an embroidery of rich beauty, without lauding it too much. All the sternness of it is softened by vegetative beauty wherever it can possibly be thrown in; and there is not here, so strongly as along Windermere, evidence that human art has been helping out Nature. I wish it were possible to give any idea of the shapes of the hills; with these, at least, man has nothing to do, nor ever will have anything to do. As we approached the bottom of the lake, and of the beautiful valley in which it lies, we saw one hill that seemed to crouch down like a Titanic watch-dog, with its rear towards the spectator, guarding the entrance to the valley. The great superiority of these mountains over those of New England is their variety and definiteness of shape, besides the abundance everywhere of water prospects, which are wanting among our own hills. They rise up decidedly, and each is a hill by itself, while ours mingle into one another, and, besides, have such large bases that you can tell neither where they begin nor where they end. Many of these Cumberland mountains have a marked vertebral shape, so that they often look like a group of huge lions, lying down with their backs turned toward each other. They slope down steeply from narrow ridges; hence their picturesque seclusions of valleys and dales, which subdivide the lake region into so many communities. Our hills, like appledumplings in a dish, have no such valleys as these." - Vol. I. pp. 223, 224. Hawthorne's education in art began in England. We have seen how kindly he took to ecclesiastical architecture, but this was rather on account of the ideas embodied in the forms than the forms themselves; for secular architecture, in all its kinds, he passes by with hardly a glance. Sculpture and painting were new revelations to him, and it was not until after some time that he began to understand and feel them. His first visit to the British Museum was made in September, 1855, and then he was rather bored than otherwise by the remains of ancient art

which he saw there, and he has honestly confessed it in a passage of char acteristic frankness:

"It is a hopeless, and to me, generally, a depressing business to go through an immense multifarious show like this, glancing at a thousand things, and conscious of some little titillation of mind from them, but really taking in nothing, and getting no good from anything. One need not go beyond the limits of the British Museum to be profoundly accomplished in all branches of science, art, and literature; only it would take a lifetime to exhaust it in any one department; but to see it as we did, and with no prospect of ever seeing it more at leisure, only impressed me with the truth of the old apothegm, 'Life is short, and Art is long.' The fact is, the world is accumulating too many materials for knowledge. We do not recognize for rubbish what is really rubbish; and under this head might be reckoned very many things one sees in the British Museum; and, as each generation leaves its fragments and potsherds behind it, such will finally be the desperate conclusion of the learned.

"We went first among some antique marbles, busts, statues, terminal gods, with several of the Roman Emperors among them. We saw here the bust whence Haydon took his ugly and ridiculous likeness of Nero,—a foolish thing to do. Julius Cæsar was there. too, looking more like a modern old man than any other bust in the series. Perhaps there may be a universalit in his face, that gives it this independence of race and epoch. We glimpsed along among the old marbles, - Elgin and others, which are esteemed suc treasures of art; - the oddest fr ments, many of them smashed by the fall from high places, or by being pounded to pieces by barbarians, gnawed away by time; the surface roughened by being rained upon fo thousands of years; almost always nose knocked off; sometimes a head less form; a great deficiency of fee and hands, poor, maimed veteran

in this hospital of incurables.

The beauty of the most perfect of them must be rather guessed at, and seen by faith, than with the bodily eye; to look at the corroded faces and forms is like trying to see angels through mist and cloud. I suppose nine tenths of those who seem to be in raptures about these fragments do not really care about them; neither do I. And if I were actually moved, I should doubt whether it were by the statues or by my own fancy."Vol. I. pp. 325, 326.

But two years later he goes again, and by what he says of the Townley Gallery we can measure the training of eye and mind which he had gone through in the mean time:

"I went first to-day into the Townley Gallery, and so along through all the ancient sculpture, and was glad to find myself able to sympathize more than heretofore with the forms of grace and beauty which are preserved there, -poor, maimed immortalities as they are,-headless and legless trunks, godlike cripples, faces beautiful and broken-nosed, heroic shapes which have stood so long, or lain prostrate so long, in the open air, that even the atmosphere of Greece has almost dissolved the external layer of the marble; and yet, however much they may be worn away, or battered and shattered, the grace and nobility seem as deep in them as the very heart of the stone. It cannot be destroyed, except by grinding them to powder. In short, I do really believe that there was an excellence in ancient sculpture which has yet a potency to educate and refine the minds of those who look at it even carelessly and casually as I do."VOL II. p. 373.

