ality was honored by all, is a
pathetic picture of disappointed hope and broken-down fortune. So also
her brother, who was imprisoned under a false charge for twenty years,
and who is obliged in his old age to lean upon his sister for support.
The other characters are alike true to life--a life that has almost
disappeared now in the changes of the half-century since its scenes were
made the inspiration of Hawthorne's romance.

The _House of the Seven Gables_ was followed by two beautiful volumes
for children: _The Wonder-Book_, in which the stories of the Greek myths
are retold, and _Tanglewood Tales_.

In _The Wonder-Book_ Hawthorne writes as if he were a child himself, so
delicious is the charm that he weaves around these old, old tales. Not
content with the myths, he created little incidents and impossible
characters, which glance in and out with elfin fascination. He feels
that these were the very stories that were told by the centaurs,
fairies, and satyrs themselves in the shadows of those old Grecian
forests. Here we learn that King Midas not only had his palace turned to
gold, but that his own little daughter Marigold, a fancy of Hawthorne's
own, was also converted into the same shilling metal. We are told, too,
the secrets of many a hero and god of this realm of fancy which had been
unsuspected by any other historian of their deeds. No child in reading
_The Wonder-Book_ would doubt for a moment that Hawthorne had obtained
the stories first hand from the living characters, and would easily
believe that he had hobnobbed many a moonlit night with Pan and Bacchus
and other sylvan deities in their vine-covered grottos by the famed
rivers of Greece. This dainty ethereal touch of Hawthorne appears
especially in all his work for children. It is as if he understood and
entered into that mystery which ever surrounds child life and sets it
sacredly apart. It is the same quality, nearly, which gives distinction
to his fourth great novel, in which he is called upon to deal with the
elusive character of a man who is supposed to be a descendant of the old
fauns. We feel that this creation, which is named Donatello, from his
resemblance to the celebrated statue of the Marble Faun by that
sculptor, is not wholly human, and although he has human interests and
feelings, Hawthorne is always a master in treating such a subject as
this. He makes Donatello ashamed of his pointed ears, though his spirit
is as wild and untamed as that