he eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. As an
artist he gives concrete images instead of abstract theories; but his
thoughts evidently delight to dwell in the same regions where the daring
speculations of his theological ancestors took their origin. Septimius,
the rather disagreeable hero of his last romance, is a peculiar example
of a similar change. Brought up under the strict discipline of New
England, he has retained the love of musing upon insoluble mysteries,
though he has abandoned the old dogmatic guide-posts. When such a man
finds that the orthodox scheme of the universe provided by his official
pastors has somehow broken down with him, he forms some audacious theory
of his own, and is perhaps plunged into an unhallowed revolt against the
Divine order. Septimius, under such circumstances, develops into a kind
of morbid and sullen Hawthorne. He considers--as other people have
done--that death is a disagreeable fact, but refuses to admit that it is
inevitable. The romance tends to show that such a state of mind is
unhealthy and dangerous, and Septimius is contrasted unfavourably with
the vigorous natures who preserve their moral balance by plunging into
the stream of practical life. Yet Hawthorne necessarily sympathises with
the abnormal being whom he creates. Septimius illustrates the dangers of
the musing temperament, but the dangers are produced by a combination of
an essentially selfish nature with the meditative tendency. Hawthorne,
like his hero, sought refuge from the hard facts of commonplace life by
retiring into a visionary world. He delights in propounding much the
same questions as those which tormented poor Septimius, though, for
obvious reasons, he did not try to compound an elixir of life by means
of a recipe handed down from Indian ancestors. The strange mysteries in
which the world and our nature are shrouded are always present to his
imagination; he catches dim glimpses of the laws which bring out strange
harmonies, but, on the whole, tend rather to deepen than to clear the
mysteries. He loves the marvellous, not in the vulgar sense of the word,
but as a symbol of perplexity which encounters every thoughtful man in
his journey through life. Similar tenants at an earlier period might,
with almost equal probability, have led him to the stake as a dabbler in
forbidden sciences, or have caused him to be revered as one to whom a
deep spiritual instinct had been granted.

Meanwhile, as i