starved fanatics who formed
his earliest precursors, in laying the foundations of a mighty empire.
Hungry for the picturesque as he always was, and not finding any very
copious provision of it around him, he turned back into the two
preceding centuries, with the earnest determination that the primitive
annals of Massachusetts should at least _appear_ picturesque. His
fancy, which was always alive, played a little with the somewhat
meagre and angular facts of the colonial period and forthwith
converted a great many of them into impressive legends and pictures.
There is a little infusion of colour, a little vagueness about certain
details, but it is very gracefully and discreetly done, and realities
are kept in view sufficiently to make us feel that if we are reading
romance, it is romance that rather supplements than contradicts
history. The early annals of New England were not fertile in legend,
but Hawthorne laid his hands upon everything that would serve his
purpose, and in two or three cases his version of the story has a
great deal of beauty. _The Grey Champion_ is a sketch of less than
eight pages, but the little figures stand up in the tale as stoutly,
at the least, as if they were propped up on half-a-dozen chapters by a
dryer annalist, and the whole thing has the merit of those cabinet
pictures in which the artist has been able to make his persons look
the size of life. Hawthorne, to say it again, was not in the least a
realist--he was not to my mind enough of one; but there is no genuine
lover of the good city of Boston but will feel grateful to him for his
courage in attempting to recount the "traditions" of Washington
Street, the main thoroughfare of the Puritan capital. The four
_Legends of the Province House_ are certain shadowy stories which he
professes to have gathered in an ancient tavern lurking behind the
modern shop-fronts of this part of the city. The Province House
disappeared some years ago, but while it stood it was pointed to as
the residence of the Royal Governors of Massachusetts before the
Revolution. I have no recollection of it, but it cannot have been,
even from Hawthorne's account of it, which is as pictorial as he
ventures to make it, a very imposing piece of antiquity. The writer's
charming touch, however, throws a rich brown tone over its rather
shallow venerableness; and we are beguiled into believing, for
instance, at the close of _Howe's Masquerade_ (a story of a strange
occurrence