History of E. Montgomery. By ELIZABETH | do not undertake to declare. We only call WETHERELL. [Pseud., i. e., Miss E. WAR- attention to the fact, that such habits do NER.] 1852. 8vo. 7. Queechy. By ELIZABETH WETHERELL. London, 1852. 2 vols. 8vo. 8. Tales. By EDGAR ALLAN POE. London, 1845. 8vo. 9. Uncle Tom's Cabin. By Mrs. H. B. STOWE. London, 1852. 8vo. widely prevail among persons calling themselves Christians, and that the vast majority of the works of imagination and fiction which come from the press in the present day are as Pagan as works produced in the atmosphere of Christian influence can be. The above remarks have been suggested partly by the appearance and surprising popularity in Britain of certain American novels, especially those of Mrs. Beecher Stowe and of Elizabeth Wetherell, which exhibit a gratifying contrast to the general run of modern novels, and partly by the publication of other works, in the same country, which are of a directly opposite nature, although that opposition is so carefully veiled under a pseudo-Christian phraseology that it may not be apparent to most readers. HOWEVER much we may regret that such a thing should be, it cannot be denied that in the present day the novelist and the poet rival the preacher in the influence and importance of their instructions. This truth is become such a truism that we should not have repeated it but for a corollary which is of great significance, although it has been hitherto almost neglected in criticism and practice it is, that the responsibility of the poet and the novelist, for the wholesomeness of their instructions, is also scarcely inferior We had occasion, in a recent number of to that of the preacher. If a minister of the this Journal, to speak our opinion concerngospel deviates a hair's-breadth from the ing American poetry, and we did it with a well-defined convictions of his congregation, candour which, as it seems, was not pleasing his audience falls away, and he will never to the self-love of our transatlantic brothers. hear the last of it; and, as for an error of We had to point out and to prove the fact practical morals, it would be regarded with that America has not yet produced one poet such horror, if it came from the pulpit, that whose name has a chance of surviving the the occurrence of such defalcations is abso- trial of a hundred years. We did this with lutely unknown among us. But, as many no unfriendly feeling. America is a new of us keep our best suit of clothes and con- thing upon the face of the earth. Great duct for the Sabbath, so we have our Sun-nations, in their youth, have commonly proday and week-day doctrines; and to be or- duced great poets; but America has had no thodox one day is regarded as salt sufficient youth. The youth of America was that of for the seven. In our Sunday sermon we Britain; and the great poets who lived bedemand a bright and spotless reflection of fore, and even after, the national schism, berevelation, and on Monday we fall to re- long as much to her literature as they do to creating ourselves (mark the etymology!) ours. In fact, the very notion of two literwith some novel or poem, which, if we had atures in one language is an absurdity. If character and courage to set its secret sins English literature, since the political inde in the light of God's countenance, would pendence of America, has flourished best at horrify us with its profound infidelity and head quarters, it is no more to be wondered insane perversion of moral truth. We re-at than that the press of London should have joice in the elegant and consistent world- been more prolific of good books than that liness of Mr. A.; and refresh our spirits of Liverpool. with the "liberal" views of Mr. B., the The spirit of romance, however, has not graceful apostle of the graceful form of Athe-been so strictly metropolitan in its choice ism called Pantheism; or follow Miss C. in of an abiding place as that of poetry. If her delicious and nerve-dissolving analysis Coleridge, Wordsworth, Burns, and Tennyand apotheosis of the relations between the son, have had no rivals in America, it is not sexes, quite contented if these admirable ge- so with Dickens, Marryat, Bulwer, and niuses preserve towards our religion the Currer Bell. Against these names America kind of respect which all well-bred people may boldly set her Stowes, Coopers, Longwill of course award to "present company," fellows, and Hawthornes, in whom there is that is to say, a verbal reservation sufficient no mistaking an independence and origi to guard against the speaker's being called nality which hold out high hopes of the to account for his language without more share which the writers of America are despain and explanation than the occasion tined to take in the English literature of the would seem to deserve. Whether such ha- future. bits of reading are compatible with the ex- In proceeding to notice a few of the leadistence of a right Christian conscience, weling works of recent American fiction, we beg ་ that our readers, particularly our American [ble reading, one for the story, and one for readers, will not attribute to us a fondness the art, which is so complete that it is for fault-finding, if, in some cases, we