ter, for instance, he is plainly inquiring into the law of repentance, or the human being's sober second thought upon his own action, after it has become an irrevocable fact of nature; and he also asks what is the part that the social whole has to do, or does do, to make this sober second thought work the cure of the sinning soul and of wounded society. In one of the Twice-told Tales (Endicott and his men) he brings before our eyes, by the magic of his art, a day of the Puritan life of New England which was historical; for the dry chronicles tell us of Endicott's cutting the Red Cross out of the English banner on a "trainingday," when the news suddenly reached him from England of some untoward act of Charles I. As usual, Hawthorne gives a framework to this historical incident from the characteristic phenomena of Puritan life as it appeared at that period in New England. "Training-day" was always the afternoon of "lecture-day," when all the people were required to assemble for a sermon, and the militia were in their uniforms. It was on this day that all the wrongdoers were punished. Among these he mentions a woman standing on the "meeting-house" steps, with the letter A on her breast, which, he adds, she was condemned to wear all her life before her children and the townspeople. For our fathers, he observes (we quote from memory), thought it expedient to give publicity to crime as its proper punishment. And then he queries whether the modern mode of keeping certain kinds of crime out of sight were better, or even more merciful, to the criminal and society. A friend asked Hawthorne if for this particular punishment he had documentary evidence; and he replied that he had actually seen it mentioned in the town records of Boston, but with no attend ant circumstances. This friend said to another at that time, "We shall hear of that letter A again; for it evidently has made a profound impression on Hawthorne's mind." And in eight or ten years afterwards appeared the romance

of The Scarlet Letter, throwing its lurid glare upon the Puritan pharisaism and self-righteous pride, and engraved with spiritual fire on the naked breast of the unsuspected sinner.

If the musty chronicles of New England history could afford an artist material for such a sharp-cut high-relief of real life as excited him to a study of its meaning so earnest that it has drawn into sympathetic interest tens of thousands of readers, who feel as if they were living in the midst of that terribly bleak locality and day, we cannot wonder that Rome, whose very aspect is so picturesque, and whose history combines such varieties of human experience, should have awakened emotions and suggested questions of a kindred depth. Many such questions are certainly asked and answered, at least hypothetically, in The Marble Faun. It is rather remarkable that criticism has not yet attempted to analyze the power of this book, or even to pluck out the heart of Miriam's mystery, the key to which, as we apprehend, is to be found in the conversation over the copy of Beatrice Cenci's portrait in Hilda's studio.

It is entirely characteristic of Hawthorne's genius to take up such a subject as the history of Beatrice Cenci, and to inquire what was her internal experience; how a temperament so delicate and a spirit so innocent as Guido's portrait shows Beatrice's to have been stood before herself, whether as a victim or as a participator in the bloody deed for which she suffered death. Still more would he be apt to inquire what would be the spiritual result of the same outrage upon quite another temperament and cast of mind, - Miriam's, for instance. And again it was inevitable, as we have already intimated, that Rome should have suggested to his mind questions upon the efficacy or inefficacy of ritualistic confession and penance on the various degrees of criminal consciousness. Hilda says of Beatrice Cenci, that "sorrow so black as hers oppresses very nearly as sin would," for she was innocent in

her own eyes until her misfortune had driven her into parricide; which, trusting to the fidelity of Guido's portrait of her remembered face, and comparing that with the portrait of the stepmother, may be believed to have been not the suggestion of her own mind, though "that spotless flower of Paradise trailed over by a serpent," as Beatrice has been well described, was too much bewildered by the incomprehensible woe in which she found herself involved, and her will was too much paralyzed to do other than obey the impulse given by the only less outraged wife. The same calamity met by the clearer reason and stronger character of Miriam would not only suggest means of escape, especially if she had, as is intimated, wealth, and other easily imagined favoring circumstances, but would give energy to accomplish a certain moral independence of her most unnatural enemy, and would excite her intellect and creative imagination, rather than "oppress her whole being." It would seem from the sketches which Donatello

These traits insured to her their warm friendship and confidence, though her history was no less unknown and mysterious to them than to the public, who had speculated on it so wildly. They therefore acquiesced in the generally received opinion, that "the spectre of the catacomb" was her model; nor ever asked why it was that he followed her so pertinaciously. Any relation between Miriam and him other than the most superficial and accidental one was effectually forbidden by their sense of her character, which also annulled in the mind of Kenyon the strange significance of the "Spectre's" own words: —

I abide in the darkness,' said he, in a hoarse, "Inquire not what I am, nor wherefore harsh voice, as if a great deal of damp were clustering in his throat. Henceforth I am nothing but a shadow behind her footsteps. She came to me when I sought her not. She has called me forth, and must abide the consequences of my reappearance in the world.""

