easiest for a stranger to remain a stranger. For a stranger to cease to
be a stranger he must stand ready, as the French say, to pay with his
person; and this was an obligation that Hawthorne was indisposed to
incur. Our sense, as we read, that his reflections are those of a shy
and susceptible man, with nothing at stake, mentally, in his
appreciation of the country, is therefore a drawback to our confidence;
but it is not a drawback sufficient to make it of no importance that he
is at the same time singularly intelligent and discriminating, with a
faculty of feeling delicately and justly, which constitutes in itself
an illumination. There is a passage in the sketch entitled _About
Warwick_ which is a very good instance of what was probably his usual
state of mind. He is speaking of the aspect of the High Street of the
town.

"The street is an emblem of England itself. What seems new
in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate adaptation of what
such a people as ourselves would destroy. The new things are
based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive a
massive strength from their deep and immemorial foundations,
though with such limitations and impediments as only an
Englishman could endure. But he likes to feel the weight of
all the past upon his back; and moreover the antiquity that
overburdens him has taken root in his being, and has grown
to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting
rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In
my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable
under the mouldy accretion, he had better stumble on with it
as long as he can. He presents a spectacle which is by no
means without its charm for a disinterested and unincumbered
observer."

There is all Hawthorne, with his enjoyment of the picturesque, his
relish of chiaroscuro, of local colour, of the deposit of time, and
his still greater enjoyment of his own dissociation from these things,
his "disinterested and unincumbered" condition. His want of
incumbrances may seem at times to give him a somewhat naked and
attenuated appearance, but on the whole he carries it off very well. I
have said that _Our Old Home_ contains much of his best writing, and
on turning over the book at hazard, I am struck with his frequent
felicity of phrase. At every step there is something one would like to
quote--something excellently wel