight cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. musings, according as we may have peopled them in bygone years. Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire-gleam, stole an expression of repose and perfect trust that made him as beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits that were watching him beheld a calm surprise draw slowly over his features, and brighten into joy, though rot so vividly as to break his evening quietude. The gate of heaven had been kindly left ojar, that this forlorn old creature might catch a glimpse within. of an intangible bliss diffused through the fitful All the night afterwards, he would be semi-conscious lapses of an old man's slumber, and would awake at early dawn with a faint thrilling of the heartstrings, as if there had been music just now wandering over them."

And so abruptly finishes this last emanation of Hawthorne's poet-soul. Its very beauty strikes a painful chord within us, when we note the certain indications in these last few lines his hand traced, how surely his genius was advancing towards the greatest heights of inspiration, how he would have exalted and delighted the world with the ripened fruit of his maturer age, and think that the soul which gave vent to his poetic yearnings has fled, that we may never more look for another magical outpouring of artistic treasure from the hand that now lies cold in death.

Truly the present age is a fatal one to genius. Those who own a higher intellect and a nobler mission than the general mass of mankind, who celestial beauty, seem unwilling now to linger are destined to give us some vague inkling of amongst us, and seek in their early prime a nobler refuge than is to be found upon earth, and where their poetic dreams will meet with a surer realization.

In former ages our great classic authors, in poetry and prose, lived mostly to a good old age, and were permitted to expand into imperishable works, for our benefit, the clearer and nobler thoughts of their autumn age; but now very few great lights in literature and art remain to us beyond their earliest manhood.

It seems not long ago that Shelley, Keats, and Mendelssohn passed away; but the other day that Hood, Mrs. Browning, and Macaulay received their last summons! (How they crowd 'upon us as we recall them!) And now another

A MOTHER'S MOAN.

BY MATTHIAS BARR.

HUGH HAMILTON'S WIFE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "WATCHING AND WAITING."

the improvement in the very first moment of our meeting. Your mouth bears a firmer expression, you have a purer, more earnest light in your eyes, and an altogether nobler cast of countenance generally. Don't mistake me, my friend. My remarks just now were solely in reference to the Hugh of other days."

strongly repelled her, and she experienced towards me only feelings of aversion and repugnance. I recollect well the first time that ever our eyes met and our souls talked together. She was standing a little aside from a party of gay young people who were discoursing flippantly upon themes of such sacredness to the "I supposed so. But the present Hugh is heart of the believer, that in the presence of but a development of the interior and better such a one, true refinement of feeling at least nature of the old-time Hugh. It may sound to must have dictated that they should be respectyou vastly like the sentimental ravings of a fully, if not reverently, spoken of. I was romantic lover to say it, but I know that under something of a sceptic in those days, owing, God I owe all that I am morally to the blessed in a measure, to the influence of certain works influence of my wife. That I possessed some of an infidel character, that bear upon the face hidden germs of good is undeniable, but they of them some show of reason and evidence of must have perished in the mass of corruption fact, which evidence, when it is brought before where they were cast, or, at the best, lain the real witnesses of truth upon the side of dormant, had the sun of her love never arisen Christianity, falls into miserable fragments, upon me. It is a wonderment to you that I and cannot, by any human skill, become again should have chosen her. It is infinitely more united. During the conversation, my sceptical mysterious to my mind that she should have opinions came out pretty freely, for I took no chosen me. I do not understand it, and never pains to conceal my views, but, on the concould. I think she herself would be quite trary, I paraded them on all possible occasions unable to assign a reason for her choice. But as convincing proof (to my mind) of superior I do not like to believe it the will of Providence understanding; and when, some observation of that the good accruing from this union should the company having elicited from me a remark be unevenly balanced, and-are you smiling at not only doubting but absolutely blasphemous, my odd fancies, Paul?-I sometimes selfishly I chanced to look in the direction of the winthink that Angela may have needed the discipline dow where Angela was standing, I found her of just such trials as my vices have subjected her beautiful eyes fixed full upon me, and their to, to purify her nature from all taint of earthi- gaze, sad and reproachful, sunk deep into my ness, and make her wholly the saint that she is. soul. Not a word was spoken, and not a word There is divine wisdom in the union of good and was needed. It was as if my suddenly aroused ill. If two natures-one with a large admixture conscience had taken bodily form and stood of good, and the other with strong tendencies before me with silent accusation and reproach. to evil-be brought together, the result will be It seemed as if those eyes were in my soul forto far higher ends than if like be joined to like. ever after. They were witnesses of all I What preaches to us so strongly the glory of thought and did. I could not escape them, the day as the pitchy darkness of the night? and I could not conceal from them. They How do we discover the horrid deformity of haunted me by day and by night. They were falseness except by contrast with the living with me in my solitude; they went before me beauty of truth? When I see the virtues of in the busy thoroughfares; they followed me my patron saint shining against the dark back- to the haunts of vice; they shone on me out of ground of my vice, I am so enamoured of their the cloud of my dreams; they stood my sentibeauty that all my misdirected affections are nels in moments of strongest temptation; until concentrated in one strong, overruling desire at last I grew to think of their owner as my to obtain and possess; and she, my angel, saviour and restorer; to seek her as meswhen she looks from me to her high ideal in senger of peace out of a far, beautiful country the clouds, feels by contrast the exceeding from which my sins had banished me; to folmajesty of goodness, and her love therefore low her as the only means given under heaven is kindled afresh; so, while she runs with swift through which I could secure salvation, temfeet up to the serene, shining heights of saint-poral and eternal; to plead with her as with liness, I, with slower, more painful, and often faltering steps, have struggled up out of the low country where evil passions take horrible, nameless shapes, and wrangle together for the souls of men; and, to quote a little known author, am beginning to work out my way into the the higher sunlit slopes of "Paul," Hugh continued, speaking slowly that mountain which has no summit, or and with great earnestness, I fully believe it or whose summit is in heaven only.' Yet, was given to that woman to redeem, elevate, though it may be shown that evil has its use, I and save my soul, and that the wonderful influconfess I cannot discover wherein lies its attrac-ence she exerted over me was a direct interpotion for good, and, as I said, the choice of my wife remains, and will ever remain, a mystery to me. I know she was not drawn to me at first. I believe that in our earlier intercourse, I

one in whose hands my life was, to lift it up to glorified heights or to dash it down to infernal deeps. But, my friend, I am telling you my story without in the least designing to do so."

Pray go on," Dr. Dana pleaded, “I am an eager listener."

sition of Providence to stay me in my mad, downward race to perdition, and turn my feet into ascending paths. She was good, and I loved her. But to love good is not to possess it; it