The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1852-08-12
LITERARY NOTICES.
THE BLrrHEDALE ROMANCE. BY Nathaniel Haw
y thorne... Boston Ticknor, Reed. a Fields. For
sale byTaylor 4 Maury, Washington ID. C.


greatest of Mr. Hawthornes works, but not in
all, if breadth Of purpose is the umpire OF ex-
celence. True the book is filled with evil
dences of genius, and of Mr.. Hawthornes ge
MUS at that but no great, distinctive ann is
manifest; none Of lfes great problems are
taken hold of earnestly; no great, individual
fact is demonstrated He gives us three or
four chief characters each the representative
of class and in vivdness of conception sub
tlety of delneation and intensity of indiyidu-
atty, they are unsurpassed, if equalled, by any
of his previous creations; but they and their
lives prove almost nothing, extrinslcally; they
simply act and react upon each other through
the medium of personal contact. First, We
have Miles Coverdale, the STORY teller "a
cultivated, quiet non-interyention Gn the abso-
lutte sense) bachelor and a poet. He is but
passive actor in the play, observing rather than
participating. Next is Hollingsworth, with his
granite physique and his ponderous intellect
originally capable Of infinite good if he had
but suffered his great heart to work according
to its God-given instincts; but, accepting one
ray only of the great sun of philanthropy and
concentrating his vision exclusively upon what
that revealed TO him, he has become blind to
all else, slave to his one idea. He is the
focus of action in the play. Then we have
Zenobia "the gorgeous magnificent as a
tropic night, full jewelled-a very Cleopatra in
Orientalism of character-laying the imperial
splendor of her nature at the feet of Holdings
worth, to be trod upon and crushed at his next
step Next comes little Priscilla, one of those
,semi-supernatural characters wherein the indi
viduality of Mr. Hawthorne's genius evidences
itself Priscilla gradually degenerates into a
New England woman, proves to be Zenobia's
sister and becomes her successful rival in the
contest for Hollingsworth, in consequence Of
which Zenobia browns herself Such and so
related are the characters.
Looking at the book as simply and strictly
tragedy, and measuring its merit by the amount
of dramatic effect produced, it is wonderful
performance. We can recall nothing that will
surpass the midnight search for the body. BY
some mysterious agency of art We are brought
into immediate personal, physical contact with
the whole scene. Coverdale calling to Hol-
lingswOrth to come down, seems to startle uS
from sleep, and that Strange tone > which he
could not keep out of his voice shivers through
our hearts and quickens their throbs as we
step forth into the ghostly light of the midnight
moon, and follow their footballs through the
silence We stand upon the brink of the river
and look into its dark face sprnkled here and
there with quivering flakes Of moonlight, and
invOluntarily the picture of Zenobia, as we
knew her comes before us" Zenobia, the
beautiful the gorgeous in the very zenith Of
her magnificent womanhood; and we try to
think of her as dead, but we cannot; so in
tensely Uifai was she in every element and at
tribute of her nature--such an incarnation of
absolute life And rs we stand, are feel, with
Coverdale, that foreshock of the fact that HOl-
lingsworth has struck the body. We see it
lying beneath the tree-eold, CHASTITY, dripping,
and fercely contorted and not till it is left
with the "tire-women are We released from
| the terrible thraldOm.
There are throughout the book manifold in
stances of that exquisite arrangement of light
and shade, and that wonderful capacity for de-
lineating all the subtlest tints of the subtlest
emotions, which so distinguish Mr., Hawthorne
as an author Now and then, too, we are
treated to quiet rambe through meadows
and woods; while from out those dreamy twi-
light moods of his, heavy -freighted thoughts
come gliding so quietly, so unobtrusively, that
we almost fail to note them sometimes, in our
eager enjoyment of the exquisite fancies that
twinkle like ire-hes along the pages. And
what charming, episodal descriptions of land
scape he gives us, too as We pass along!
We have been struck in this book, more than
ever before, with the marvellous beauty of Mr.
HawthOrne's style The sentences roll along
with the rich, swelling harmony of sea-waves,
laden with poetry and humor, that flash in
sprayey brilliancy from their crests as they
break upon the periods
One other thing, and we have done. The
singular aptness with which words are fire.
quently used-for instance, what an exquisite
stroke is the application of gorgeous to Ze-
nobia. That single word comprehends the
whole woman.
LITTLE PEpIINGToN AND THE PEDLINGToNIANs.
BY John Poole. New York ID. Appleton 4 Co.
For sale by X. Farnham, Washington, ID. C..
During these August days, when the atmos-
phere is molten gold, not only in complexion
but in temperature, and when ones thoughts
iniH wander yearningy back to those good, an
tcdiluvian times when sans cutottes was the
modo such book a. the one before us is a
very God-send Ludicrous incident, racy de-
scriptiOn, keen satire and an omniprcsent hui
NOR, are its components-making altogether
| lust The book to counterfeit that undue tend
ency to languor which the season is prone to
engender in ones intellect
The publishers deserve to be heartily sus-
tanned in this endeayor to tamilarize us with
standard English literature and we think the
public needs only to know that the present
happy selection owes its paternity to the same
pen rs that notorious piece of ubiquity, Paul
Pry' to insure rapid sale.
And now, we want to utter our protest
against the abominable ugliness OF the style OF
binding adopted for this series of publications.
1t is positive insult to the really handsome
Typography, to associate it with such hyper
horrible, dingy-red cover
LospoN LABOR AND THE LONDON Poor. No. 90
BY Henry Mayhem. New York Harper Broth
ers For sale by Franck Taylor, Washington, ID.
Nothing but the most determined energy and