Of pictures in London he has very Ettle to say. If he went to the Natonal Gallery at all, he made no record of his impressions. He sees Raphael's artoons at Hampton Court, and will not pretend to admire nor to under"and" them. We do not wonder at his, for, by reason of their being form without color, they should close one's raining in pictorial art and not begin it.

But at Manchester, in the summer of 1857, he made a careful study of the paintings assembled at the Arts' Exhibition in that city. He is at first bewildered and distracted with the multitude of objects which court his attention, and sets down his sensations in language which will recall the experience of many in similar conditions :

"Day before yesterday we went to the Arts' Exhibition, of which I do not think that I have a great deal to say. The edifice, being built more for convenience than show, appears better in the interior than from without, — long vaulted vistas, lighted from above, extending far away, all hung with pictures; and on the floor below, statues, knights in' armor, cabinets, vases, and all manner of curious and beautiful things, in a regular arrangement. Scatter five thousand people through the scene, and I do not know how to make a better outline sketch. I was unquiet, from a hopelessness of being able to enjoy it fully. Nothing is more depressing to me than the sight of a great many pictures together; it is like having innumerable books open before you at once, and being able to read only a sentence or two in each. They bedazzle one another with cross lights. There never should be more than one picture in a room, nor more than one picture to be studied in one day. Galleries of pictures are surely the greatest absurdities that ever were contrived, there being no excuse for them, except that it is the only way in which pictures can be made generally available and accessible."- Vol. II. pp. 307, 308.

He recognizes the truth and power of Hogarth, but finds it unaccountable that the "English painters' achievements should be so much inferior to those of the English poets." He sees something wonderful in Turner's "lights and mists and yeasty waves," but "should like him still better if his pictures looked in the least like what they typify." He is strangely sceptical as to all portrait-painting, and says that he does not "remember ever to have

recognized a man by having previously seen his portrait." The only painter who calls forth a hearty burst of unqualified enthusiasm is Murillo, who seems to him "about the noblest and purest painter that ever lived, and his Good Shepherd the loveliest picture I have ever seen." This strong expression may be explained by the fact that Murillo, like Hawthorne himself, combined a delicate sense of ideal beauty with the most accurate observation of real life, and could paint equally well an old monk or a lovely infant.

He speaks of his last visit to the Exhibition in terms which show that he had made good progress in the study of art:

"September 6th. - I think I paid my last visit to the Exhibition, and feel as if I had had enough of it, although I have got but a small part of the profit it might have afforded me. But pictures are quite other things to me now from what they were at my first visit; it seems even as if there were a sort of illumination within them, that makes me see them more distinctly.” — Vol. II. p. 331.

Of music, other than street music, there is no record whatever in the Note-Books. The opera had no attractions for him, and the same is true of those musical festivals in the great cathedral towns of England, where the grand strains of Handel, Haydn, and Beethoven are heard as they can be heard nowhere else, with the best artists in the world for the solo parts, and a vast tide of trained voices on which to float the choruses. He is equally silent as to the theatre. There is nothing in his journal to prove that he ever attended a dramatic performance during all his residence in England. And he passed by on the other side, without heeding, many things which most foreigners are particularly anxious to observe. It does not appear that he ever was present at more than one debate in the House of Commons, and by that he was evidently wearied. It is not strange that with his shy and reserved habits he should have avoided the great balls and

evening parties of the London season, and nothing but a strong sense of duty would have tempted him to take a seat on the platform at an anniversary meeting, though the most eloquent lips in England had been set down in the programme. And as for a presentation at Court, beyond all question he would have preferred to fight a duel or go into battle.

