BOOKS.

MR. JULIAN HAWTHORNE'S ROMANCE.*

Mn. Gavroii should make much of Mr. Julian Hawthorne. An equally remarkable case of the inheritance of a faculty, and not merely of the inheritance of a faculty, but of the inheritance of a peculiar and very delicately marked variety of faculty, as this of Mr. Julian Hawthorne's, probably the history of literature in all ages will not furnish again. We do not mean that there is no difference between the genius of the father and the genius of the son. Were there none, we should be inclined to regard the latter as an imitation of the former, which he certainly is not. There is far too much freshness and initiative in Mr. Julian Hawthorne to suggest the idea of imitation. No man could imitate another's execution in dealing with a totally new subject-matter, itself imagined with a great deal of originality and force. Nor indeed, even if we could suppose that the theme to be treated had been, by any accident, derived from the tradition of the elder Haw- thorne's conversation, should we be inclined to assert that the younger writer had handled it precisely as his father would have handled it. Mr. Julian Hawthorne shows, we think, as yet, decidedly less command of the individuality of morbid feel- ing than his father, though fully as vivid an imagination for the ghastly-picturesque in moral situation and scene. In neither of his very promising romances has he shown a fourth part of the power of analysing character which went to the creation of the three most striking figures in the Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, the Minister, and little Pearl. On the other hand, he seems to have at least as much skill as the elder Hawthorne in conceiving situations which freeze the blood while they kindle the imagina- tion, and he carries them through with a touch even more vigorous and a discrimination hardly less subtle than that which painted the mother and child and the unacknowledged father standing together at midnight on the scaffold appropriated to the sinners of the Puritan village, when suddenly a meteoric glare spread over the sky and made them momentarily visible to the injured and malignant husband.

Idolatry is a more powerful book than Bressant, and though there is very little of the real world in it,—indeed, the author uses the real world very skilfully only to lend a new flavour of contrast to the weird conceptions of his fancy,—the ideal world it invents is not one of capricious dream, but full of coherence, intensity, and power. If the figures are mostly phantoms, they are • Idolatry: a Romance. By Julian Hawthorne. 2 vols. London: Henry S. Sing • and Co. phantoms which take a more powerful hold on the mind than many very real figures. Mr. Julian Hawthorne does not lay so. cold a hand on the beatings of the human heart as his father, but he seems to have at least an equal command of grisliness of

moral effect. There are three scenes in this romance, any one of which would prove true genius. The first is one of a very sub- dued character, in which an old Bank director, suddenly waking- from a nap in his private room in a Boston bank, mistakes for a time the son of an early friend, of whom he has been dreaming, for that early friend himself, carrying on the conversation with the

dead past as if it were the living present, and who then, as he dis- covers his error, tranquilly passes into the actual, with little sign of self-correction and no confusion. This scene is in every respect one which we might have ascribed to the genius of _the elder Hawthorne, the principal character in it being indeed a- study of one aspect of Nathaniel Hawthorne himself, as he often described himself, and closely resembling those portraits' of them- selves by great masters of the art of painting, in which they give you,

in the same work of art, a light upon their nature and a study of their style. We do not mean at all that Mr. MacGentle could stand fora complete picture of the elder Hawthorne ; but it is undoubtedly- the picture of one very distinctly felt and very prominent aspect of his mind, of the wistful and far-off gaze which he directed on the bustling human interests with which his own sympathy was but cold. The following criticism, too, on the old man's mistake, by the young athlete whom Mr. MacGentle has confused with his father, is conceived as completely in Nathaniel Hawthorne's- meditative style, as is the figure itself which he is criticising :-

" How composedly he took me for my father ! and when he discovered. his mistake, how composedly he welcomed me in my own person L Was that the extreme of senility ? or was it a subtle assertion of the- fact that he who keeps in the vanguard of the age, in a certain sense contains his father—the past—within himself : and is a distinct persons chiefly by virtue of that containing power ?"

But the scene on which this is a comment, though completely in

Nathaniel Hawthorne's manner, is in his subdued and twilight manner, the melancholy-mocking manner in which he was a master..

