taneously that, considered as a portraiture of Miss Fuller, the picture of Zenobia Fauntleroy cannot be called accurate. From Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, the sister-in-law of Hawthorne, it is learned that he explicitly denied ever having any of his acquaintance in mind when developing the persons of his dramas, In this very instance of Zenobia he remarked, on being asked, that once or twice a floating but only partial likeness between his heroine and Miss Fuller had presented itself to him, but this merely as one individual might remind him vaguely of another. The woman he had imagined was so real to him and so distinctive, that the actual woman just referred to of fered herself simply as an illustration of the former. On the other hand, where he had seen but little of people and did not know them like the seamstress and the vagabond, standing respectively for Priscilla and Moodie he seized upon their outward appearance, and then invented their inner traits to suit his own purpose.

One other coincidence should be included in this brief summary. In a volume called "Homes of American Authors," published thirty years ago, George William Curtis inserted a chapter on Hawthorne, which embraced some valuable references to the romancer's retired mode of life at Concord; and at the close he recalled a local episode, that, namely, of a young woman's suicide by drowning in the Concord River, which is pertinent to the present theme. This girl, a farmer's daughter, had received an education which awakened aspirations beyond the ability of her circumstances to satisfy; and, after much silent brood ing, she one evening disappeared. It was suspected that she had made away with herself, and the river

was thought of. "Then," writes Mr. Curtis, who was
himself present, "with the swiftness of certainty all
friends far and near were roused and thronged along
the banks of the stream. Torches flashed in boats
that put off for the terrible search. Hawthorne, then
living in the Old Manse, was summoned, and the man
whom the villagers had seen at morning only as a
moving spectre in his garden now appeared among
them at night to devote his strong arm and steady
heart to their service. The boats drifted slowly down
the stream; the torches flared strangely upon the
black repose of the water. . . but at length toward
midnight the sweet face of the dead girl was raised
more placidly to the stars than it had ever been to the
sun. ... So ended a village tragedy. The reader
may possibly find in it the original of the thrilling
conclusion of the Blithedale Romance.'
6
The like-

hess here becomes still more striking when it is added that, just as Miles Coverdale is made to awaken Hollingsworth by tossing a clod of earth into his sleepingroom, so Mr. Curtis stood beneath Hawthorne's window, and in a similar manner roused him. The two then went out in a boat, with one of the villagers; precisely as Coverdale, Hollingsworth, and Silas Foster go upon their gloomy quest, in the chapter headed "Midnight." Of the book, when completed, Hawthorne wrote in a letter to his friend Horatio Bridge this sentence heretofore unpublished: "Perhaps you have seen Blithedale' before this time. I doubt whether you will like it very well, but it has met with good success, and has brought me (besides its American circulation) a thousand dollars from England, whence, likewise, have come many favorable no

tices." Despite the extreme modesty of his tone concerning it, the book met with a cordial reception, and slowly made its way to the position it now occupies as one of the classics of American literature.

G. P. L

PREFACE.

IN the "BLITHEDALE" of this volume many readers will, probably, suspect a faint and not very faithful shadowing of BROOK FARM, in Roxbury, which (now a little more than ten years ago) was occupied and cultivated by a company of socialists. The author does not wish to deny that he had this community in his mind, and that (having had the good fortune, for a time, to be personally connected with it) he has oocasionally availed himself of his actual reminiscences, in the hope of giving a more life-like tint to the fancysketch in the following pages. He begs it to be understood, however, that he has considered the institution itself as not less fairly the subject of fictitious handling than the imaginary personages whom he has introduced there. His whole treatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main purpose of the romance; nor does he put forward the slightest pretensions to illustrate a theory, or elicit a conclusion, favorable or otherwise, in respect to socialism.

In short, his present concern with the socialist community is merely to establish a theatre, a little removed from the highway of ordinary travel, where the creatures of his brain may play their phantasmagor ical antics, without exposing them to too close a com parison with the actual events of real lives. In the old countries, with which fiction has long been conversant,

21

a certain conventional privilege seems to be awarded to the romancer; his work is not put exactly side by side with nature; and he is allowed a license with regard to every-day probability, in view of the improved effects which he is bound to produce thereby. Among ourselves, on the contrary, there is as yet no such Faery Land, so like the real world, that, in a suitable remoteness, one cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, beheld through which the inhabitants have a propriety of their own. This atmosphere is what the American romancer needs. In its absence, the beings of imag ination are compelled to show themselves in the same category as actually living mortals; a necessity that generally renders the paint and pasteboard of their composition but too painfully discernible. With the idea of partially obviating this difficulty (the sense of which has always pressed very heavily upon him), the author has ventured to make free with his old and affectionately remembered home at BROOK FARM, as being certainly the most romantic episode of his own life, essentially a day-dream, and yet a fact, — and thus offering an available foothold between fiction and reality. Furthermore, the scene was in good keeping with the personages whom he desired to introduce.

These characters, he feels it right to say, are entirely fictitious. It would, indeed (considering how few amiable qualities he distributes among his imaginary progeny), be a most grievous wrong to his former excellent associates, were the author to allow it to be supposed that he has been sketching any of · their likenesses. Had he attempted it, they would at least have recognized the touches of a friendly pencil But he has done nothing of the kind. The self-con