if there were only the magic touch to effect the
transfiguration. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever
afterwards so touched, and so transfigured.

Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be
attributed to the circumstance, that her life had turned, in a great
measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the
world,--alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearl
to be guided and protected,--alone, and hopeless of retrieving her
position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable,--she cast
away the fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no law for
her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly
emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many
centuries before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings.
Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged--not actually, but
within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode--the
whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of
ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a
freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the
Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have
held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet
letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited
her, such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England; shadowy
guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their
entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her
door.

It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often
conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of
society. The thought suffices them, without investing itself in the
flesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with Hester. Yet, had
little Pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it might have
been far otherwise. Then, she might have come down to us in history,
hand in hand with Ann Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious
sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She
might, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the stern
tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations
of the Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the
mother's enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon.
Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to
Hester'