trunks and withering boughs, with here and there clearings of faint sweet verdure steeped in dying sunshine, and knots of delicate wild-flowers drooping on their stems. Hawthorne is a close student of country lore, from the grand phenomena of the seasons and years, down to the veriest details of insignificant rural objects. Nothing escapes his shy, wandering glance. And he has the rare faculty of reproducing his own sensations in the minds of his readers; we feel in reading his books what he must have felt in writing them. The walk of his genius, or that in which it pleases him to make his genius walk, is somewhat narrow, but it is far-reaching, ascending into skyey regions, and descending into chasms of darkness. It is a line-but a line which touches the verge of things. The chief drawback of his genius is its exceeding delicacy. It is too delicate, too shadowy, too spiritual in many of its manifestations, to be at once, or ever very widely recognized. It needs the study of a kindred mind, which the mass of readers have not, and the moods of mind which feed it, which but few have ever felt, or feeling have known how to classify and analyze. Had Hawthorne written worse, he would have written-for the world of readers we mean-better. His excellences have been his worst enemies.

One of the first things that strike us in his writings, is the simplicity, purity, and beauty of his style. He is not only correct-many authors who are nothing else are that but he makes his correctness charming. There is an indescribable grace about his sentences, and a peculiar rhythm in their construction, which falls upon the ear like the voice of some one who is dear to us. We never forget his prose, because we never find anything like it out of his books. It is better than that of Irving, admirable as that is, because it is more fresh and unstudied, while equally correct; and better than was Addison's, the heretofore model of fine English prose. It is difficult to describe it, save as style; other writers are mannerists-Hawthorne is a styleist. Does he attempt description, the object or objects described stand before us clearly or dimly, as circumstances require, and always in their most obvious relations, which strike us the more from the vail of beauty that half conceals them, and the dramatic grouping in which they

are shown. Does he become reflective, his thoughts are new and striking, often universal in their bearings; never obscure, even while expressing obscurity, but crystal-like in their clearness, and often gorgeous with imagery, threading the intricate labyrinths of fancy and imagination with the certain clew of poetry." Does he analyze the passions of his characters, his analysis is always sure and profound, bringing many dark things to light, and laying bare the heart of many mysteries. In the region of mystery, the wildernesses and caverns of the mind, he is at home-more at home, it seems to us, than in the upper and outer world. His personages are not so much men and women, as passions, simple or complex in their forms; ideas made palpable and familiar, sentiments clothed in flesh. A single character sometimes embodies the result of many years' thought and observation. Nothing is wanting to make many of his characters perfect, save that spontaneity which is the crown of human nature. They are either too bad or too good

"For human nature's daily food." But we always see-not always, however, "with eye serene"

"The very pulse of the machine." He aims to impart form, symmetry, harmony and beauty to whatever he touches; unless he does this, he does nothing. He conceives an idea which he wishes to work out in an essay or tale; broods over it, it may be for years, until it takes form; broods over the form until it suits and satisfies his conscience of taste; and then broods over its various parts, carefully adapting each to each, and linking all together

with the most subtile threads of fact and

feeling. A sentence or a single word sometimes gives one the clew to whole pages. A seemingly random speech or action, admits a flood of light into the chambers of the heart. "Not only" says Poe, in a critique on Hawthorne-" not only is all done that should be, but (what perhaps is an end with more difficulty attained) there is nothing done which should not be. Every word tells, and there is no word which does not tell."

The form of Hawthorne's works is gen

In his younger days Hawthorne passed for a poet, and, for anything that we know, wrote and destroyed whole reams of poetry.

ONE

SATANIC LITERATURE.

NE of our Western exchanges deplores the spread of "Satanic Literature" in the West, and calls upon the press to enlist in a general war against it. The highways of travel-the depôts, cars, steamboats-the hotels, and even the households of the people, it says, are invaded by the evil. Got up in cheap form, rendered attractive by meretricious engravings and exaggerated titles, these pernicious books are thrust into almost every accessible place, and are infecting to the core a large portion of the youth of the country. All the demons could not, in council, devise a more destructive instrumentality against the moral welfare of the young. Bad books are as old as literature itself, but our age is a bibliographical epoch in this respect. It teems with literary miasma, and the desolating plague rages about us, as do sometimes outbreaks of contagion in the physical world. Ejaculatory lamentations enough are uttered over it by individual good men, but something more is requisite to arrest the evil-some moral sanitary project, more comprehensive, more potent, if any indeed is possible. What it can be we attempt not now to say; we but refer to the prevalence of the evil, and submit some general suggestions respecting it.

