In a misty, twilight atmosphere, starting where stories frequently end,--with a momentous act already performed,--Hawthorne's romances proceed almost by formula. Each is dominated by a physical symbol, itself a suggestion of some connection with the past, continually recurrent, always half mysterious. Each is told in terms of a very small group of characters, of whom three usually emerge farthest from the shadows. The best of his longer works are not put into the "well-made plot" strait-jacket; and on this point Mrs. Hawthorne's testimony is on record that the plots grew out of the people instead of being imposed upon them. Each is made up mostly of analytic interpretation of moods, and each is garnished with many a meditative commentary on the story-text. Finally, each and all of Hawthorne's writings are characterized by a scrupulous nicety of style, a leisureliness of sentence, a precision of diction that become the courtly manners of the old régime. He was as simple as formality will allow, as formal as simplicity will permit. If we are to liken him to other writers, it will not be to any contemporaries, not even to Mr. Howells. The comparison will take us back to Goldsmith or Jane Austen or to those passages in Thackeray which are most reminiscent of the elder day. Moreover, the book style of Hawthorne was something quite apart from his letter writing, which had a masculine directness and vigor. He was a late member of Irving's generation. When he wrote he "took his pen in hand" to address "the gentle reader." All such literary amenities are now the oldest of old fashions; but when they were the vogue Hawthorne was a master of them. BOOK LIST NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Works. There have been eighteen editions of Hawthorne's Collected Works between 1871 and 1904 in from 6 to 18 vols. These appeared in book form originally as follows: Fanshawe, 1828; Twice-Told Tales, 1837; Grandfather's Chair, 1841; Famous Old People, 1841; Biographical Stories for Children, 1842; Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846; The Scarlet Letter, 1850; True Stories, 1851; The House of the Seven Gables, 1851; A Wonder Book, 1851; The Blithedale Romance, 1852; Tanglewood Tales, 1853; The Marble Faun, 1860; Our Old Home, 1863; American Notebooks, 1868; English Notebooks, 1870; French and Italian Notebooks, 1871; Septimius Felton, 1871; The Dolliver Romance, 1876; Doctor Grimshawe's Secret, 1883. =Bibliography= A volume compiled by Nina E. Browne. 1905. Also Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 415-424. =Biography and Criticism= BRIDGE, HORATIO. Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1893. (Based on three papers in _Harper's Magazine_, January-March, 1892.) BROWNELL, W. C. American Prose Masters. 1909. CONWAY, M. D. Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1890.