he unknown young writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne:
"When a new star rises in the heavens, people gaze after it for a season
with the naked eye, and with such telescopes as they may find. . . . This
star is but newly risen; and erelong the observation of numerous
star-gazers, perched up on arm-chairs and editor's tables, will inform
the world of its magnitude and its place in the heaven of"--not poetry in
this instance, but that serene and unclouded region of the firmament
where shine unchanging the names of Herodotus and Thucydides. Those who
had always believed in their brilliant schoolmate and friend at last felt
themselves justified in their faith. The artist that sent this unframed
picture to be hung in a corner of the literary gallery was equal to
larger tasks. There was but one voice in the circle that surrounded the
young essayist. He must redeem his pledge, he can and will redeem it, if
he will only follow the bent of his genius and grapple with the heroic
labor of writing a great history.

And this was the achievement he was already meditating.

In the mean time he was studying history for its facts and principles,
and fiction for its scenery and portraits. In "The North American Review"
for July, 1847, is a long and characteristic article on Balzac, of whom
he was an admirer, but with no blind worship. The readers of this great
story-teller, who was so long in obtaining recognition, who "made twenty
assaults upon fame and had forty books killed under him" before he
achieved success, will find his genius fully appreciated and fairly
weighed in this discriminating essay. A few brief extracts will show its
quality.

"Balzac is an artist, and only an artist. In his tranquil,
unimpassioned, remorseless diagnosis of morbid phenomena, in his
cool method of treating the morbid anatomy of the heart, in his
curiously accurate dissection of the passions, in the patient and
painful attention with which, stethoscope in hand, finger on pulse,
eye everywhere, you see him watching every symptom, alive to every
sound and every breath, and in the scientific accuracy with which he
portrays the phenomena which have been the subject of his
investigation,--in all this calm and conscientious study of nature
he often reminds us of Goethe. Balzac, however, is only an artist
. . . He is neither moral nor immoral, but a calm and profound
observer of human society and human passions, and a minute, patient