orne's humor was quiet and fine, like
Irving's, but less genial and with a more satiric edge to it. The book
last named was written at Salem and published in 1850, just before its
author's removal to Lenox, now a sort of inland Newport, but then an
unfashionable resort among the Berkshire hills. Whatever obscurity may
have hung over Hawthorne hitherto was effectually dissolved by this
powerful tale, which was as vivid in coloring as the implication of its
title. Hawthorne chose for his background the somber life of the early
settlers of New England. Ho had always been drawn toward this part of
American history, and in _Twice-Told Tales_ had given some
illustrations of it in _Endicott's Red Cross_ and _Legends of the
Province House_. Against this dark foil moved in strong relief the
figures of Hester Prynne, the woman taken in adultery; her paramour,
the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale; her husband, old Roger Chillingworth; and
her illegitimate child. In tragic power, in its grasp of the
elementary passions of human nature and its deep and subtle insight
into the inmost secrets of the heart, this is Hawthorne's greatest
book. He never crowded his canvas with figures. In the _Blithedale
Romance_ and the _Marble Faun_ there is the same _parti carre_ or group
of four characters. In the _House of the Seven Gables_ there are five.
The last mentioned of these, published in 1852, was of a more subdued
intensity than the _Scarlet Letter_, but equally original, and, upon
the whole, perhaps equally good. The _Blithedale Romance_, published
in the same year, though not strikingly inferior to the others, adhered
more to conventional patterns in its plot and in the sensational nature
of its ending. The suicide of the heroine by drowning, and the
terrible scene of the recovery of her body, were suggested to the
author by an experience of his own on Concord River, the account of
which, in his own words, may be read in Julian Hawthorne's _Nathaniel
Hawthorne and His Wife_. In 1852 Hawthorne returned to Concord and
bought the "Wayside" property, which he retained until his death. But
in the following year his old college friend Pierce, now become
President, appointed him consul to Liverpool, and he went abroad for
seven years. The most valuable fruit of his foreign residence was the
romance of the _Marble Faun_, 1860, the longest of his fictions and the
richest in descriptive beauty. The theme of this was the development
of the soul