He is silent upon all the games, ath-, letic exercises, and amusements which in England are embraced under the comprehensive name of sport, and in which the nobility and gentry take so much interest and spend so much money. He has never a word to say about cricket or yachting or fox-hunting or horse-racing. To be in England four years, and yet never be at Epsom on a Derby day, is as exceptional a thing as to be a Mussulman and never make a pilgrimage to Mecca; yet Hawthorne never witnessed this unique and characteristic spectacle. All forms of animal life are unheeded by him. English horses, English cattle, English dogs, are all matchless in their way, but he sees or heeds them not. Indeed, we do not remember that any animal is introduced into any of his romances. He was probably never the proprietor of a horse or a dog, and was never seen on the back of a horse. In this respect he presents a marked contrast to both Scott and Dickens, who show their fondness for animals by often putting them into their books.

We had marked other passages for extract, but our notice is already long enough, and we must come to an end. Were we to copy everything that struck us as remarkable in the reading, we should transfer to our pages about half the work. We have given our readers enough to satisfy them that they have in the English Note-Books a book of permanent interest and value, both from its essential literary merit and from its autobiographical character, as illustrating the mental and personal traits of the most original genius in the sphere of imaginative literature that our country has yet produced.

G. S. Hillard.

IN

CHAPTER XXIII.

N the mean time the Hopetons had left for the sea-shore, and the two women, after a drive to Magnolia, remained quietly on the farm. Julia employed the days in studying Lucy with a soft, stealthy, unremitting watchfulness, which the latter could not suspect, since, in the first place, it was a faculty quite unknown to her, and secondly, it would have seemed absurd because inexplicable. Neither could she guess with what care Julia's manner and conversation were adapted to her own. She was only surprised to find so much earnest desire to correct faults, such artless transparency of nature. Thus an interest quite friendly took the place of her former repulsion of feeling, of which she began to be sincerely ashamed.

Moreover, Julia's continual demonstration of her love for Joseph, from which Lucy at first shrank with a delicate tremor of the heart, soon ceased to affect her. Nay, it rather seemed to interpose a protecting barrier between her present and the painful memory of her past self. She began to suspect that all regret was now conquered, and rejoiced in the sense of strength which could only thus be made clear to her mind. Her feeling towards Joseph became that of a sister or a dear woman friend; there could be no harm in cherishing it she found a comfort in speaking to Julia of his upright, unselfish character, his guilelessness and kindness of heart.

The work upon the house was nearly finished, but new and more alarming bills began to come in; and worse was in store. There was a chimney-piece, "the loveliest ivory veins through the green marble," Julia said, which she had ordered from the city; there were boxes and packages of furniture already

on hand, purchased without Joseph's knowledge and with entire faith in the virtues of the Amaranth. Although she still clung to that faith with a desperate grip, the sight of the boxes did not give her the same delight as she had felt in ordering them. She saw the necessity of being prepared, in advance, for either alternative. It was not in her nature to dread any scene or circumstance of life (although she had found the appearance of timidity very available, and could assume it admirably); the question which perplexed her was, how to retain and strengthen her ascendency over Joseph ?

It is needless to say that the presence of Lucy Henderson was a part of her plan, although she held a more important service in reserve. Lucy's warm, frank expressions of friendship for Joseph gave her great satisfaction, and she was exhaustless in inventing ways to call them forth.

"You look quite like another person, Lucy," she would say; "I really think the rest has done you good."

"I am sure of it," Lucy answered.

"Then you must be in no hurry to leave. We must build you up, as the doctors say; and, besides, if—if this speculation should be unfortunate — 0, I don't dare to think of it! - there will be such a comfort to me, and I am sure to Joseph also, in having you here until we have learned to bear it. We should not allow our minds to dwell on it so much, you know; we should make an exertion to hide our disappointment in your presence, and that would be such a help! Now, you will say I am borrowing trouble, but do, pray, make allowances for me, Lucy! Think how everything has been kept from me that I ought to have known!"

"Of course, I will stay a little while for your sake," Lucy answered; "but Joseph is a man, and most men bear