The Express.
London, England, 1860-03-21 00:00:00

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LITERATURE.

malformation ; or,
_ the Rookattee of Monte Beni.
By NATHANUIL Author of "The
Scarlet Letter," &c. &c. 3 vole. Smith, Elder,
and Co.

This work will disappoint the admirers of Mr.
Hawthorne, and most of all those who have best
appreciated and most heartily enjoyed the peculiar'
quality of his former stories. The great charm of
the most successful of these lies in their combina-
tion of the characteristics of two seemingly opposite
schools of fiction. Whatever be their subject,
whether it be the gloomy- superstition of Rhode
Island puritans, or the pantisocratic vagaries of
Boston transcendentalists, not only are the inner
and outer worlds, so to speak both done justice to,
but both are treated with the ease and familiarity
of a master. There is both insight and observation
of life. In "The Scarlet Letter," and " The
Blithedale Romance,' there is a. sensitive, we had
almost said a morbid, apprehension of the various
phases of sustained emotional excitement, together
with a weird, mystical half supernatural element ;
but both these admirable stories are redeemed from
vagueness and unreality by their minute, loving,
and even homely descriptions of natural scenery,
domestic life, and national charaeter. There is a
Yankee flavour about them, which is so far from
spoiling them, that they would in our opinion be
intolerable without it. Mr. Hawthorne, however,
apparently conceives that he can write a better
story without this ingredient, and he has accord-
ingly laid the scene off this new one in Rome. "No
author," he says, " without a trial can conceive
the difficulty of writing a romance abont,a country
where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery,
no picturesque and gloomywrong, nor anything but a
oommonplime prosperity, in broad and simple day-
light, as is happily the ease with my dear native
land. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-
flowers, need ruins to make them grow." We may
say: in passing, that the description iu negatives
which Mr. Hawthorne has here given of his dear
native country, we do not believe to be applicable
to any country on the face of the earth. More-
over, we conceive his theory of romance and poetry
to be entirely false, or at all events not true in
any memos warranting an author's betaking himself
to ruins and the other elements of the conventional
picturesque with malice prepense, in order to make
a romance out of them. Any one who compares
this noYel with "The House of the Seven Gables,',
or either of those we have mentioned, will, we
think, be strongly inclined to suspect that Mr.
Hawthorne has abandoned the cultivation of what
is for him the only remunerative ground in obedi-
ence to a mistaken idea of the romantic. We sin-
cerely trust that before his next story he may re-
invigorate himself by a contact with his mother
mirth. ,

"Transformation, or, the Romance of Monte
Beni," is a story of artist life in Rome. The
principal interest of this queer, incomplete tale
attaches to four characters, two of whom are
Americans—Hilda, a young mint? and Kenyon, a
sculptor ; the other two are Miriam, who is the
inscrutable and mysterious personage of the book,
and Donatello, a Tuscan count, who very much
resembles, and is bond fide represented as descended
from, a Fawn!
Welled marcely patience to follow the various
unnatural situations and strained and artificial
conversations of these four characters, which are
the staple of the story. The only tangible incident
is the murder of a mysterious person who dor
Wiliam's steps, and is thrown off the Tarpeian rock
by Donatello.
American artist life in Rome, vividly and truth-
fully depicted, would have been no bad subject for
• ctory; but we suppose Mr. Hawthorne would
have found adherence to truth and natural colour-
ing an unbearable restraint in the carrying out et
his new and high flown views of romance. It is
painful to speak so disparagingly of a writer ao able
and delightful as Mr. Hinthornegenerally Is. bet
we vaunt say that ".The Romance of Monte &al"
is so Jaoor,s• tame, and so unnatural, that • r
rfer the author's popularity, to asy nothingnd
fame, would have d any judicious adviser to die-
.nide him from publishing it.