dwell scarcely possible to comprehend all its bearwith greater emphasis upon the errors than ings on the first perusal, though that which upon the excellencies of the works noticed. we do comprehend on the first perusal, is of All the books at the head of this Article, itself entirely satisfactory and sufficient. have received in Britain a welcome of un- This is a great test of the genuineness of an mistakable heartiness. The critic's chief imaginative work. In proportion to its truth, duty is to point out faults and virtues which depth, and power, a work of art is like a do not manifest themselves to the hasty work of nature, a mountain, for example, reader. If the writers herein to be noticed which exhibits a clear and organic outline in had missed their meed of popular applause, the distance at which nothing else can be they should have had little else than praise seen; on a nearer approach the blue and from us; as it is, they can well afford to be perpendicular surface resolves itself into an called, for once, to a somewhat strict ac- orderly system of subordinate peaks, forests, count of their short-comings. and ravines, and these, on a closer acquaintNathaniel Hawthorne, a name that must ance, exhibit their geological ard botanical be familiar to most of our readers, has dis- characteristics; all is order and proportion, tinguished himself in England chiefly by view it how you will, carefully or carelessly, three very remarkable tales-"The House near or far off, with the telescope, the naked with the Seven Gables," The Scarlet Let- eye, or with the microscope. Shakspeare's ter," and "The Blithedale Romance." These plays are the rivals of nature in this excelworks are the most forcible in the imagina- lent composition of parts; and in the same tive line that America has yet produced. direction, though at a vast distance, the tales Nothing in her poetry is half so poetical, of Hawthorne follow. and yet they are not more so than imagina- Notwithstanding all this artistic exceltive prose has a right to be. The most lence, there are certain very serious defects striking features in these tales are the extra- in Mr. Hawthorne's tales. We will notice ordinary skill and masterly care which are the two faults which chiefly strike us. One displayed in their composition. "The is mainly artistic, the other mainly moral. House with the Seven Gables" may be The artistic fault is the continual, and cercharged with a little redundance of des- tainly the very effective, though faulty, use cription; but in the other stories named, it of the supernatural. Now, the supernatural, would be difficult to pick out a page that as Mr. Hawthorne uses it, is perhaps an alcould be omitted without loss to the devel- lowable means of effect in a work which is opement of the narrative and the idea, which only meant to endure for the day and hour are always mutually illustrative to a degree in which such work is written and read; not often attained in any sp cies of modern but Mr. Hawthorne's tales are too permaart. When Mr. Hawthorne begins one of nently valuable to admit, legitimately, of so his stories, he seems to become so perfectly large an admixture of an element of effect absorbed with his leading moral-which, by which fails upon the second reading. Mr. the way, is not always unexceptionable Hawthorne manages the supernatural so that he no longer has eyes or memory for well, he makes it so credible by refining anything in the universe but for exactly away the line of demarcation between the those things which will serve him best for natural and supernatural, he derives profit illustrations and arguments and steps in his so ingeniously from the existing tremor of poetical proof of the moral proposition he the public mind, arising from what is seen sets out with. With all this rigid adherence and said of mesmerism, electro-biology, to his point, there is, however, no sense of spirit-rappings, and Swedenborgian psycholhardness, difficulty, and confinement in his ogy, that we could have made no objection style. His language, though for an Ame- to one trial of his faculties for rendering rican extraordinarily accurate, is always nightmares compatible with daylight and light and free; his illustrations and incidents, open eyes; but when the thing is done over though often startlingly odd, and, for the and over again, and the sober and admirable moment, apparently unrelated, have never nature of his stories continually overwhelmed the air of being far-fetched, but seem rather with this insane supernature, it loses its to be the best possible for the occasion; and value. Nature being a thing of beauty, is the narrative, though curiously elaborated, a joy for ever; but a trick, however skilful is so well contrasted and proportioned in its and astonishing, is not worth seeing more several parts, that it makes, when we have than once. Mr. Hawthorne should, morefinished, an impression full of simplicity and over, recollect that, in the course of a few totality. His tales always deserve a dou-years at most, the class of phenomena upon 66 which he relies for his most vivid colouring, tality rendered at once impossible, and not will certainly either sink to the sober level worth acceptance. But I