ess was brilliant and continuous; but many
of his works show the effect of misdirected talent, and have fallen
into neglect.

The "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and "Rip Van Winkle" are the specimens
of American fiction most intimately associated with New York. In these
stories the traditions and scenery of the Hudson River were treated by
Washington Irving with all the richness of imagination and delicacy of
expression of which he had so great a store. Some part of that romantic
interest afforded to the traveller by the castles of the Rhine, has
been imparted to the Hudson by the exquisite pages of the "Sketch
Book." The stories of Nathaniel P. Willis and some of the novels of
Bayard Taylor and of J.G. Holland also belong especially to New York.

At the head of New England, and, indeed, of American writers of
fiction, stands Nathaniel Hawthorne. His three great works, "The
Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," and "The Blithedale
Romance," are the finest specimens of imaginative writing which
American genius has yet produced. The interest of Hawthorne's novels
lies almost entirely in their subtle and astute studies of the hidden
workings of the human mind. His fictions are remarkable for their want
of action. "The Scarlet Letter" can hardly be said to have a plot. The
series of chapters which intervene between the exhibition of Hester
Prynne on the scaffold and the voluntary self-exposure there of the
Puritan minister, simply represent gradual changes from the first to
the last situation of the principal characters. But narrative
excitement was never Hawthorne's object, and the want of it is never
felt by his reader. Each scene is an appropriate sequel to the last,
and a natural introduction to the next. Each chapter has its special
interest,--the analysis of a condition of mind, a dramatic situation,
or a highly finished domestic picture. It is in the delineation of
character and the study of human motives that Hawthorne's chief
excellence as a novelist consists. Nothing can exceed the penetration
and vividness with which such persons as Zenobia, in "The Blithedale
Romance," and Holgrave, in "The House of the Seven Gables," are
described. The homeward walk of the fallen young minister, in "The
Scarlet Letter," when he had resolved to desert his flock and to
connect himself again with Hester Prynne, is an unsurpassed delineation
of sudden moral degeneration. There is nothing of modern realism in
Hawthorne's n