The next scene of true genius in this book is conceived in an intenser and eerier school of art,—again Nathaniel Hawthorne's,- but in it we fancy we see some infusion of hotter blood, the flashing of a more vivid fire, combining with the curdling spell of the elder writer's genius. It is the scene on the deck of the steamer, just before its collision with the schooner, when two men who have never seen each other's faces, begin talking in the midst of a pro- found darkness, and with the cold fog soaking into their bones,. of that vast power which sin, if not stumbled into but deliberately- pursued as a means of culture, would confer on the mind which plunged into it ; and how, if perfectly embodied in a " Christ of evil," it might enable the devotee to carry the world with him in a successful revolt against the government of God. The- interlocutors are a middle-aged, crafty, half-insane Egyptian, versed in all the lore of his country's priesthood, though European in culture and habit and ordained a clergyman of the American Episcopal Church, and the young American athlete fresh from, German speculations, and full of the self-idolatry of a strong physique, just now referred to,—so that though the speakers have- no knowledge of each other, the reader sees the verisimilitude of their naked-minded talk:-

"'

I hope I'm not disturbing your solitude ? You are not a noisy- neighbour, sir !' So flat fell the words on the blank darkness, it seemed; as if there could never be a reply. Nevertheless, a reply came. ' Yore must come much nearer me than you are, to disturb my solitude. It does not consist in being without a companion.' The quality of this voice of darkness was peculiar. It sounded old, yet of an age that had not out-lived the devil of youth. Probably the invisibility of the speaker enhanced its effect. With most of the elements of pleasing,. it was nevertheless repulsive. It was soft, fluent, polished,—but savage licence was not far off, hard-held by a slender leash: an underlying suggestion of harsh discordance. The utterance, though somewhat rapid, was carefully distinct. Helwyse had the gift of familiarity—of that rare kind of familiarity which does not degenerate into contempt. But there was an incongruity about this person, hard to assimilate. In a couple of not very original sentences, he had wrought upon his listener an effect of depraved intellectual power, strangely combined with artless. simplicity,—an unspeakably distasteful conjunction ! Imagination, freed from the check of the senses, easily becomes grotesque ; and Hel- wyse, unable to see his companion, had no difficulty in picturing him as a grisly monster, having a satanic head set upon the ingenuous shoulders of a child. And what was Helwyse himself ? No longer surely the gravely humorous moraliser ? the laws of harmony forbid !- He like- wise is a monster,—say (since grotesqueness is the fashion) the heart of Lucifer burning beneath the cool brain of a Grecian sage. The sym- bolism is not inapt, since Helwyse—while afflicted with pride and ambi- tion as abstract as boundless—had a logical, fearless brain, and keen delight in beauty.= I was just thinking,' remarked the latter monster, that this was a good place for confidential conversation.'—' You believe, then, that talking relieves the mind !' rejoined the former, softly —' I . believe a thief or a murderer would be glad of an hour—such as now. passes—to impart the story of what is dragging him to Hell. And even the best houses are better for an airing ! A pregnant idea! There are certainly some topics one would like to discuss, free from the re- straint which responsibility imposes. Have you ever reflected on the subject of omnipotence?' Somewhat confounded at this bold question, Helwyse hesitated a moment.—' I can't see you, remember, any more than you can see me I' insinuated the voice, demurely.—' I believe I have sometimes asked myself whether it were obtainable,—how it might be approximated,' admitted Helwyse, cautiously ; for ho began to feel that even darkness might be too transparent for the utterance of some thoughts. 'But you never got a satisfactory answer, and are not there- fore omnipotent? Well, the reason probably is that you began wrongly. Did it ever occur to you to try the method of sin ?'—' To obtain omni- potence? No It would not be right, eh ?' chuckled the voice. ' But then one must lay aside prejudice, if one wants to be all-powerful! Now, sin denotes separation : the very etymology of the word should have attracted the attention of an ambitious man, such as you seem to be. It is a path separate from all other paths, and therefore worth ex- ploring.'—'It leads to weakness, not to power!'—'If followed in the wrong spirit—very true. But the wise man sins and is strong! See how frank I am ! But don't let me monopolise the conversation.'—' I should like to hear your argument, if you have one. You are a prophet of new things.'—' Sin is an old force, though it may be applied in new ways. Well, you will admit that the true sinner is the only true re- former and philosopher among men ? No ? I will explain, then. The world is full of discordances for which man is not to blame. His endeavour to meet. and harmonise this discordance is called sin. His indignation at disorder—rebellion against it—attempts to right it—are crimes ! That is the vulgar argument, which wise men smile at.'—' I may be very dull, but I think your explanations need explaining?— ' We will take some examples. What is the liar, but one who sees the false relations of things, and seeks to put them in the true ? The mis- sion of the thief, again,-is to equalise the notoriously unjust distribution of wealth. A fundamental defect in the principles of human association gave birth to the murderer ; and as for the adulterer, he is an immortal pro- test against the absurd laws which interfere between the sexes. Are not these men, and others of like stamp, the bulwarks of true society? —our leaders towards justice and freedom?' Whether this were satire, madness, or earnest, Helwyse could not determine. The night-fog had got into his brain. Ho made shift, however, to say that the criminal class were not, as a mere matter of fact, the most powerful. 'Again you misapprehend me,' rejoined the voice, with perfect suavity. ' No doubt there are many weak and foolish persons who commit crimes; nay, I will admit that the vast majority of criminals are weak and foolish. But that does not affect the dignity of the true sinner—he who sins from exalted motives. Ignorasce is the only real crime—

