For many of these stories
are at once a representation of early New-England life and a criticism
on it. They have much of the deepest truth of history in them. "The
Legends of the Province House," "The Gray Champion," "The Gentle Boy,"
"The Minister's Black Veil," "Endicott and the Red Cross," not to
mention others, contain important matter which cannot be found in
Bancroft or Grahame. They exhibit the inward struggles of New-England
men and women with some of the darkest problems of existence, and have
more vital import to thoughtful minds than the records of Indian or
Revolutionary warfare. In the "Prophetic Pictures," "Fancy's Show-Box,"
"The Great Carbuncle," "The Haunted Mind," and "Edward Fane's
Rose-Bud," there are flashes of moral insight, which light up, for the
moment, the darkest recesses of the individual mind; and few sermons
reach to the depth of thought and sentiment from which these seemingly
airy sketches draw their sombre life. It is common, for instance, for
religious moralists to insist on the great spiritual truth, that wicked
thoughts and impulses, which circumstances prevent from passing into
wicked acts, are still deeds in the sight of God; but the living truth
subsides into a dead truism, as enforced by commonplace preachers.
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