white hair diffused about it. At a distance, but distinctly to be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appeared the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs around the brow of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to embrace the world.

At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter, the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of ex- 10 pression, so imbued with benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms aloft, and shouted,

'Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone Face!'

a literary crime, even if he disregard this caution.

In the present work the author has proposed to himself. but with what success, 5 fortunately, it is not for him to judge to keep undeviatingly within his immunities. The point of view in which this tale comes under the romantic definition lies in the atttempt to connect a by-gone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. It is a legend, prolonging itself, from an epoch now gray in the distance down into our own broad daylight, and bringing along with it some of its legen15 dary mist, which the reader, according to his pleasure, may either disregard or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about the characters and events for the sake of a picturesque effect. The narrative, it may be, is woven of so humble a texture as to require this advantage, and, at the same time, to render it the more difficult of attainment.

Then all the people looked and saw that what the deep-sighted poet said was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished what he had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly home- 20 ward, still hoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by appear, bearing a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.

The National Era, Jan. 24, 1850.

PREFACE TO THE HOUSE OF
THE SEVEN GABLES

-

Many writers lay very great stress upon 25 some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral; — the truth, namely, that the wrong-doing of one 30 generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief; and he would feel it a singular gratification, if this romance might effectually convince mankind — or, indeed, any one man of the folly of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush them, until the accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while. therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral, as with an iron rod,- or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly, thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of

When a writer calls his work a romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had 35 he professed to be writing a novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. 40 The former while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart — has fairly a right to pre- 45 sent that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation. If he thinks fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights, and deepen and enrich the shadows, of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the marvelous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent 55 flavor, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit

50

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS (1806-1867)

The life of Willis invites comparison with that of Longfellow. They were born within a year of each other in what was then the little provincial city of Portland, Maine; they went early to college, Willis to Yale and Longfellow to Bowdoin; they completed their education in Europe at a time when to have been in Europe was to be distinguished, Longfellow remaining abroad three years from 1826, and Willis four years from 1831; and both upon their return became authorities upon European culture and manners. But here the comparison must cease. Willis arose by leaps and bounds. His scriptural poems had made of him a national figure even before he left college. He plunged at once into literature as a profession, while Longfellow turned to teaching and scholarship. His apprenticeship he served under Goodrich of Boston as editor of the most distinctive of the American Annuals, The Token, then he stepped into magazine editorship first in Boston, then in New York, where he associated himself with G. P. Morris and the New York Mirror. Here he found himself in his element: the journal catered to the feminine masses of America which demanded the sentimental and the romantic. To them Europe was the home of romance, and it was easy after a time for Willis to persuade the journal to send him on a trip over the route made famous by Byron,- France, Italy, the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, Germany and England. He was to have $500 down and ten dollars for letters that should give weekly reports of his experience. He kept his agreement to the full; and then in 1835 in London issued the letters as Pencillings by the Way in three volumes. The book made him at once as famous in England as Washington Irving had been made a decade and a half earlier by The Sketch Book. For a time the London magazines were glad to pay him a guinea a sheet for all he could furnish them and his books were paid for even while they were in manuscript. When in 1839 Longfellow issued Hyperion and Voices of the Night, the beginning of his literary work, Willis was everywhere, at home and abroad, acclaimed the leading American poet and litterateur, or at least the greatest of the younger group. All through the thirties and even in the forties the American public could read without smiling such judgments as, 'Goethe is the N. P. Willis of Germany,' and 'Willis is the leading American poet of his generation.' Poe, who knew him well, made no such mistake. When his fame was at its height he wrote 'He "pushed himself," went much into the world, made friends with the gentler sex, "delivered" poetical addresses, wrote Scriptural" poems, traveled, sought the intimacy of noted women, and got into quarrels with notorious men. All these things served his purpose, - if, indeed, I am right in supposing that he had any purpose at all.'

