varying influences that led to it. After the publication of 'The Scarlet Letter,' we read that he was constantly applied to by criminals and others for advice and help.

Hawthorne was in many ways a 'confessor;' and in his most repulsive subjects and characters there is a slight air as of justification for the wrongdoer. A kind of subdued apology for the vileness of human nature runs through his writings. This is not because he held light views as to duty-his views of duty were as strict and as high as those of any of his Puritan ancestors; but, as has been said, he desires to see everything in relation to a prevailing Providence; and the necessity that lies on him, in order to make this the better apparent, to rigidly reduce the claims of individuals, leads him almost of set purpose to mix and conglomerate motives. He himself has written, 'Blessed are all simple emotions be they bright or dark; it is only the mixture of them that is infernal.' But in spite of this he dealt in mixed emotions till it would almost seem as though he had no taste for simpler ones, or had wholly lost the faculty of interesting himself in them; as those who have been accustomed to highly spiced food and drink, cannot bring themselves afterwards to relish foods and drinks that

are pure and unmixed. It was his morality and his need for actual contact with men, that saved him from the last and worst results of cynicism. He is no hero-worshipper. He sees

too clearly into human nature, and detects its seamy places far too easily to be a sentimentalist in any form. But he is in the best sense a believer, though not perhaps after the precise orthodox type. He has the firmest faith in a divine purpose that embraces all man's puny efforts, and takes them up and includes them, to educe from them at last a largesse of benefit for humanity, however far the individuals themselves may have failed to recognise, or to reach up to the height of, this divine design. And thus, notwithstanding that he is sometimes very divided as to several open courses of human action, he never really doubts. The more we get to know him we feel the more surely that he is a genuine believer in goodness and in God. In spite of his strange curiosity, which cannot even be restrained in face of the most perilous problems, he still keeps intact a region of his spiritual nature sacred to mystery. This man, with his 'awful in-sight,' and his morbid melancholy, yet held firmly by the spiritual world, refusing to surrender the inmost citadel. Here he takes his position with the most

commonplace of men; and in this lies one element of his greatness. His works, while they may sometimes raise question as to conventional judgments on this or that action, always encourage the deepest reverence for the spirit of man itself-from which flows unceasingly the true morality that ever renews itself in love and sympathy. And he always will, on this account, be most truly appreciated by close students of human nature; while the ghostliness of his imagination gives him sometimes a strange fascination, which all alike must feel, and recognise the strength that lay behind it.

Of his qualities as a writer what need is there to speak? No man has ever used the English language with more perfect grace and self-control than he has done, no man has more skilfully brought out its more secret chords and harmonies. His words fit his thoughts, as neatly as do the coverings which nature provides for her finest and most delicate productions-chaste ornament never being spared.

I

MOTHER RIGBY'S PIPE.

I.

DICKON,' cried Mother Rigby, 'a coal for my pipe!'

The pipe was in the old dame's mouth when she said these words. She had thrust it there after filling it with tobacco, but without stooping to light it at the hearth, where indeed there was no appearance of a fire having been kindled that morning. Forthwith, however, as soon as the order was given, there was an intense red glow out of the bowl of the pipe, and a whiff of smoke from Mother Rigby's lips. Whence the coal came, and how brought thither by an invisible hand, I have never been able to discover.

'Good!' quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod