66 fur. In the coarser representations of this class which, if the Faun of Praxiteles must be sup- could have first dreamed of a pation, with guilt; that we are but imper- dle is indicated, however, only by two definite fect and partial, so long as our conscience signs, these are the two ears of the Faun, is free from the darker stains with which life which are leaf-shaped, terminating in little may besmirch it, until we have fathomed the peaks, like those of some species of animals. depths, as well as scaled the heights of our Though not so seen in the marble, they are proinmost nature. Such a theory as this isbably to be considered as clothed in fine downy hinted at in The Blithedale Romance, where Coverdale, speaking of Hollingsworth's "plan for the reformation of criminals through an appeal to their higher instincts," says, he ought to have commenced his investigations of the subject by perpetrating some huge sin, in his proper person, and examining the condition of his higher in- "Only a sculptor of the finest imagination, stincts afterwards." The difficulty that the most delicate taste, the sweetest feeling, and would, at the outset, present itself in un- the rarest artistic skill in a word, a sculptor dertaking such a task, would be to find a and a poet too human type representing, with any approach Faun in this guise, and then have succeeded in to adequacy, the original state of innocence imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in and natural simplicity. The solution of this marble. Neither man nor animal, and yet no difficulty is found in the poetic conception monster; but a being in whom both races meet on friendly ground! The idea grows coarse as of the Faun of Antiquity; and it is perhaps we handle it, and hardens in our grasp. But, if to his studies of classical art, while in Rome, the spectator broods long over the statue, he will that Hawthorne is indebted for the germi- be conscious of its spell; all the pleasantness of nating idea of the work, as he confessedly sylvan life, all the genial and happy characteris to the conditions of life, physical sur-istics of creatures that dwell in woods and fields, roundings, and social atmosphere of the "Eternal City" of the present day for its details and the background. As the marble Faun of Praxiteles affords the key-note to the whole romance, we give his description of it here. After describing the externals of the statue, he thus proceeds to analyse its inner life: will seem to be mingled and kneaded into one substance, along with the kindred qualities in the human soul. Trees, grass, flowers, woodland, streamlets, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man! The essence of all these was compressed long ago, and still exists within that discoloured marble surface of the Faun of Praxiteles. "And, after all, the idea may have been no dream, but rather a poet's reminiscence of a pe"Perhaps it is the very lack of moral severity, riod when man's affinity with nature was more of any high and heroic ingredient in the charac-strict, and his fellowship with every living thing ter of the Faun, that makes it so delightful an more intimate and dear." object to the human eye, and to the frailty of the human heart. The being here represented is en- fine. But admirable as it is, it gives a As a piece of Art-criticism this is very dowed with no principle of virtue, and would be incapable of comprehending such; but he would very inadequate idea of the depth and be true and honest by dint of his simplicity. We thoroughness of the critical insight and exshould expect from him no sacrifice or effort for position he brings to bear on this wonderan abstract cause; there is not an atom of mar-ful creation of the heathen imagination. tyr's stuff in all that softened marble; but he has a capacity for strong and warm attachment, and might act devotedly through its impulse, and even die for it at need. It is possible, too, that the Faun might be educated through the medium of his emotions, so that the coarser animal portion of his nature might eventually be thrown into the background, though never utterly expelled. The animal nature, indeed, is a most essential part of the Faun's composition; for the The whole life of Donatello is an extended evolution and comment on the ideas he has here formally indicated. For his purpose, there is something marvellously suitable in the conception of the wild freshness, guilelessness, sportive exuberance, of natural life in its physical perfection, obtained in the meeting-point of man and animal; and this is worked out with a felicity and grace in the character of Donatello's yet blameless life, that vie with the production of Praxit eles itself. characteristics of the brute creation mect and combine with those of humanity in this strange yet true and natural conception of antique poeWe have before spoken of his fine eye try and art. Praxiteles had subtly diffused for the natural innocence and purity of throughout his work that mute mystery which so hopelessly perplexes us whenever we attempt to gain an intellectual or sympathetic knowledge of the lower orders of creation. The rid childhood. He has sketched the same qualities of heart and character, under an ideal aspect, in the person of Hilda, who exhibits a nature more mature and cultivated, and enriched by the fine instincts and sympa- | soning than of a vivifying imagination. thies of an artist, but hardly less childlike We must content ourselves without more than "Little Annie." The picture of her special reference to the remaining members virgin life, up in her lonely tower, above of the quartet, as it would be impossible the turmoil, and passion, and filth of the in a paragraph or two even to indicate the city, pursuing the calling of her art with line of analysis of a character so complex self-renouncing devotion, surrounded by as that of Miriam, on the one hand, and so the flock of white doves she feeds from her devoid of salient points as that of Kenyon, window, tending the never extinguished on the other. In truth, to do justice to lamp before the shrine of the Virgin at the this, in some respects Hawthorne's greatest battlemented angle of her perch-home, with work, it would be necessary to devote to a sentiment akin to natural piety, but with- its consideration an entire article, instead out the superstition of the professed wor- of a page or two of a general review of shippers of "Our Lady," forms a perfect his works. It is certainly the most mature, contrast, not only to the dark, passionate and, especially in the earlier half, the most heart of Miriam, who supplies the relieving delightful production of his pen. There is shadow required for artistic balance to her something in the free, joyous nature of spotless whiteness, but also in her growth Donatello that creates an atmosphere of to fair and noble womanhood, unsullied ap- freshness and health around the reader; it parently by base deed or foul thought, to is as if he heard the song of birds and the the idea sought to be worked out in the babbling of brooks; as if the bright sunmore perilous career of Donatello attaining shine of a southern sky were overhead, but a higher development through personal fall interrupted by a cool and leafy shade; as and repentance. And in this, perhaps, we if conventional fetters were all broken, and have an example of Hawthorne's tendency life rejuvenized and full of the agile sportto balance every argument and opinion ive gladness of the most wildly innocent with its counterpoise, and of his anxiety animals. In a word, he feels as if the ever to give both sides a fair hearing. The dream of a Golden Age were a realized professed aim of the book is to display the fact, and all nature rejoicing, and educational operation of sin in awakening the conscience to a higher activity, and the rousing of the intellectual and moral nature, through passion, to a more comprehensive grasp of our position and relations in the universe. The progress of Donatello's development is meant to exhibit this. But Hawthorne would not be held to commit himself too absolutely to such a view, and side by side with the Faun-man, he seeks to show us in Hilda a being of the purest and truest instincts, of profound insight into what most vitally bears on the inner life of man, unfolding the richest blossoms of her nature with as little sense of guilt as could well be the lot of any human soul, save the mysterious shadow and burden its existence in others casts on the purest. "-its beauty Its sole duty." sensuous Alongside of this perhaps too This romance is also the author's most ambitious effort. His other works deal with isolated and peculiar cases; their interest may be profound, but it is narrow. In "the marble Faun" he takes a wider range, and in the training of Donatello seems to aim at symbolizing the education at once of the The first part of Transformation, it seems race and of each individual, from a condito us, is more successful than the latter por- tion of unconscious innocence and unreflecttion. The growth and slow unfolding of ing happiness to the conscious life of a freeDonatello's nature under the quickening in- will agent, quickened to recognise and war fluence of love-for it must not be over- with evil, from a condition in which man looked that this, as well as guilt, is a teach- is but the highest and noblest animal, to one er to him, and that his crime is not the out-of true humanity. Not only is the aim and come of unmixed and native evil, but of the scope of the book thus loftier and wider passionate madness of a heart untutored to than any of the others; it includes a more restraint, and moved to its depths by a not varied range of interests, and supplements wholly ignoble enthusiasm, his earlier life, the main current with tributary streams. we say, up to the period of his crime, is ex- But from this spring also some of its imquisitely fine and full of imaginative truth. perfections. The effect