Poe undoubtedly was right. Time has proved that Willis was a literary adventurer, a journalist who wrote for a brief hour. He served a sentimental age, the age that sang Morris's songs and read the annuals and dreamed of European romance. In the New York Mirror and the Broadway Journal with which all of his later literary life was connected, he gave the public what it demanded and he worked with haste. Undoubtedly his Letters from Under a Bridge written during his brief retirement at his country seat, Glenmary, are his best claim to remembrance. They came from a real enthusiasm for country life, a passing whim undoubtedly but genuine while it lasted.- and they were written in a leisurely calm that was unusual in the artificial life of their author. Willis was a butterfly that skimmed over a surprising amount of surface and that called forth at every point of his career exclamations of delight and wonder from the superficial throng, but that left behind little that is permanent. He fluttered in a Byronic way over Europe, he alighted for a period in the peaceful regions of rural New York, he fluttered for years up and down Broadway with the ephemeral throng, and then he was seen no more. Only a fragment of his voluminous output is still in print and even that is less and less called for by readers. He is interesting to students of the development of American literature, but that is all.

ABSALOM •

The waters slept. Night's silvery veil hung
low

On Jordan's bosom, and the eddies curled
Their glassy rings beneath it, like the still,
Unbroken beating of the sleeper's pulse.

5

The reeds bent down the stream; the willow-
leaves,
With a soft cheek upon the lulling tide,
Forgot the lifting winds; and the long stems,
Whose flowers the water, like a gentle nurse,
Bears on its bosom, quietly gave way,
And leaned, in graceful attitudes, to rest. 10

It were so sweet, amid death's gathering gloom,

To see thee, Absalom!

country to possess your bodily sensations as well as your mind, in tranquil control. It is only when you have forgotten streets and rumors and greetings forgotten the

'And now, farewell! 'Tis hard to give thee 5 whip of punctuality, and the hours of

LETTER XI

15

forced pleasure-only when you have cleansed your ears of the din of trades, the shuffle of feet, the racket of wheels, and coarse voices only when your Own Io voice, accustomed to contend against discords, falls, through the fragrant air of the country, into its natural modulations, in harmony with the low key upon which runs all the music of nature - only when that part of the world which partook not of the fall of Adam, has had time to affect you with its tranquillity- only then that the dregs of life sink out of sight, and while the soul sees through its depths, like 20 the sun through untroubled water, the senses lose their fever and false energy, and play their part, and no more, in the day's expenditure of time and pulsation. Still harping on my daughter,' you will 25 say; and I will allow that I can scarce write a letter to you without shaping it to the end of attracting you to the Susquehannah. At least watch when you begin to grow old, and transplant yourself in 30 time to take root, and then we may do as the trees do- defy the weather till we are separated. The oak itself, if it has grown up with its kindred thick about it, will break if left standing alone; and you and I, dear Doctor, have known the luxury of friends too well, to bear the loneliness of an unsympathizing old age. Friends are not pebbles, lying in every path, but pearls gathered with pain, and rare as they are precious. We spend our youth and manhood in the search and proof of them, and when death has taken his toll, we have too few to scatter none to throw away. I, for one, will be a miser of mine. I feel the avarice of friendship growing on me with every year-tightening my hold and extending my grasp. Who at sixty is rich in friends? The richest are those who have drawn this wealth of angels around them and spent care and thought on the treasuring. Come, my dear Doctor! I have chosen a spot on one of the loveliest of our bright rivers. Here is all that goes to make an Arcadia, except the friendly dwellers in its shade. I will choose your hill-side, and plant your grove, that the trees at least shall lose no time by your delay. Set

The box of Rhenish is no substitute for yourself, dear Doctor, but it was most welcome partly, perhaps, for the qualities it has in common with the gentleman 35 who should have come in the place of it. The one bottle that has fulfilled its destiny, was worthy to have been sunned on the Rhine and drank on the Susquehannah, and I will never believe that anything can 40 come from you that will not improve upon acquaintance. So I shall treasure the remainder for bright hours. I should have thought it superior even to the Tokay I tasted at Vienna, if other experiments had 45 not apprised me that country life sharpens the universal relish. I think that even the delicacy of the palate is affected by the confused sensations, the turmoil, the vexations of life in town. You will say you 50 have your quiet chambers, where you are as little disturbed by the people around you as I by my grazing herds. But, by your leave, dear Doctor, the fountains of thought (upon which the senses are not a 55 little dependent) will not clear and settle over night, like a well. No-nor in a day, nor in two. You must live in the