ovels, and yet they leave a realistic impression behind
them. The greater number of his characters appear to us rather as
representatives of certain mental conditions then as real flesh and
blood. Neither in the dialogue, nor in what may be called the
"properties" of his writing did Hawthorne strive at realistic effects.
Still, when the reader lays down "The Scarlet Letter," or "The House of
the Seven Gables," he insensibly feels himself embued with the spirit
and atmosphere of Puritan New England. Hawthorne was so intensely a New
Englander in his sympathies, prejudices, and habits of mind, that his
writings were always colored by the thought and sentiment of his native
land. In "The Scarlet Letter," there is little evidence of the use of
historical researches, and yet in that volume, colonial life has been
made real and actual to us by the very intensity of the author's
national feeling.

New England fiction includes a number of other celebrated and honored
names. Catherine M. Sedgwick began her literary career with "Hope
Leslie," a story founded on the early history of Massachusetts, which
was followed by "Redwood" and "The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in
America." Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes studied New England village life in
"Elsie Venner," and Sylvester Judd that of the Maine backwoods in
"Margaret." Mr. T.W. Higginson has written "Malbone." Mr. W.D. Howells,
Rev. Edward Everett Hale, and Miss E.S. Phelps are still adding to
their reputations.

Among the novels relating to life in the Southern States, "Uncle Tom's
Cabin" is the most prominent. The circulation and fame of this book
have been the most remarkable phenomenon in the annals of literature.
Within a year, more than two hundred thousand copies were sold in the
United States, and fully a million in England. Thirteen different
translations were issued in Germany, four in France, and two in Russia;
the Magyar language boasted three separate versions; the Wallachian,
two; the Welsh, two; and the Dutch, two; while the Armenian, Arabic,
Romaic, and all the European languages had at least one version. The
book was dramatized in not less than twenty different forms, and was
acted all over Europe. In France, and still more in England, all other
books and all other subjects became, for the time, secondary to "Uncle
Tom's Cabin." This extraordinary popularity was chiefly due to the
importance and novelty of the subject treated. Mrs. Stowe imparted a
considerable na