is richer, but more The subsequent process has an air of effort, divided. With the larger theme the imas if more the expression of reflective rea-pression is less intense. It is less uniform in texture, and, whether from the flagging power of the writer, or from the inherent nature of the subject, the crisis is felt to be reached when the plunge into crime is made. It thus labours under the serious defect of attaining its highest point in the middle, after which the interest ebbs without a second flood. "The Scarlet Letter," for unique purpose, sustained tone, and culminating effect, must perhaps be admitted to be the more perfect work of art. Besides the central interest of the romance, the book is full of subsidiary elements of attraction. We have already spoken of the criticisms on Art with which it abounds, and also casually referred to the delightful and accurate delineations of Italian scenery and life, and many of the monuments of world-wide interest in and around the city of the seven hills, introduced in the course of the narrative. The author seems to have imbibed the very spirit of the scenes around him. His reproduction of Roman life and locality are faithful and living to a degree that can be fully appreciated by those only who have breathed that air, heavy with the memories of centuries, and gazed around on those circling hills of amethyst, and upward into that sky of such tender ethereal pearly grey and palpitating brightness. We know no description in prose or verse that so conveys the sylvan charm of the Borghese grounds, the beauty and magic prospect from the Pincio, the spell of witchery of the Trevi waters by moonlight, the solemn grandeur and hallowed memories of the Coliseum, broken in upon by the inharmonious and impertinent mirth or borrowed sentiment of tourists, as it too often is, in its hours of most sanctified and impressive aspect, when night seems to withdraw it from the bustle and pettiness of the life of to-day into the silence and grandeur of a bygone world. We would not, in conclusion, venture on an attempt at any estimate of our author's mental constituents, or at assigning to him a definite place in the literature of his country or language; but as, in the foregoing pages, we have dwelt mainly on what seemed to us admirable for some form of power or refinement in his literary character and works, we would now the more freely, and to prevent misconception, in a closing paragraph refer again to what we conceive to be in him a fertile source, of justness, no doubt, but far more of weakness-his indecision and balance, not of faculties, but of convictions. The pondering judicial attitude in which he so habitually holds himself leads him in many cases to offer opposing views of a question, either through the medium 66 of different characters, or through the puzzled and wavering introspection of one, or even sometimes through the author's own reflections and descriptions on divers occasions. He deals in few fabrics that have a decidedly right side and a wrong; and takes care to exhibit the reverse of his wares as well as the obverse. He seems endowed with a sort of intellectual polarity. In his mind questions assume formulæ which, like quadratic equations in algebra, yield a twofold and opposite result, a solution at once positive and negative. He has no singleness of eye"-not that the rays of mental vision ever mingle and confuse each other; on the contrary, each image is clear and sharp; but neither do they coalesce in stereoscopic solidity; they are distinct, but they are quite different. The sceptic, not in the popular, but in the strict philosophical sense of the word, enters as a large ingredient into his composition. He contemplates the world, apart, with shaded eye. He seems ever collecting evidence and information - arranging, sifting, expounding the pleas of both sides, like an impartial judge delivering his charge; but his meatal jury rarely return a verdict. On the one side, it is demanded, "Who can trust the religious sentiment of Raphael, or receive any of his Virgins as heaven-descended likenesses, after seeing, for example, the Fornarina of the Barberini Palace, and feeling how sensual the artist must have been to paint such a brazen trollop of his own accord, and lovingly?" On the other, we are reminded of Madonnas by Raphael, on whose lips he has impressed a holy and delicate reserve, implying sanctity on earth, and into whose soft eyes he has thrown a light which he never could have imagined, except by raising his own eyes with a pure aspiration heavenward." Seen from Hilda's and Kenyon's point of view, Guido's Archangel Michael is the most beautiful and divinest figure that mortal painter ever drew," with "an expression of heavenly severity, a degree of pain, trouble, and disgust at being brought in contact with sin, even for the purpose of quelling and punishing it, and yet a celestial tranquillity pervading his whole being." The same figure calls forth from Miriam's