polluting deeds that, wisely done, are sublime. Sin is culture Were I, then, from motives of self-culture, to kill you, I should be taking a long step towards rising in your estimation?' put in Helwyse.—' Admir- able !' softly exclaimed the voice, in a tone as of an approving pat on the back. ' Certainly I should be the last to deny it But would it not be more for the general good were I, who have long been a student of these arcana, to kill a seeming novice like you! It would assure me of having had one sincere disciple I' -I wonder whether he's really mad ?' mused Balder Helwyse, shuddering a little in the dampness. 'But badinage aside,' resumed this loquacious voice, ' although there is so much talk and dispute about evil, very few people know what evil essentially is. Now, there are some things the mere doing of which, by the most involuntary agent, would at once stamp his soul with the con- viction of ineffable sin. He would have touched the essence of eviL And if a wise man has done that, he has had in his hand the key to omnipotence!'—' t is easily had, then ! A man need but take his Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and run through the catalogue of crimes. He would be sure of finding your key hidden beneath some of them?— ' No ; you do Moses scant justice I He—shrewd soul !—was too cun- ning to fall into such an error as that. He forbade a few insignificant and harmless acts which every one is liable to commit. His policy was no less sagacious than simple. By amusing mankind with such trum- pery, he lured them off the scent of true sin. Believe me, the artifice was no idle one ! Should mankind learn the secret, a generation would not pass before the world would be turned upside down, and its present Ruler be buried in the ruins."

So far, the reader will think that he has got Nathaniel Hawthorne redivivus, and nothing more. But the conclusion of this eerie conversation, which we do not intend to give, throws a lurid flash of light upon it, more fiery and fiercer than anything in the older writer's tales. The abandon of the artist is greater, and the gleam of the reverend Egyptian's half developed insanity is painted with consummate force.

The third scene of high power is that in which the same Egyptian,—the Rev. Manetho Glyphic,— converses with his violin on the eve, as he thinks, of his great revenge, with no one for the witness of his ghastly joy and incoherent pathos, except the maimed and disfigured victim,—so disfigured as to have remained for years unrecognised by himself,—of his youth- ful love. The fitful musical raptures of his insanity and his wickedness, the constitutional tenderness that mingles with his loathsome scheme of revenge, the melting thoughts which only add flavour to his cruelty, the idyllic pictures in which memory seeks a foil to the deadly -tortuousness of his revenge, are given with an elan,—and, again, the sudden reaction when a string of his violin breaks is painted with a suddenness and brilliancy,—which seem to us to belong more to the genius of the son than to that which he has borrowed from his father. We can hardly say that the Rev. Manetho Glyphic; is a living man, but he is a dream of a man so powerfully imagined and so vividly presented, as to have

more chance of a permanent place in our memory than many most real pictures of men. The dream of an ideal woman is the feeblest thing in this romance. In Gnulemah we see nothing to admire.

The influence of a great sin on the mind of one hitherto innocent, —one of Nathaniel Hawthorne's perpetual subjects of speculation, —is painted with far less strength than by the great magician from whom Mr. Julian Hawthorne has learned his craft, and hardly, per- haps, as powerfully as in his own previous tale. Indeed, at one point this thread of the story seems once or twice very near lost. But that. which gives this strange romance its brilliant effect is its subtle thought of contrasting, on American ground, the oldest and most flexible forms of philosophy, faith, sin, and temptation, with the newest and the hardest,—of giving us the embalmed mummy of modern antiquarianism in the close embrace of the most ancient form of sinuous, diabolic craft ; of putting side by side, fantastic fusions of pliant but fierce passions and the musty superstitions- of an inherited creed ; of contrasting the primitive metaphysics of the East, in which good and evil struggle like embodied forces, with the complexities of a material civilisation and the practical ambition of a go-ahead people. The subtlety of this conception is worked out with a vivacity and intensity of power which seem to us to bespeak true genius,—the genius of Nathaniel Haw- thorne, which is a genius of vigilant, curious, intellectual detach- ment, having a touch of mockery in its glance, modified by asso- ciation with a whiff of the very different genius of youth and buoyancy and passion.