MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE

By Nathaniel Hawthorne

THE HALL OF FANTASY



It has happened to me, on various occasions, to find myself in a
certain edifice which would appear to have some of the
characteristics of a public exchange. Its interior is a spacious
hall, with a pavement of white marble. Overhead is a lofty dome,
supported by long rows of pillars of fantastic architecture, the
idea of which was probably taken from the Moorish ruins of the
Alhambra, or perhaps from some enchanted edifice in the Arabian
tales. The windows of this hall have a breadth and grandeur of
design and an elaborateness of workmanship that have nowhere been
equalled, except in the Gothic cathedrals of the Old World. Like
their prototypes, too, they admit the light of heaven only through
stained and pictured glass, thus filling the hall with many-colored
radiance and painting its marble floor with beautiful or grotesque
designs; so that its inmates breathe, as it were, a visionary
atmosphere, and tread upon the fantasies of poetic minds. These
peculiarities, combining a wilder mixture of styles than even an
American architect usually recognizes as allowable,--Grecian,
Gothic, Oriental, and nondescript,--cause the whole edifice to give
the impression of a dream, which might be dissipated and shattered
to fragments by merely stamping the foot upon the pavement. Yet,
with such modifications and repairs as successive ages demand, the
Hall of Fantasy is likely to endure longer than the most substantial