e pictures, distinct and lifelike in form and colour,
seen through the medium of an old-fashioned magic-lantern. Yet
even in this fantastic trifle we can discern the feeling for
words and the sense of proportion that characterise Hawthorne's
longer works.

_The Scarlet Letter_ (1850) was originally intended to be one of
several short stories, but Hawthorne was persuaded to expand it
into a novel. He felt some misgivings as to the success of the
work:

"Keeping so close to the point as the tale does, and
diversified in no otherwise than by turning different
sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, it will
weary very many people and disgust some."

The plot bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Lockhart's
striking novel, _Adam Blair_. The "dark idea" that fascinates
Hawthorne is the psychological state of Hester Prynne and her
lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, in the long years that follow their
lawless passion. Their love story hardly concerns him at all. The
interest of the novel does not depend on the development of the
plot. No attempt is made to complicate the story by concealing
the identity of Hester's lover or of her husband. The action
takes place within the souls and minds of the characters, not in
their outward circumstances. The central chapter of the book is
named significantly: "The Interior of a Heart." The moral
situation described in _The Scarlet Letter_ did not present
itself to Hawthorne abstractly, but as a series of pictures. He
habitually thought in images, and he brooded so long over his
conceptions that his descriptions are almost as definite in
outline and as vivid in colour as things actually seen. His
pictures do not waver or fade elusively as the mind seeks to
realise them. The prison door, studded with pikes, before which
Hester Prynne first stands with the letter on her breast, the
pillory where Dimmesdale keeps vigil at midnight, the
forest-trees with pale, fitful gleams of sunshine glinting
through their leaves, are so distinct that we almost put out our
hands to touch them. Hawthorne's dream-imagery has the same
convincing reality. The phantasmagoric visions which float
through Hester's consciousness--the mirrored reflection of her
own face in girlhood, her husband's thin, scholar-like visage,
the grey houses of the cathedral city where she had spent her
early years--are more real to her and to us than the blurred
faces of the Puritans who throng the marketplace to gaze