To men who have not given attention to the subject, a statement of the extent of this enormous mischief, considered merely in its commercial aspect, would be incredible. Not merely the "respectable" bad books-the licensed libertinism of our established literature, (which every literary man knows to be diabolical enough,) the works of Smollett, Fielding, Byron, Moore, &c.—have a constantly renewed currency, but the advertised catalogues of the men engaged in this infernal traffic show that they descend into the sewers of French demoralization, and gather up for American homes the worst literary abominations of the old world. Besides these, there is also in their advertisements a continual announcement of flimsy, trashy abortions from native anonymous scribblers of the lowest rank-intellectual abortions, but moral monstrosities.

the land. Agencies and depôts are organized for it everywhere. It is the most omnipresent product of the press, except the newspaper. Though many otherwise respectable houses are engaged in it, partially at least, it is nevertheless acquiring such importance as to assume a distinct business position. There are firms of no inconsiderable pretensions almost exclusively devoted to it.

In England, the traffic seems hardly less active. The London Chronicle refers to it as a national evil. After giving the statistics of some "novelettes or tales" of the "worst description," weekly editions of which, at the rate of six thousand each, are circulated, it says:-"The young people of both sexes, in the families of the mechanic and the shop-keeper, are now habituated to a course of reading, in which felony, murder, forgery, adultery, and all other crimes are treated of as the common occurrences of life. The consequence is that the minds of thousands are depraved by that very exercise which ought to improve them. There is no use in denying that some of these felonious tales are written with ability; but that only aggravates the evil, for it serves as an excuse to the common reader, and has the effect of attracting some readers of a better class. There are four of these weekly Felonists, (for that is the nickname they have adopted,) whose combined sale is calculated at three hundred and fifty thousand, and whose readers must, I should say, extend to a million a week. One of these Felonists, and the most prosperous, has several gentlemen of ability among its contributors, and will probably be won over to the cause of order and good morals the moment the newspaper press begins to stir upon the subject."

An English novelist himself has uttered an emphatic opinion on the subject. Thackeray declares that English morals have degenerated below those of France, chiefly through this one cause. "We boast," he says, " of our science, and vaunt our superior morality. Does the latter exist? In spite of all the forms which our policy has invented to secure it-in spite of all the preachers, all the meetinghouses, and all the legislative enactments

painful labor of purchasing and perusing some of the cheap periodical prints which

form the people's library of amusement, and contain what may be presumed to be their standard in matters of imagination and fancy, he will see how false the claim is that we bring forward of superior morality." "The lower classes," he adds, "have their scandal and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters; and, as their tastes are somewhat coarser than my lord's, and their numbers a thousand to one, why, of course, the prints have increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a ratio exactly proportionable to the demand, until the town is infested with such a number of monstrous publications of the kind as would have put Abbé Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry shame. Talk of English morality!—the worst licentiousness, in the worst period of the French monarchy, scarcely equaled the wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping country of ours."

We doubt not that a large proportion of the demoralization now so appallingly increasing in our own country is owing to this potent cause. Crimes of the most heinous character are incessantly occurring; immoralities not usually reached by law, however illegal, are having a still rifer growth; and Thackeray's description of English morals is undeniably applicable to some sections of our own country. Some of our larger communities can hardly boast moral superiority over the old degenerate capitals of Europe. We never like to make these admissions; jealousy for our national character is with us a personal sentiment, but there is no disguising this matter. How can vice assume anywhere more effrontery than it presents among us? Much of it is doubtless imported, but much also is native. It will be found that the latter, though it congregates mostly in the cities, comes from the country, where the causes of demoralization, and especially the one we are considering, work powerfully, though insidiously.

man, but are the presses and the merchants engaged in it, branded as they should be? Do they not shelter themselves, with comparative respectability, under that false and most dangerous corruption of business morality which has, within some years, become too prevalent among us, and which teaches that whatever comes within the "line" of a man's business is right, and not to be embarrassed with questions of casuistry-that the general morality of his calling is to cover its secondary immoralities? It is this flimsy and demoralizing logic that still mainly sustains, in respectable trade and respectable hotels, the abominations of the liquor traffic, and innumerable downright iniquities find shelter under it. Alas for the self-respect of men who can thus willfully blindfold themselves to the moral disasters they are inflicting on the world!

The responsibility of this heinous mischief can hardly be exaggerated. He that corrupts an individual mind does a terrible deed; but what a work is his who spreads moral poison through a whole population, distributing it along the crowded highways of travel, insinuating it into retired villages, and stealthily conveying it even to consecrated homes, and to the yet unbeguiled hearts of youth and childhood! His work is fit only for devils, and he is fitting himself most effectually for their fellowship and their doom.

There are few, if any, spheres of public life as responsible as that of the author. He lives a multiplied life-extending over the whole range of the circulation of his productions. Communing as he does so personally and intently with his readers, his influence, especially if corrupt, is more subtile, more insinuating, more powerful, than can possibly be that of ordinary speech or example, given out casually amid the ever-changing circumstances of social or public life. If he is a man of power-of genius-fearfully is this penetrating and assimilating influence en

A writer may

A powerful book is the greatest power known among men-greater even than a powerful example or a powerful life, as its sway is indefinitely more extended and more durable. thus live a larger and more potential life in his book than in his actual and local existence. And if that book, good or evil, possesses the inherent, self-sustaining energy of genius, how may its author live