The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-12 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Our Old Home. By Nathaniel Hawthorne, author
of " Transformation," " The Scarlet Letter," Bcc.

Two volumes. smith and Elder.

Nathaniel Hawthorne has before now furnished
us with " Twice-told-Tales," many of ,which were
worth twice telling. We cannot affirm the same of
the recollections he has now favoured us with, some
of which—not a few of which—had better have been
left unsaid. In his introductory confidences "to a
friend" Mr. Hawthorne tells us that ho had at first
intended to write a larger work upon the same sub-
ject, " but." he adds, " the Present, the Immediate,
the Actual has proved too potent for me. It takes
away from me not only my scanty faculty, but even
my desire for imaginative composition." He goes on
to say, however, " I shall easily find room for the
abortive work on a certain ideal shelf where are
reposited many other shadowy, volumes of mine,
more in number, and very much super for in quality,
to those which I have succeeded in rendering
actual." How many of Mr. Hawthorne's readers,
and how many of his admirers (for his quaint style
and shrewd observation have gained him, in this
country, many admirers) will, like ourselves, wish
for his own fame's sake that these two " actual"
volumes also reposed upon that same "shadowy" shelf !
He himself acknowledges that some of his friends
have told him, that these sketches evince an asperity
of sentiment towards the English people which he
ought not to feel. He affects surprise at this asser-
tion, and claims an " hereditary sympathy" for the
English people; and yet, in the very next breath,
he exclaims, and the exclamation coming from a
yankee almost takes sways our breath :—" These
people (the English) think so loftily of themselves,
and so contemptuously of everybody else, that it re-
quires more generosity than I possess to keep
always in perfectly good humour with them P'
Equally marvellous, in the utter unconsciousness of
its application nearer home, is another remark of
gr. Hawthorne's, which occurs in the second
volume :

AMERICAN IDEA OP ENGLISH PUGNACITY !

All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a far
greater degree than ourselves by this simple and honest
tendency, in cases of disagreement, to batter one another's
poson; and whoever has seen a crowd of English ladies
(for instance. at the door of the Sistine Chapel, in Holy
Week), will be satisfied that their belligerent propensities
are kept in abeyance only by a merciless rigour on the part
of society. It requires a vast deal of refinement to spiri-
tualize their large physical endowments.
The English ladies appear to be more particularly
the objects of this American gentleman's ungallant
scorn. His picture of an English matron of fifty
is simply a grotesque caricature. Nevertheless, he
admits that "an English maiden in her teens, though
verysawn so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to
say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and
delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood
shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, some-
how or other, our American girls often fail to adorn
themselves during an appreciable moment." And
this same writer, immediately after pronouncing
this graceful panegyric upon the charms of refine-
ment, goes on to express his farther sentiments on
the subject of corporeal growth in a style so coarse
as to
be positively revolting. Wo make these re-
marks "more in sorrow than in anger," for we have
been ever ready to recognise Mr. Hawthorne's real
abilities, of which the volumes before us give ample
evidence. As a specimen of his style, here is a
humorous but sarcastic sketch of

Tag DENIZENS OF TIIE THAMES TUNNEL.
There seem to be people who spend their lives here, and
who probably blink like owls, when, once or twice a year,
perhaps, they happen to climb into the sunshine. All
along the corridor, which I believe to be a mile in extent,
we see stalls or shops in little alcoves, kept principally by
women—they were of a ripe age, I was glad to observe, and
certaialy robbed England of none of its very moderate sup-
ply of feminine loveliness (I) by their deeper than tomb-like
interment, As you approach (and they are so accustomed
to the dusky gaslight that they toad all your characteristics
afar off), they assail you with hungry entreaties to buy
some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the
Tunnel Put up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a
magnifyiarglass at one end to make the vista more
effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jewellery, sunny
topazes and resplendent emeralds for sixpence, and diamonds
jioh-l-noor at a not much heavier cost, to-
es big as the
gether with a
multifarious trumpery which has died out of
the upper world to reappear in this Tartarean bazaar. That
you may fancy yourself still in the realms of the living,
they urge you to partake of cakes, candy, ginger-beer,
and such small refreshment, more suitable, however, for
the shadowy appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy stomachs
of Englishmen. The most capacious of the shops contains
a dioramic exhibition of cities and scenes in the daylight
world, with a dreary glimmer of gas among them all; so
that they says well enough to represent the dim, unsatis-
factory remembrances that dead people might be supposed
to retain from their past lives, mixing them up with the
ghastliness of their unsubstantial state. I dwell the more
upon these trifles, and do my best to give them a mockery
of importance, because, if these are nothing, then all
this elaborate contrivance and mighty piece of work
he.s been wrought in vain. The Englishman has burrowed
under the bed of his great river, and set ships of two or
three thousand tons a-rolling over his head, only to pro-
vide new sites for a few old women to sell cakes and ginger-
beer I Yet the conception was a grand one.
On the other band, full of pathos (although also of
exaggeration) are the glimpses of the crowded alleys
London. These pictures are in-
and back slums of
deed drawn with the blackest pencil. Here is a
sketch, however, somewhat more to our liking than
those we have given above :
WOMAN IN BAGS.

