tality" which it has "brought to light." Nay, more; we would, with the utmost caution, avoid every measure, every rule, and every practice, tending to promote a reckless spirit of change. It is only as the zealous friends of religion and order, that we advocate the legal reform here recommended. ART. III. Twice-Told Tales. By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Boston. 1837. 12mo. pp. 334. THE mental and moral influence of the most faultless novels and tales of the fashion now current is at least questionable. There is reason to apprehend, that no mind could feed much upon them, without finding its notions of life unsettled, and the balance of its moral judgment disturbed. And the fault lies, not in any depravity of taste or perversion of feeling in the writers, but in the peculiar kind of composition. Fictions of this class create, where there is a creation already. They usurp the realm of fact, and change its order into anarchy. They disturb and displace the fabric of things as they are, and build up their ideal world in the very same space, which the actual world occupies. But true poetry, (from which higher fiction differs only in form,) takes for the theatre of its creations space unoccupied by grosser shapes and material agencies. Its province lies beyond, beneath, and within the world of matter and of fact. It leaves things as they are; but breathes into them a vital glow, writes upon them the image of the unseen and spiritual, and robes them in a softer light, a richer charm, a purer beauty. This is the character of the Tales before us. For this we prize and admire them. They are poetry from the deepest fountains of inspiration. Their interest consists in the development, not of events, but of sentiment. Many of them have neither plot nor catastrophe, indeed, are not tales in the common sense of the word; but are simply flower-garlands of poetic feeling wreathed around some everyday scene or object. We thank and love the man, who draws aside for us the veil between sense and spirit, who reveals to us the inward signifi cance, the hidden harmonies of common things, who bathes in poetic teints the prosaic elements of daily life. We welcome such a work, and deem it truly great, however humble or unostentatious the form in which it is wrought. We feel that Mr. Hawthorne has done this for us, and we thank him. We thank him also for having given us creations so full of moral purity and beauty. We are charmed by the naiveté of these tales. Their style is perfectly transparent. The author shows himself in all of them; and we feel, after the perusal of this little volume, as if we had always been familiarly acquainted with him. The best pieces in the volume are those, which give us merely a transcript of the author's own musings, with barely a thread of incident to bind them together. The "Sunday at Home" could have been written only by one, who revelled in the hushed calm and holy light of the Sabbath, whose soul was attuned to its harmonies, but of so fastidious a taste and delicate a sensibility, as to be repelled and chilled by the dissonances of the multitude's worship. "Sights from a Steeple" is a graphic and beautiful sketch (à la "Diable Boiteux,”) of the scenes and adventures, discernible in a half hour's gaze from a church steeple, a picture which, as every one knows, must needs borrow its shapes and colors much more from the author's own mind, than from the city of his residence. "A Rill from the Town-pump" is an outgush (in the form of a soliloquy by the pump) of those manifold and party-colored associations and feelings, which always cluster around an object, however humble, which has been familiar to the eye from infancy; and the object is in itself so bare, barren, unsuggestive, as to give us the clearer insight into the mind, which could weave its ungraceful trunk, and arm, and trough, into a charming little idyll, as clear and refreshing as its own cool stream. There is hardly anything in the volume, which pleases us more than "Little Annie's Ramble," which is a mere sketch, simple, natural, full of child-like feeling, of a child's stroll with her friend through the gay streets of the town, by the print-shops and the toy-shops, through all the little worlds of gorgeous sights, which arrest infancy's lingering steps on its earliest walks. The chief fault, which we can find with these delicious phantasies, is, that some of them are too vague and dreamy, drawn with dim and shadowy outlines only. If we may be allowed to prophesy, we pronounce this volume, beautiful as the earnest we deem it, as but a gathering of early windfalls, of future rich, ripe, mellow harvests, we hope, for half a century to come. A mind so rich, a heart so pure and so enamored with purity, a love of nature so confiding and child-like, an imagination so teeming with gorgeous fancies, cannot blossom and shed its first-fruits, without awakening the fondest hopes and betraying the brightest promise. وو There is hardly one of these Tales, grave or gay, which we would not gladly give our readers; and we hardly know where to make our choice. We should like to transfer "The Gentle Boy to our pages; but it is too long, and would not bear the We will content ourselves with "David Swan," leaf out of the every-day book of life, illustrating the safe and narrow path by which a kind Providence guides us between hidden precipices and chasms, by unseen pitfalls both of sorrow and of deceptive joy. scissors. - a "We can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually influence our course through life, and our final destiny. There are innumerable other events, if such they may be called, which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results, or even betraying their near approach, by the reflection of any light or shadow across our minds. Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would be too full of hope and fear, exultation or disappointment, to afford us a single hour of true serenity. This idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David Swan. "We have nothing to do with David, until we find him, at the age of twenty, on the high road from his native place to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, Iwas to take him behind the counter. Be it enough to say, that he was a native of New Hampshire, born of respectable parents, and had received an ordinary school education, with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton academy. After journeying on foot, from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer's day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down in the first convenient shade, and await the coming up of the stage coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a little tuft of maples, with a delightful recess in the midst, and such a fresh bubbling spring, that it seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty lips, and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing his head upon some shirts and a pair of pantaloons, tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him; the dust did not yet rise from the road, after the heavy rain of yesterday; and his grassy lair suited the young man better than a bed of down. The spring murmured drowsily beside him; the branches waved dreamily across the blue sky overhead; and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within its depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are to relate events which he did not dream of. "While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people were wide awake, and passed to and fro, a-foot, on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was there; some merely glanced that way, without admitting the slumberer among their busy thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept; and several, whose hearts were brimming full of scorn, ejected their venomous superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was near, thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the young fellow looked charming in his sleep. A temperance lecturer saw him, and wrought poor David into the texture of his evening's discourse, as an awful instance of dead drunkenness by the road-side. But, censure, praise, merriment, scorn, and indifference, were all one or rather all nothing to David Swan. "He had slept only a few moments, when a brown carriage, drawn by a handsome pair of horses, bowled easily along, and was brought to a stand-still, nearly in front of David's resting place. A linch-pin had fallen out, and permitted one of the wheels to slide off. The damage was slight, and occasioned merely a momentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife, who were returning to Boston in the carriage. While the coachman and a servant were replacing the wheel, the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves beneath the maple trees, and there espied the bubbling fountain, and David Swan asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe which the humblest sleeper usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly as the gout would allow; and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk gown, lest David should start up, all of a sudden." - pp. 261-263. - This respectable couple had lost their only son, had been disappointed by the ill conduct of a young relative designed to fill his place, and seriously conferred together on the expediency of adopting this handsome and unsophisticated young stranger as their son and heir. "Providence seems to have laid him here,' whispered she to her husband, and to have brought us hither to find him, after VOL. XXV. 3D S. VOL. VII. NO. II. 24 Methinks I can see a our disappointment in our cousin's son. "That open countenance!' replied his wife, in the same hushed voice, yet earnestly. This innocent sleep!' "While these whispers were passing, the sleeper's heart did not throb, nor his breath become agitated, nor his features betray the least token of interest. Yet fortune was bending over him, just ready to let fall a burthen of gold. * * * "Shall we not waken him?' repeated the lady, persuasively. "The coach is ready, sir,' said the servant behind. "The old couple started, reddened, and hurried away, mutually wondering, that they should ever have dreamed of doing anything so very ridiculous. The merchant threw himself back in the carriage, and occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum for unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile, David Swan enjoyed his nap. "The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two, when a pretty young girl came along, with a tripping pace, which showed precisely how her little heart was dancing in her bosom.". - pp. 264, 265. This girl, too, accidentally turns aside into David's bedchamber, just in time to do battle with a mischievous bee that was settling on his eyelid. "This good deed accomplished, with quickened breath, and a deeper blush, she stole a glance at the youthful stranger, for whom she had been battling with a dragon in the air. "He is handsome!' thought she, and blushed redder yet. "How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within him, that, shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder, and allow him to perceive the girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile of welcome brighten upon his face? She was come, the maid whose soul, according to the old and beautiful idea, had been severed from his own, and whom, in all his vague but passionate desires, he yearned to meet. Her, only, could he love with a perfect love, - him, only, could she receive into the depths of her heart, and now her image was faintly blushing in the fountain, by his side; should it pass away, its happy lustre would never gleam upon his life again. "How sound he sleeps!' murmured the girl. "She departed, but did not trip along the road so lightly as when she came. "Now, this girl's father was a thriving country merchant in |