of his crude ancestors. In this
book--which takes its name from the statue--_The Marble Faun_, there is
a description of a scene where Donatello, who is by title an Italian
count, joins in a peasant dance around one of the public fountains. And
so vividly is his half-human nature brought out that one feels as if
Hawthorne must have witnessed somewhere the mad revels of the veritable
fauns and satyrs in the days of their life upon the earth. In the whole
development of this story Hawthorne shows the same subtle sympathy with
natures so far out of the commonplace that they seem to belong to
another world. The mystery of such souls having the same charm for him
as the secrets of the earth and air have for the scientist and
philosopher.

[Illustration: AT BROOK FARM.]

The book coming between _The House of the Seven Gables_ and _The Marble
Faun_ is called The _Blithedale Romance_. It is founded partly upon a
period of Hawthorne's life when he became a member of a community which
hoped to improve the world by showing that to live healthily, manual
labor must be combined with intellectual pursuits, and that
self-interest and all differences in rank could only be injurious to a
country. This little society of reformers lived in a suburb of Boston,
and called their association Brook Farm. Each member was supposed to
perform some manual labor on the farm or in the house each day, although
hours were set aside for study and intellectual work. Here Hawthorne
ploughed the fields like a farmer boy in the daytime, and in the evening
joined in the amusements, or sat apart while the other members talked
about art and literature and science, danced, sang, or read Shakespeare
aloud.

Some of the cleverest men and women of New England became members of
this community, the rules of which obliged the men to wear plaid blouses
and rough straw hats, and the women to content themselves with plain
calico gowns.

This company of serious-minded men and women, who tried to solve a great
problem by leading the lives of Acadian shepherds, at length dispersed,
each one going back into the world and working on as bravely as if the
experiment had been a great success. The record of the life and
experiences of Brook Farm are shadowed forth in _The Blithedale
Romance_, although it is not by any means a literal narrative of its
existence.

[Illustration: THE OLD MANSE.]

Hawthorne's early married life was spent at Concord, near Boston, in a
quain