nationality.

As to which of the two was the greater, discussion is idle, but that
Hawthorne was the finer genius few would deny. Poe, as cunning an
artificer of goldsmith's work and as adroit in its vending as was ever
M. Josse, declared that "Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention,
creation, imagination, originality,--a trait which in the literature of
fiction is positively worth all the rest." But the moral basis of
Hawthorne's work, which had flowered in the crevices and crannies of
New-England Puritanism, Poe did not concern himself with. In Poe's hands
the story of "The Ambitious Guest" might have thrilled us with a more
powerful horror, but it would have lacked the ethical beauty which
Hawthorne gave it and which makes it significant beyond a mere feat of
verbal legerdemain. And the subtile simplicity of "The Great Stone Face"
is as far from Poe as the pathetic irony of "The Ambitious Guest." In
all his most daring fantasies Hawthorne is natural, and, though he may
project his vision far beyond the boundaries of fact, nowhere does he
violate the laws of nature. He had at all times a wholesome simplicity,
and he never showed any trace of the morbid taint which characterizes
nearly all Poe's work. Hawthorne, one may venture to say, had the broad
sanity of genius, while we should understand any one who might declare
that Poe had mental disease raised to the _n'th_.

Although it may be doubted whether the fiery and tumultuous rush of a
volcano, which may be taken to typify Poe, is as powerful or as
impressive in the end as the calm and inevitable progression of a
glacier, to which, for the purposes of this comparison only, we may
liken Hawthorne, yet the effect and influence of Poe's work are
indisputable. One might hazard the assertion that in all Latin countries
he is the best known of American authors. Certainly no American writer
has been as widely accepted in France. Nothing better of its kind has
ever been done than "The Pit and the Pendulum," or than "The Fall of the
House of Usher," which Mr. Stoddard has compared recently with
Browning's "Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower came" for its power of
suggesting intellectual desolation. Nothing better of its kind has ever
been done than "The Gold-Bug," or than "The Purloined Letter," or than
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue." This last, indeed, is a story of
marvellous skill: it was the first of its kind, and to this day it
remains a model, not only unsurpassed,