in these dark abodes, is strangely iden-
ticalith
ewt motherhood,hhrat°wct have all known it to be in the happiest
tihnaseclnlor? poignant because perplexingly
entangledrgrief and p iwithty(l
anl ination to smile) than to hear a gaunt
homes. Nothing,
a
and ragged mother priding
herself on the pretty ways of
her ragged and skinny infant, just as a young matron might
when she invites her
the nursery. Indeed,
.144 friends to admire her
-Chrobed
ctedralrstliongseleilmed to have altogether
uploumwpo,manwhlyite
perished out of these poor souls. It was the
very same creature whose tender torments make the rapture
of our young days, whom we love, cherish, and protect,
and rely upon in life and death, and whom we delight to
see beautify her beauty with rich robes and set it off with
jewels, though now fantastically was
groups round a door-step or in
masquerading in a garb of
tatters, wholly unfit for her to handle. I recognized her,
over and over again, in the
the descent of a cellar, chatting with
prodigious earnest-
ness about intangible trifles, laughing flor a little jest,
sympathizing at almost the same, instant with one neigh-
bour's sunshine and another s shadow, wise, simple, sly,
Perturbed,
, and breaking into small
and jealousy, tornadoes
afenmdipnaintieenebt,uyileittieonassiloyf
spite,pertu wrath,
of a moment, such as vary the social atmosphere of her
silken-skirted sisters, though smothered into propriety by
dint of a well-bred habit. Not that there was an absolute
deficiency of good breeding even here. It often surprised
me to witness a courtesy and deference among these ragged
folks, which, having seen it, I did not thoroughly believe
in, wondering whence it should have come. I am per-
suaded, however, that there were laws of intercourse
which they never violated—a code of the cellar, the garret,
the common staircase, the door-step, and the pavement,
which perhaps has as a deep foundation in natural fitness
as the code of the drawing-room.
We might quote numerous descriptive passages, all
indicating the vigorous hand and thoughtful brain,
but also the oblique vision and bad taste of their
author. Even the name he has chosen for his work,
with its crowd of tender memories and touch-
ing associations—" Our Old Home !" —has been
powerless to appeal to his sensibilities. Nathaniel
Hawthorne, claiming," hereditary sympathy" with
England, has visited his old home in no filial or
fraternal spirit. This " chid" has been " amang
us" taking notes in the unfriendly spirit of Cassius
—" All our faults observed (aye, and exaggerated
tenfold !), set in a note-book, learned and conned by i
rote to cast into our teeth." But, as in all such n•
stances of unfair criticism or unfounded attack, less
injury is done to the recipient than to the donor,
Nathanial Hawthorne will reap anything but satis-
faction from his uncandid censorship, while the
" Old Home" he despises will be unharmed by his
assault and indifferent to his opinion.

Poems. By Francx,is Charles Weedon. One vol.

pp. 239. Longman and Co.

44 At the request of friends," is, of all apologies
publication of any literary production
for
theater, about the sorriest. It is beyond a doubt
of t the sorriest that could by possibility be pre-
fioa to any collection of poetical or quasi poetical
performances. Yet, as in the instance before us, it
greets us a:: the very opening of the little volume
now under
.nooe, in accents for once singularly
persuasive in theie tone, it wins at once our most
inpathy hi regard to the metrical pro-
gdellneetir:l3ll: 651
, to which, in a very exceptional manner,
the trite old phrase above quoted hero forms the aptest
introduction. Nearly two year have elapsed since