would have perished of natural facts, or will be exploded as im- on the spot, rather than believe it. postures and vapours of enfeebled brains. wonders that have followed in their train-such "The epoch of rapping spirits, and all the The " supernatural" is only interesting be- as tables upset by invisible agencies, bells selfyond other things so long as it continues to tolled at intervals, and ghostly music performed vibrate between the credible and the incre- on Jews' harps, had not yet arrived. Alas, my dible. The credible, however exalted, is countrymen, methinks we have fallen on an nature, the absolutely incredible is a lie, evil age! If these phenomena have not humand neither nature nor supernature. If ever bug at the bottom, so much the worse for us. What can they indicate, in a spiritual way, exclairvoyance and spirit-rappings become escept that the soul of man is descending to a teblished facts, they will immediately fall lower point than it has ever before reached, into the domains of nature; spiritual nature, while incarnate? We are pursuing a downindeed, but still nature; and they will be ward course in the eternal march, and thus no more extraordinary" or superna- bring ourselves into the same range with beings tural" than any of those moral phenomena whom death, in requital of their gross and evil whose realities daily plague or pacify the lives, has degraded below humanity! To hold intercourse with spirits of this order, we must conscience, although they fail to present any stoop and grovel in some element more vile very distinct and tangible substance to the than earthly dust. These goblins, if they exist eye of the mere understanding. When this at all, are but the shadows of past mortality, comes to pass, all the "supernatural" co- outcasts, mere refuse stuff, adjudged unworthy louring of Mr. Hawthorne's tales will re- of the eternal world, and, on the most favorable semble the prominent "lights" of Sir supposition, dwindling gradually into nothingJoshua Reynolds' pictures, which, through ness. The less we have to say to them the bet some fault of the artist, have all changed to blackness and vacancy. It must be further The other charge we have to make against remarked, that Mr. Hawthorne's error in Mr. Hawthorne is a far graver one, and not this matter is not wholly artistical; he is unallied with that with which we have now damaging the cause of truth in endowing been engaged. The fault in question is that with such a wonderful semblance of reality of making the moral subserve the art, inthings in which he himself has no settled stead of the art the moral; and furthermore, faith. He is unconsciously taking part with of even distorting moral truth, in order to the charlatan whose proceedings he thus obtain artistic effect. Mr. Hawthorne's powerfully describes and denounces : -- ter, lest we share their fate!" mind is much too discerning to allow of a "I heard, from a pale man in blue spectacles, some stranger stories than ever were written in a romance; told, too, with a simple unimaginative steadfastness, which was terribly efficacious in compelling the auditor to receive them into bination which certainly produces a very the category of established facts. He cited in-strong artistic effect, but which, as it is stances of the miraculous power of one human formed at the expense of Christian reality, being over the will and passions of another; in- we do not hesitate to condemn. Again, the somuch that settled grief was but a shadow be- great fundamental truth of all morality, that neath the influence of a man possessing this God's violated laws vindicate themselves, is potency, and the strong love of years melted obscured by the frequent employment of away like a vapour. At the bidding of one of these wizards, the maiden, with her lover's kiss supernatural means of restoring the equilistill burning on her lips, would turn from him brium destroyed by sin. Mesmerism, magic with icy indifference; the newly made widow signs in heaven and earth, witches, and evil would dig up her buried heart out of her young persons endowed with a fiendish ubiquity husband's grave, before the sods had taken and omniscience, are not needed, or emroot upon it; a mother with her babe's milk ployed, to work out the moral harmony of in her bosom would thrust away her child. Human character was but soft wax in his the world; and to use them as Mr. Haw. hands; and guilt or virtue, only the forms into thorne does, is to do as much as lies in his which he should see fit to mould it. The reli- power, to weaken his reader's apprehension gious sentiment was a flame which he could of the most solid and self-sufficient of all blow up with his breath, or a spark that he realities. Those who have not perused any could utterly extinguish. It is unutterable the of Mr. Hawthorne's works, will scarcely horror and disgust with which I listened, and understand or credit the statement of the saw that if these things were to be believed the individual soul was virtually annihilated, and very extraordinary impression which those all that is sweet and pure in our present life works are calculated to leave upon the mind. debased, and that the idea of man's eternal re- Upon laying down one of