wildly excited imagination the following scorching sarcasm: 66 with his unruffled wings, with his unhacked "That Archangel now, how fair he looks, sword, and clad in his bright armour, and that exquisitely fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest Paradisiacal mode! What a dainty air of the first celestial society! With what half-scornful delicacy he sets his prettily sandalled foot on such child's-play as Guido's dapper Archangel seems to have found it." 66 the head of his prostrate foe! But is it thus that | unimportant in itself, would imply almost virtue looks the moment after its death-struggle every reform which society is now suffering with evil? No, no; I could have told Guido for." And elsewhere we have a reflection better. A full third of the Archangel's feathers of the author's own, that "all towns should should have been torn from his wings, the rest be made capable of purification by fire or of ruffled, till they looked like Satan's own! His decay within each half-century." What sword should be streaming with blood, and per- destruction, in the thought and heart of a haps broken half-way to the hilt; his armour crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory; a bleed-nation, of the sense of grandeur, of tradiing gash on his brow, cutting right across the tional associations, of the reverence for the stern scowl of battle! He should press his foot past that forms the hope and life-spring of hard down upon the old serpent, as if his very the future, would such teaching, generally soul depended upon it, feeling him squirm might- accepted and acted on, at once bear witness ily, and doubting whether the fight were half of, and reactively contribute to effect! We over yet, and how the victory might turn! And have already quoted a suggestion that vice with all this fierceness, this grimness, this un- may be but a lower form of virtue, and may utterable horror, there should still be something ultimately be sublimed into it. But the high, tender, and holy in Michael's eyes, and counterbalancing statement is not wanting. around his mouth. But the battle never was There is, I believe," says Hilda, "only one Right and one Wrong; and I do not understand how two things so totally unlike And in these widely divergent criticisms, can be mistaken for one another; nor how representing not merely differences of view, two mortal foes, as Right and Wrong surely but antithetic types of mind, we recognise are, can work together in the same deed." the feelings of the two classes, under one or Again, Sin has educated Donatello, and other of which the students of Guido and elevated him," and the scope of the whole Raphael mostly rank themselves. Notwith- book is an attempt to embody this view. standing his keen and profound sympathy Is sin then, which we deem such a with art and artist life, the author of Trans-dreadful blackness in the universe, is it formation declares that "a taste for pictorial like Sorrow, merely an element of human art is often no more than a polish upon the education, through which we struggle to a hard enamel of an artificial character;" and higher and purer state than we could otherwith as little ruth as any Vandal he would ob- wise have attained? Did Adam fall that literate the decaying remains of the revered we might ultimately rise to a far loftier partreasures that have come down to us from adise than his?" To which we have the the noblest pencils of early date. "Now that rejoinder, Do This is terrible. the colours are so wretchedly bedimmed you not perceive what a mockery your creed now that blotches of plastered wall dot the makes, not only of all religious sentiment, frescoes all over, like a mean reality thrust-but of moral law? and how it annuls and ing itself through life's brightest illusions the next best artist to Cimabue, or Giotto, or Ghirlandaio, or Pinturicchio, will be he In some measure this oscillation may be that shall reverently cover over their ruined but the expression of varying moods of a masterpieces with whitewash!" His imag- fanciful and speculative mind, that delights, ination not only seeks, but craves for the old," as an intellectual and moral exercise,” as the reverend, the time-hallowed, and feels he himself says, in imagination to play out scared by the spick-and-span newness of the part of beings hypothetically endowed American life; yet he rails against a perma- with intellectual and moral attributes, and nent and enduring architecture, an art placed in hypothetical situations. In so far which, both in public monuments, civil and as it is the result of genuine doubt, sincere religious, and in private and domestic home-impartiality and candour, and dispassionate steads (where the character is nourished inquiry, it may indicate a character that will that feeds the national spirit), is perhaps as never command a great following; but it is sure an expression as any of the stability surely better than the unhesitating but blind and historic life