of the Puritans. His own judgment upon the deep matters of the
human conscience was stern enough, but it was a universalized
judgment, and by no means the result of a Calvinism which he
hated. Over-fond as he was in his earlier tales of elaborate,
fanciful, decorative treatment of themes that promised to point a
moral, in his finest short stories, such as "The Ambitious
Guest," "The Gentle Boy," "Young Goodman Brown," "The Snow
Image,"
"The Great Stone Face," "Drowne's Wooden Image," "Rappacini's
Daughter," the moral, if there be one, is not obtruded. He loves
physical symbols for mental and moral states, and was poet and
Transcendentalist enough to retain his youthful affection for
parables; but his true field as a story-teller is the erring,
questing, aspiring, shadowed human heart.

"The Scarlet Letter," for instance, is a study of a universal
theme, the problem of concealed sin, punishment, redemption. Only
the setting is provincial. The story cannot be rightly estimated,
it is true, without remembering the Puritan reverence for
physical purity, the Puritan reverence for the
magistrate-minister--differing so widely from the respect of
Latin countries for the priest--the Puritan preoccupation with
the
life of the soul, or, as more narrowly construed by Calvinism,
the problem of evil. The word Adultery, although suggestively
enough present in one of the finest symbolical titles ever
devised by a romancer, does not once occur in the book. The sins
dealt with are hypocrisy and revenge. Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester
Prynne, and Roger Chillingworth are developing, suffering, living
creatures, caught inextricably in the toils of a moral situation.