those books, we sponsibility was made ridiculous, and immor-Iseem to have been living in a world of bad dreams, and horribly consistent insanities; | Hester in the evening, and extorts from her the author's wonderful power of describing, a promise that she will never discover him; and of harmonizing, the strangest characters for he is quite unknown in the town. After and incidents, gives, for the time, a strong this, he makes himself known as a physiimpression of the possibility and reality of cian, under the name of Roger Chillingsuch events and persons; and so long as worth, and getting a suspicion that the man this impression remains, vibrating in the he seeks is no other than the Rev. Arthur heart and mind, the ordinary realities of Dimmesdale, whose declining health and life seem to totter, and to become insubstan-settled and mysterious unhappiness, totial. This impression is always of a strongly gether with other symptoms, seem to justify moral kind; but the morality is often par- this idea, he gradually attaches himself to tial and perverted, and sometimes unchris- him, as a medical adviser, and contrives, at tian, if not anti-christian. last, to take up his abode with him. Each of Mr. Hawthorne's works has such The reader is, by degrees, made aware an admirable totality and unsuperfluousness that Chillingworth's suspicions are well in itself, that it is impossible to give our founded. This young minister, who is rereaders a due notion of its merit, by any garded as a pattern of holiness, whose serabstract or extracts. We hope, however, to mons are blessed by numerous conversions, give them insight enough into one or two of and who, perhaps, of all the community, is his tales, to send them to the originals for the most highly extolled, carries about with further satisfaction of an awakened curiosity. him the consciousness that he is, in reality, To begin with "The Scarlet Letter:" In linked in common crime with the poor dethe sombre puritan youth of America, Hes- spised woman of the scarlet letter. He is ter Prynne, during the absence of her hus- frequently tempted, when he hears the town band, who has not been heard of for some ringing with his praises, to step down from years, gives birth to a daughter. The his pedestal, and declare himself an adulauthorities of the American town, greatly terer; but cowardice invariably stops him scandalized at a crime almost unheard of in from what he believes to be his distinct their simple community, take the matter in duty. His fiendish physician has ample hand, and after vainly attempting to elicit scope for his revenge, in harrowing the senfrom the unfortunate culprit, the name of sitive mind of his patient by harping on him who has brought this disgrace upon her, subjects most likely to call up his remorse, condemn her to sit for some hours on a and his sense of guilt; and the minister, scaffold in the market-place, exposed to the though unconscious of the cause, soon acgaze of the whole town, and to wear ever quires a dread of Chillingworth which makes after, on her breast, a letter embroidered his constant surveillance an intolerable burin brilliant scarlet, to mark her as the adul- den, in itself sufficient to embitter life. In tress. this constant struggle between the longing During Hester's exposure on the scaffold, to ease his conscience, and the dread of the elder ministers call upon her pastor, the exposure, seven years pass away. One night Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, a young man the minister rushes from his room to the of extraordinary power in preaching, and scaffold where Hester had passed her dreadgreatly beloved by all the town, to exhort ful trial. her once more to name the father of her child. After some hesitation he consents, pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky, "It was an obscure night of early May. A and solemnly conjures her, if she feels it to from zenith to horizon. If the same multitude be for her soul's welfare, to do so. He re- which had stood as eye-witnesses while Ilester minds her that by concealing his name, she Prynne sustained her punishment, could now encourages, nay, forces him, as it were, to have been summoned forth, they would have hypocrisy, while, by declaring it, she may discerned no human face above the platform, indeed bring him to shame in this world, nor hardly the outline of a human shape, in the but may be the means of saving his soul dark grey of the midnight. But the town was from perdition hereafter. Hester remains The minister might stand there, if it so pleased all asleep. There was no peril of discovery. immovable, and sits alone, through the long him, until morning should redden in the east, hours of agonizing shame, to which her without other risk than that the dank and crime has brought her. During her expose-chill night air would creep into his frame, and ure, her husband returns. He is an old and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog his deformed man, and on finding his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby deyoung and beautiful wife in this terrible situation, frauding the expectant audience of to-morrow's feels no tenderness nor pity, but is at once save that ever wakeful