of a people. "We shall live movement of a spirit of narrow partisanship to see the day, I trust," says Holgrave, and merely receptive activity, and must re"when no man shall build his house for pos- commend itself to all thinking minds as a terity. If each generation were healthy discipline, and a process that must allowed and expected to build its own precede and underlie all well-founded behouses, that single change, comparatively lief. 1 obliterates whatever precepts of Heaven are written deepest within us?" CHAPTER XXX. THE JUSTICE-ROOM. EARLY next morning I made it my business to lay the whole case before a respectable solicitor at Mallowe; and that gentleman, together with Mr. Marten and I, were in due attendance at the justice-room. Ewen and his grandfather were also there, and young George Roper accompanied his aunt, who was present to produce the hitherto mysterious knife, which now gave such proof to Ralph Herbert's narrative. Agnes too came, in my sister's charge. But her uncle was conspicuous by his absence. He had been apprised of his son's position by the rector; and Mr. Marten said the muscles of his face had twitched sadly when he heard it, but he only said, "My son, sir? I haven't a son. It can't concern me." Directly the magistrates pronounced their opinion, Ewen rose from his seat and softly left the place. In that little brown room, with its solitary window looking on to a square flagged court with a broken pump in the middle, the two cousins met. Her face was just a little whiter than usual, and perhaps he held her hand a second longer than he held mine. That was all. He was as reserved as she; and yet, a minute afterwards, I think the recollection of her manner troubled him. It was an utterly mute greeting. There was something to be said between the two,- but not then- not there. "Mr. Herbert will return with us to our house," said my sister. "You will come also, Agnes, will you not ?" 66 "I must go home to my uncle now," she answered quite calmly. So, good-bye, Ralph! I shall see you again before night." They shook hands again, and he went with her to the door. When he rejoined us, his face was sadder and more concerned than it had been at any time during the morning. It was a sufficiently commonplace scene, -the shabby justice-room, with its worn oil-cloth, and its rows of wooden chairs, and intent faces turned towards the two old gentlemen invested with the majesty of the law: kindly enough old gentlemen, who drank port at dinner, and had dainty lady- "She has given me up," he said, as we daughters and strapping sons of their own ushered him into our parlour. "For her to stir their elderly hearts, but who yet sake, I ought to be very glad, but I can't." seemed strangely separate from humanity "Wait a while," answered Ruth rather when they sat down in their awful arm-grimly, "and don't show your selfishness ehairs, and said commonplace things through before you muse." the Oracle of Justice, and sprinkled magis- My sister utterly refused to be won over terial snuff over the papers of the reporter to the side of Mr. Ralph. Except one or beside them. That dreadful reporter, too, two curt remarks, she was courteous to him, -whom some fear more than God or their as a stranger and in trouble, but no more. own conscience,- he was only a lank lad Immediately after our early tea, she anof twenty, with red hair. Once or twice, nounced that she should pay a visit to the as the inquiry lengthened, I noticed him Refuge. She had scarcely departed on adding up the lines of his report, and it this errand, before Agnes fulfilled her struck me he was thinking of the sum he promise of an evening visit. Of course, would gain by the job. directly she entered, I left the room. an old man, but my memory is not yet decayed. I remember how it troubled me when Lucy's father called us that evening in the fields, and when her mother chanced to stand at her side the next morning. To this day, I wish it had not so happened. I am By two o'clock it was all over. There was no evidence against Ralph Herbert, but every reason to credit his story, and to believe that Mr. Roper had met his death by his own rash act. The justices shook their heads very much over it, and administered little parental reproofs all round, ad- I went up-stairs to my own chamber, and monishing Mr. Marten and me for having tried to read. Sometimes, in the profound dared to conceal the discovery of the knife silence, I caught a tone of the earnest talk from the proper authorities: "Very in the room beneath me. I heard Ralph wrong, very unwise, gentlemen; though we can understand your motives, gentlemen, and respect them. But it is not a safe course of action." And sniff, sniff, went a pinch of judicial snuff. There was a little chamber opening from the justices' room, and it made a convenient refuge for all the more interested spectators. Only one did not avail himself of it. walk up and down after the fashion of per- "There's no peace anywhere because of |