with the feelings of
the actor, forgets to inquire into the probability of these
circumstances. Unfortunately, in Mr Hawthorne's stories, it is the
human being himself who is not probable, nor possible.

It will be worth while to illustrate our meaning by an instance or
two, to show that, far from being hypercritical, our canon of
criticism is extremely indulgent, and that we never take the bluff and
surly objection--it cannot be!--until the improbability has reached
the core of the matter. In the first story, "The Birth Mark," we raise
no objection to the author, because he invents a chemistry of his own,
and supposes his hero in possession of marvellous secrets which enable
him to diffuse into the air an ether or perfume, the inhaling of which
shall displace a red mark from the cheek which a beautiful lady was
born with; it were hard times indeed, if a novelist might not do what
he pleased in a chemist's laboratory, and produce what drugs, what
perfumes, what potable gold or charmed elixir, he may have need of.
But we do object to the preposterous motive which prompts the amateur
of science to an operation of the most hazardous kind, on a being he
is represented as dearly loving. We are to believe that a good
_husband_ is afflicted, and grievously and incessantly tormented by a
slight red mark on the cheek of a beautiful woman, which, as a
_lover_, never gave him a moment's uneasiness, and which neither to
him nor to any one else abated one iota from her attractions. We are
to suppose that he braves the risk of the experiment--it succeeds for
a moment, then proves fatal, and destroys her--for what? Merely that
she who was so very beautiful should attain to an ideal perfection.
"Had she been less beautiful," we are told, "it might have heightened
his affection. But, seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one
defect grow more and more intolerable, with every moment of their
united lives." And then, we have some further bewildering explanation
about "his honourable love, so pure and lofty that it would accept
nothing less than perfection, nor miserably make itself contented with
an earthlier nature than he had dreamed of." Call you this "pure and
lofty love," when a woman is admired much as a connoisseur admires a
picture, who might indeed be supposed to fume and fret if there was
one little blot or blemish in it. Yet, even a connoisseur, who had an
exquisite picture by all old master, with only one trifling blem