in poetry and prose--are just, examine the works of this
great painter-teacher as closely and suspiciously as we may, we can
discover nothing that will induce a momentary doubt of his integrity of
purpose in all he did; his shafts were aimed at Vice,--in no solitary
instance was he ever guilty of arraigning or assailing Virtue. Compare
him with the most famous of the Dutch masters, and he rises into glory;
coarseness and vulgarity in them had no point out of which could come
instruction. If they picture the issues of their own minds, they must
have been gross and sensual; they ransacked the muck of life, and the
grovelling in character, for themes that one should see only by
compulsion. But Hogarth's subjects were never without a lesson, and,
inasmuch as he resorted for them to the open volume of humanity, like
those of the most immortal of our writers, his works are "not for an age
but for all time."

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NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

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The author of _The House of Seven Gables_ is now about forty-five years
of age. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and is of a family which
for several generations has "followed the sea." Among his ancestors, I
believe, was the "bold Hawthorne," who is celebrated in a revolutionary
ballad as commander of the "Fair American." He was educated at Bowdoin
College in Maine, where he graduated in 1825.

Probably he appeared in print before that time, but his earliest volume
was an anonymous and never avowed romance which was published in Boston
in 1832. It attracted little attention, but among those who read it with
a just appreciation of the author's genius was Mr. S. G. Goodrich, who
immediately secured the shrouded star for _The Token_, of which he was
editor, and through which many of Hawthorne's finest tales and essays
were originally given to the public. He published in 1837 the first and
in 1842 the second volume of his _Twice-Told Tales_, embracing whatever
he wished to preserve from his contributions to the magazines; in 1845
he edited _The Journal of an African Cruiser_; in 1846 published _Mosses
from an Old Manse_, a second collection of his magazine papers; in 1850
_The Scarlet Letter_, and in the last month the longest and in some
respects the most remarkable of his works, _The House of Seven Gables_.

In the introductions to the _Mosses from an Old Manse_ and _The Scarlet
Letter_ we have some glimpses of his personal history. He had been
severa