In
"Fancy's Show-Box," Hawthorne seizes the prolific idea; and the
respectable merchant and respected church-member, in the still hour of
his own meditation, convicts himself of being a liar, cheat, thief,
seducer, and murderer, as he casts his glance over the mental events
which form his spiritual biography. Interspersed with serious histories
and moralities like these, are others which embody the sweet and
playful, though still thoughtful and slightly saturnine action of
Hawthorne's mind,--like "The Seven Vagabonds," "Snow-Flakes," "The
Lily's Quest," "Mr. Higgenbotham's Catastrophe," "Little Annie's
Ramble," "Sights from a Steeple," "Sunday at Home," and "A Rill from
the Town-Pump."
The "Mosses from an Old Manse" are intellectually and artistically an
advance from the "Twice-Told Tales." The twenty-three stories and
essays which make up the volumes are almost perfect of their kind. Each
is complete in itself, and many might be expanded into long romances by
the simple method of developing the possibilities of their shadowy
types of character into appropriate incidents. In description,
narration, allegory, humor, reason, fancy, subtilty, inventiveness,
they exceed the best productions of Addison; but they want Addison's
sensuous contentment and sweet and kindly spirit.
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