s gained most by re-perusal. If it be true of the others
that the pure, natural quality of the imaginative strain is their
great merit, this is at least as true of _The House of the Seven
Gables_, the charm of which is in a peculiar degree of the kind that
we fail to reduce to its grounds--like that of the sweetness of a
piece of music, or the softness of fine September weather. It is
vague, indefinable, ineffable; but it is the sort of thing we must
always point to in justification of the high claim that we make for
Hawthorne. In this case of course its vagueness is a drawback, for it
is difficult to point to ethereal beauties; and if the reader whom we
have wished to inoculate with our admiration inform us after looking a
while that he perceives nothing in particular, we can only reply
that, in effect, the object is a delicate one.

_The House of the Seven Gables_ comes nearer being a picture of
contemporary American life than either of its companions; but on this
ground it would be a mistake to make a large claim for it. It cannot
be too often repeated that Hawthorne was not a realist. He had a high
sense of reality--his Note-Books super-abundantly testify to it; and
fond as he was of jotting down the items that make it up, he never
attempted to render exactly or closely the actual facts of the society
that surrounded him. I have said--I began by saying--that his pages
were full of its spirit, and of a certain reflected light that springs
from it; but I was careful to add that the reader must look for his
local and national quality between the lines of his writing and in the
_indirect_ testimony of his tone, his accent, his temper, of his very
omissions and suppressions. _The House of the Seven Gables_ has,
however, more literal actuality than the others, and if it were not
too fanciful an account of it, I should say that it renders, to an
initiated reader, the impression of a summer afternoon in an
elm-shadowed New England town. It leaves upon the mind a vague
correspondence to some such reminiscence, and in stirring up the
association it renders it delightful. The comparison is to the honour
of the New England town, which gains in it more than it bestows. The
shadows of the elms, in _The House of the Seven Gables_, are
exceptionally dense and cool; the summer afternoon is peculiarly still
and beautiful; the atmosphere has a delicious warmth, and the long
daylight seems to pause and rest. But the mild provincial qua