Scarlet Letter," when he had resolved to desert his flock and to connect himself again with Hester Prynne, is an unsurpassed delineation of sudden moral degeneration. There is nothing of modern realism in Hawthorne's novels, and yet they leave a realistic impression behind them. The greater number of his characters appear to us rather as representatives of certain mental conditions then as real flesh and blood. Neither in the dialogue, nor in what may be called the "properties" of his writing did Hawthorne strive at realistic effects. Still, when the reader lays down "The Scarlet Letter," or "The House of the Seven Gables," he insensibly feels himself embued with the spirit and atmosphere of Puritan New England. Hawthorne was so intensely a New Englander in his sympathies, prejudices, and habits of mind, that his writings were always colored by the thought and sentiment of his native land. In "The Scarlet Letter," there is little evidence of the use of historical researches, and yet in that volume, colonial life has been made real and actual to us by the very intensity of the author's national feeling. New England fiction includes a number of other celebrated and honored names. Catherine M. Sedgwick began her literary career with "Hope Leslie," a story founded on the early history of Massachusetts, which was followed by "Redwood" and "The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America." Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes studied New England village life in "Elsie Venner," and Sylvester Judd that of the Maine backwoods in "Margaret." Mr. T.W. Higginson has written "Malbone." Mr. W.D. Howells, Rev. Edward Everett Hale, and Miss E.S. Phelps are still adding to their reputations.