the clear atmosphere of his poetry.
Neither was the Great Stone Face forgot-
ten, for the poet had celebrated it in an
ode which was grand enough to have been
uttered by its own majestic lips. The
man of genius, we may say, had come
down from heaven with wonderful en-
dowments. If he sang of a mountain, the
eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier
grandeur reposing on its breast, or soar- to
ing to its summit, than had before been
seen there. If his theme were a lovely
lake, a celestial smile had now been
thrown over it, to gleam forever on its
surface. If it were the vast old sea, even 15
the deep immensity of its dread bosom
seemed to swell the higher, as if moved
by the emotions of the song. Thus the
world assumed another and a better aspect
from the hour that the poet blessed it with 20
his happy eyes. The Creator had be-
stowed him, as the last best touch to his
own handiwork. Creation was not fin-
ished till the poet came to interpret, and
so complete it.

25

The effect was no less high and beautiful when his human brethren were the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child 30 who played in it, were glorified if he beheld them in his mood of poetic faith. He showed the golden links of the great chain that intertwined them with an angelic kindred; he brought out the hidden 35 traits of a celestial birth that made them worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who thought to show the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all the beauty and dignity of the natural world 40 existed only in the poet's fancy. Let such men speak for themselves, who undoubtedly appear to have been spawned forth by Nature with a contemptuous bitterness; she having plastered them up out 45 of her refuse stuff, after all the swine were made. As respects all things else, the poet's ideal was the truest truth.

The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after his cus- 50 tomary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage door, where for such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by gazing at the Great Stone Face. And now as he read stanzas that caused 55 the soul to thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast countenance beaming on him so benigrantly.

'O majestic friend,' he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, 'is not this man worthy to resemble thee?'

The Face seemed to smile, but answered 5 not a word.

Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not only heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life. One summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great distance from Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with his carpet-bag on his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, and was resolved to be accepted as his guest.

Approaching the door, he there found. the good old man, holding a volume in his hand, which alternately he read, and then, with a finger between the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.

'Good evening,' said the poet. 'Can you give a traveler a night's lodging?'

'Willingly,' answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, methinks I never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger.'

The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and the wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts and feelings gushed up with such a natural freedom, and who made great truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had been so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in the fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside; and, dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm of household words. So thought the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand, was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung out of his mind, and which peopled all the air about the cottage door with shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The sympathies of these two men instructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attained alone. Their minds ac

corded into one strain, and made delightful music which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nor distinguished his own share from the other's. They led one another, as it were, into a high pa- 5 vilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hitherto so dim, that they had never entered it before, and so beautiful that they desired to be there always.

As Ernest listened to the poet, he im- 10 agined that the Great Stone Face was bending forward to listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet's glowing eyes.

'Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?' he said.

The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.

15

You have read these poems,' said he. 'You know me, then,- for I wrote them.' Again, and still more earnestly than 20 before, Ernest examined the poet's features; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, with an uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance fell; he shook his head, and sighed.

poet.

ident in nature and in human life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope to find me in yonder image of the divine?'

The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise, were those of Ernest.

At

At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants, that made a tapestry for the naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framewor.. of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany 25 earnest thought and genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat, or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued cheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and amid the boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass. In another direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer, combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.

'Because,' replied Ernest, all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, when I read these poems, I 30 hoped that it might be fulfilled in you.'

You hoped,' answered the poet, faintly smiling, to find in me the likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly with Mr. Gathergold, 35 and Old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz. Yes, Ernest, it is my doom. You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record another failure of your hopes. For in shame and sadness do I 40 speak it, Ernest I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic image.'

'And why?' asked Ernest. He pointed

Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart and mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts; and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with the life which he had always

to the volume. 'Are not those thoughts 45 lived. It was not mere breath that this divine?'

They have a strain of the Divinity,' replied the poet. You can hear in them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has not corresponded 50 with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have been only dreams, because I have lived and that, too, by my own choice among poor and mean realities. Sometimes even shall I dare 55 to say it? I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, which my own works are said to have made more ev

preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and rich, had been dissolved into this precious draught. The poet, as he lis tened, felt that the being and character of Ernest were a nobler strain of poetry than he had ever written. His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerable man, and said within himself that never was there an aspect so worthy of a prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance with the glory of

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 fitting 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, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly, thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly.

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 50 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 and unnatural attitude. A high truth, inflavor, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit

or,

deed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crown ing the final development of a work of

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS (1806–1867)

The life of Willis invites comparison with that of Longfellow. They were born within & 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.

The reeds bent down the stream; the willowleaves,

5

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