But the reflective reader, not being, like Kenyon, under the spell of Miriam's

hideous circumstances had not failed to arouse thoughts of murderous revenge which had governed her artistic creativeness in the selection and treatment of subjects, but that she had not thought of any more harmful realization of the dark dreams that haunted her than upon canvas. Until the fatal "look" passed from her eyes, which tempted Donatello to give free way to the impulse of hatred, with which his love for her had inspired him, towards one who was evidently her enemy, and no common enemy, the author plainly accounts her not only actually innocent, but a most humane person, and, like Beatrice, "if a fallen angel, yet without sin." Thus he speaks of her "natural language, her generosity, kindliness, and native truth of character," as banishing all suspicions, and even questions, from the minds of Hilda and Kenyon, to both of whom he ascribes the fine poetic instincts that intimate more truths concerning character than we can account for by phenomena.

ing the relations between her and the so-called model, if he will compare this not unmeaning speech with the conversation in Hilda's study, to which we have already referred, when that inexperienced child pronounced the parricide an inexpiable crime":—

"O Hilda! your innocence is like a sharp steel swerd,' cxclaimed her friend. 'Your judgments are often terribly severe, though you scem all made up of gentleness and mercy. Beatrice's sin may not have been so great; perhaps it was no sin at all, but the best virtue possible in the circumstances. If she viewed it as a sin, it may have been because her nature was too feeble for the fate imposed upon her. Ah,' continued Miriam, passionately, if I could only get within her consciousness!-if I could only clasp Beatrice Cenci's ghost, and draw it into mywhether she thought herself innocent, or te self! I would give up my life to know one great criminal since time began. As Miriam gave utterance to these words, Hilda looked from the picture into her face, and was startled to observe that her friend's expression had become almost exactly that

Again, when in pity for her tormentor, she suggests prayer and penance:

"In this man's memory there was something that made it awful for him to think of prayer, nor would any torture be more ore intolerable than to be reminded of such divine comfort and success as await pious souls merely for the asking. This torment was perhaps the token of a native temperament deeply susceptible of religious impressions, but which he had wronged, violated, and debased, until at length it was capable only of terror from the sources that were intended for our purest and loftiest consolation. He looked so fearfully at her, and with such intense pain struggling in his eyes, that Miriam felt pity. And now all at once it struck her that he might be mad. It was an idea that had never before seriously occurred to her mind, although, as soon as suggested, it fitted marvellously into many circumstances that lay within her knowledge. But alas! such was her evil fortune, that, whether mad or no, his power over her remained the same, and was likely to be used only the more tyrannously if exercised by a lunatic."

This chapter of "fragmentary sentences" has suggested to some readers the idea that a mutual, or at least a shared crime, was "the iron link that bound" these two persons together. But a careful reading will find no proof of this in any word of the author or of Miriam ; and the "unmitigable will" which she tells him he mistook for an "iron necessity" is quite sufficient to explain the identification which the possible madman insists on at that time, and intimates afterwards, by beckoning her to wash her hands in the Fountain of Trevi when he did so himself.

To all those who ask if the author meant to represent Miriam, previous to the fatal night on the Tarpeian rock, as guilty of any crime, we commend a con

you

"But know that I am innocent,' she cried, interrupting herself again, and looking Kenyon in the face.

"I know it by my deepest consciousness,' he answered, and I know it by Hilda's trust and entire affection, which you never could have won had you been capable of guilt.'

"That is sure ground, indeed, for pronouncing me innocent,' said Miriam, with the tears gushing into her eyes. 'Yet I have since become a horror to your saintlike Hilda by a crime which she herself saw me help to perpetrate.'

The fatal word which Miriam so dreaded was unquestionably that which would prove that she had not "committed suicide," and so expose her, like Beatrice Cenci, to an ignominious death, notwithstanding her innocence.