The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-04-04
ON PuRIrANIsM
IE,se Cutler Bissell, iu Current.|


 Among the many influences entering as factors into eur complex American lite none has been more vital or more potent for good than that of the New England Puritans. To them we assign no small part in the formation of our national character, and much of the interest in our uast clusters about them. They brought to our shores stern morality, an indom- i,able will, aud rigid principles; from bleak New England they sent forth an influence which shaped and molded our pliant nationality. Surely, this austere race of our foTsfssheFs was not destined to pass into memory, to be preserved merely in history2 No; it lives in the literature of the country it helped to build up it glows with life on the pages of Americas greatest novelist.
 Nathaniel Hawthorne was a Puritan by direct descent;" out of the soil of New England he sprang-in a crevice of that immitigable granite he sprouted and bloomed" He was born on the spot where the saddest tragedy of our coun- try was enacted, and numbers amosg his ancestors one of the actors of that tragedy. But the old Puritanic character was somewhat modified by the lapse of time and change of surroundings, and exhib- tied in him only its mtlder characteristics, giving him a subtle sympathy with his grim ancestors and deep interest in the old Puritan times. With this knowledge of his birth and ancestry we are not sur prised that the early history of New Eng land, moro largely than any other source, has supplied him with events and incl dents for his creations; or that the man ners, beliefs, and superstitions of the Furitans had strange charm fer him. Their times are his heroic age; their stern morality is his theme.
 His portrayal of them is the more de- lighttul since it Is both objective and sub. jective. He trod the same street that had echoed their footsteps; he felt their blood ccursing in his veins. He had none of that modern realism which elaborates details and expands description he made little of local coloring, and yet we feel that his "Scarlet Letter" D" came out of the very heart of New England :' he had no thought of writing historical romances, and yet no better picture of Puritan life can be found than that of his writings.
 Puritanism is the background over which his ftful fancy played it is the prevailing life of "The Scarlet Letter 1" The House of the Seven Cables - though it gloss with the touch of his i'm agination, its presence is plainly percept- ible and it's severity strongly felt it awakens our interest, but never gains our sympathy.
 The Puritan's life was one long battle with evil, a stern reality, into which en- tered no hope, no aspiration the terrible consciousness of sin was ever with him, clouding the fairest visions, blighting the purest joys. His spirit was bowed down under the fearful responsibility of this life, and his soul trembled at his concep- ton of God. To him "religion and law were almost identical" and both were so thoroughly interfused in his character that "forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of divine institu- tions." Justice and mercy were bitter antagonists, whose reconciliation VI as inn possible. "The habit of seeing sin everywhere the dusky gaze bent always upon a nature draped in mourning the pitiless analysis of ones selF-all these elements were shadowed in the faces of the Puritans, who looked strangely like bad angels, or at least men who had wrestled so continually and SO sternly with the devil that somewhat of his 6erceness had been imparted to their own visages." Reared in an atmosphere of severity, restrained by harsh discipline, they never knew the blithssomeness of childhood or felt the glowing enthusiasm of youth "they owed their progress not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the somber sagacity of age, accomplish ing so much precisely because they inn agined and hoped so little" The past was dreary, the present fieeting, and the future forebodinE. With no sympathy for erring humanity, with religion too intolerant to admit the brotherhood of mankind. they inclosed themselves each in his narrow individuality, and wrought cut the problem of life in loneliness and gloom.
 The Puritan was the embodiment of conscience, and Hawthorne has given to its pitiless power and uurelenting de. crees all the tragic force of the nytho- logical fate of the ancients. 1t is the Ne. mesis of the Puritans, the avenging fury of the evil-doer.
 The less frequent phenomena of nature were the objects of a superstitious dread, and to the devout-minded were flAught with terrible import or betokened divine approval. The air and forest were peo- pied with spirits of evil; and many an- other, like "Arthur Dimmesdale," when conscious of baleful influence, knew not that it came from mortal, but "fan- cied himself given over to 6end, to be tortured with frightfnl dreams and des- perate thoughts. the sting of remorse and despair of pardon"
 A nature thus warped and distorted must experience violent reactions; if the lifelong struggle with sin is abated ore instant, in that instant sin becomes the victor. "Arthur Dimmssdale, ," tempted by dream of happiness" had wavered and yielded tc sin, and Aaothing short of atotal change of dynasty and moral code WaR ade0uafe to Areount foY thA irnuulseR