Meantime, such rewards
as Mr. Motley offered weighed down the already laden scales on the
side of artistic wealth.
Perhaps it will not be impertinent for me to remark, in reference to
this admirable and delightful letter, that its writer here exemplifies
the best feelings about Hawthorne's art without quite knowing it. We
see him bubbling glad ejaculations in the true style of an Omar
Khayyam who has drained the magic cup handed to him. It is delicious
to hear that he was not sure he cared about the personages of a story
that had clutched his imagination and heart, until he reeled a little
with responsive enchantment; though it is hard to say about what he
cared if not about the romancer's powerful allies, who carried his
meaning for him. Mr. Motley tries to attribute to the scenes he knew
so well in reality, under their new guise of dreamy vividness, the
spell which came, I believe, from the reality of moral grandeur, in
both its sin and its holiness, but which we so entirely ignore every
precious hour by sinking to the realities of bricks and common clay.
Miriam and Donatello may seem at first glance like visions; but I have
always been taught that their spell lay in our innate sense that they
were ourselves, as we really are. The wine of great truth is at first
the most heady of all, making its revelations shimmer.
CHAPTER XIV
THE WAYSIDE
In order to give an idea of how it happened that our family could
return from Europe to Concord with a few great expectations, I will
rehearse somewhat of the charm which had been found in the illustrious
village when my father and mother first knew it.
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