humor, and hopes and doubts and vanishing delights, that journey will
proceed, on and on into utter gloom." And it does so, although "Hilda
had a hopeful soul, and saw sunlight on the mountain-tops". It does
so, because Miriam and Donatello are the figures which interest us
most profoundly, and they are both lost in the shadow. Donatello,
indeed, is the true centre of interest, as he is one of the most
striking creations of genius. But the perplexing charm of Donatello,
what is it but the doubt that does not dare to breathe itself, the
appalled wonder whether, if the breeze should lift those clustering
locks a little higher, he would prove to be faun or man? It never does
lift them; the doubt is never solved, but it is always suggested. The
mystery of a partial humanity, morally irresponsible but humanly
conscious, haunts the entrancing page. It draws us irresistibly on.
But as the cloud closes around the lithe figure of Donatello, we hear
again from its hidden folds the words of "The Birth-Mark": "Thus ever
does the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over
the immortal essence, which, in this dim sphere of half-development,
demands the completeness of a higher state". Or still more sadly, the
mysterious youth, half vanishing from our sympathy, seems to murmur,
with Beatrice Rappaccini, "And still as she spoke, she kept her hand
upon her heart,--'Wherefore didst thou inflict this miserable doom
upon thy child?'"

We have left the story of Hawthorne's life sadly behind. But his life
had no more remarkable events than holding office in the Boston
Customhouse under Mr. Bancroft as collector; working for some time
with the Brook--Farmers, from whom he soon separated, not altogether
amicably; marrying and living in the Old Manse at Concord; returning
to the Custom-house in Salem as surveyor; then going to Lenox, in
Berkshire, where he lived in what he called "the ugliest little old