t as characters, but as representatives, very
picturesquely arranged, of a single state of mind; and the interest of
the story lies, not in them, but in the situation, which is
insistently kept before us, with little progression, though with a
great deal, as I have said, of a certain stable variation; and to
which they, out of their reality, contribute little that helps it to
live and move. I was made to feel this want of reality, this
over-ingenuity, of _The Scarlet Letter_, by chancing not long since
upon a novel which was read fifty years ago much more than to-day, but
which is still worth reading--the story of _Adam Blair_, by John
Gibson Lockhart. This interesting and powerful little tale has a great
deal of analogy with Hawthorne's novel--quite enough, at least, to
suggest a comparison between them; and the comparison is a very
interesting one to make, for it speedily leads us to larger
considerations than simple resemblances and divergences of plot.

Adam Blair, like Arthur Dimmesdale, is a Calvinistic minister who
becomes the lover of a married woman, is overwhelmed with remorse at
his misdeed, and makes a public confession of it; then expiates it by
resigning his pastoral office and becoming a humble tiller of the
soil, as his father had been. The two stories are of about the same
length, and each is the masterpiece (putting aside of course, as far
as Lockhart is concerned, the _Life of Scott_) of the author. They
deal alike with the manners of a rigidly theological society, and even
in certain details they correspond. In each of them, between the
guilty pair, there is a charming little girl; though I hasten to say
that Sarah Blair (who is not the daughter of the heroine but the
legitimate offspring of the hero, a widower) is far from being as
brilliant and graceful an apparition as the admirable little Pearl of
_The Scarlet Letter_. The main difference between the two tales is the
fact that in the American story the husband plays an all-important
part, and in the Scottish plays almost none at all. _Adam Blair_ is
the history of the passion, and _The Scarlet Letter_ the history of
its sequel; but nevertheless, if one has read the two books at a short
interval, it is impossible to avoid confronting them. I confess that a
large portion of the interest of _Adam Blair_, to my mind, when once I
had perceived that it would repeat in a great measure the situation of
_The Scarlet Letter_, lay in noting its difference o