one which had seen him prayer and sermon. No eye could see him, seized with an overwhelming desire to re- in the closet, wielding the bloody scourge. venge himself upon his rival. He visits Why, then, had he come hither? Was it but the mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself! A mockery at which angels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced with jeering laughter! He had been driven hither by the influence of that remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister, and closely linked companion, was that cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of disclosure. Poor miserable man! What right had infirmity like his to burIden itself with crime ? Crime is for th iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling it off at once! This feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which intertwined in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repent ance. "And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. On that, in very truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud; an outery that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the hills in the back-ground; as if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro. 6 tern before his breast with the other, the minister could hardly restrain himself from speaking. A good morning to you, venerable Father Wilson! Come up, hither, I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me! "Good Heavens! Had Mr. Dimmesdale actually spoken! For one instant he believed that these words had passed his lips. But they were uttered only within his own imagination. The venerable Father Wilson continued to step slowly onward, looking carefully at the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning his head towards the guilty platform. When the light of the glimmering lantern had faded quite away, the minister discovered, by the raintness which came over him, that the last few moments had been a crisis of terrible anxiety, although his mind had made an involuntary ef fort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid playfulness. Shortly after, the like grisly sense of the humorous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold. Morning would break and find him there. * * Whom would they discern there. with the red eastern light upon his brow? Whom but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had stood! "Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the minister unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a great peal of laughter. It was immediately responded to by a light airy laugh, in which, with a thrill of the "It is done! muttered the minister, cover-heart-but he knew not whether of exquisite ing his face with his hands. The whole town pain, or pleasure as acute he recognized the will awake, and hurry forth, and find me tones of little Pearl. here!' "Pearl, little Pearl? cried he, after a moment's pause; then suppressing his voice'Hester, Hester Prynne, are you there? "Yes; it is Hester Prynne!' she returned in a tone of surprise, and the minister heard her footsteps approaching from the side walk along which she had been passing. 'It is I and my little Pearl. "Whence come you, Hester,' asked the minister. What sent you hither? "I have been watching at a death-bed,' answered Hester Prynne, at Governor Winthrop's death-bed, and have taken his measure for a robe, and am now going homeward to my dwelling.' "The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes, however, were soon greeted by a glimmering light, which, at first, a long way off, was approaching up the street. It threw a gleam of recognition on here a post, and there a garden fence, and here a latticed window pane, and there a pump, with its full trough of water, and here again, an arched door of oak, with an iron knocker, and a rough log for the door-step. The Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale noted all these minute particulars, even while firmly convinced that the doom of his existence was stealing onwards, in the footsteps which he now heard; and that the gleam of the lantern would fall upon him in a few minutes more, and reveal his long-hidden "She silently ascended the steps, and stood secret. As the light drew nearer, he beheld on the platform, holding little Pearl by the within its illuminated circle, his brother clergyman, or to speak more accurately, his professional father, as well as highly valued friend, the Rev. Mr. Wilson, who, as Mr. Dimmesdale now conjectured, had been praying at the bed-side of some dying man. "Come up hither, Hester, thou and little Pearl,' said the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale; ye have both been here before, but I was not with you. Come up hither once again. and we will stand all three together! hand. The minister felt for the child's other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so, there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins as if the mother and child "As the Reverend Mr. Wilson passed beside were communicating their vital warmth to his the scaffold, closely muffling his Geneva cloak half torpid system. The three formed an elecabout him with one arm and holding the lan-tric chain. |