avenue of black ash-trees."

From the street the reader is taken to "the rear of the house," where
there was "the most delightful little nook of a study that ever
offered its snug seclusion to a scholar." Through its window the
clergyman saw the opening of the "deadly struggle between two
nations." He heard the rattle of musketry, and

"there needed but a gentle wind to sweep the battle smoke
around this quiet house. Perhaps the reader, whom I cannot
help considering as my guest in the Old Manse and entitled
to all courtesy in the way of sight-showing,--perhaps he
will choose to take a nearer view of the memorable spot. We
stand now on the river's brink."... "Here we are, at the
point where the river was crossed by the old bridge."...
"The Old Manse! We had almost forgotten it, but will return
thither through the orchard."... "What with the river, the
battle-field, the orchard, and the garden, the reader begins
to despair of finding his way back into the Old Manse. But
in agreeable weather it is the truest hospitality to keep
him out-of-doors. I never grew quite acquainted with my
habitation till a long spell of sulky rain had confined me
beneath its roof. There could not be a more sombre aspect of
external nature than as then seen from the windows of my
study."

And so Hawthorne continues through this long and beautiful description
of "The Old Manse;" every change in the point of view is noted.

Mental Point of View.

Closely connected with the physical point of view is the mood or
purpose of the writer; this might be called _the mental point of
view._ Not everything should be told which the author could know from
his position, but only those things which at the time serve his
purpose. In the description already quoted from Newman, the mercantile
gentleman notes a large number of features which are the commercial
advantages of Attica; of these but three are worthy of mention by "yon
pilgrim student" in giving his impression of Athens as "a shrine where
he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of
invisible unoriginate perfection." The others--the soil, the streams,
the climate, the limestone, the fisheries, and the silver mines--do
not serve his purpose. Hawthorne in the long description already
mentioned has retained those features which suggest quiet and peace.
Such a profusion of "quiet," "half asl