that style; it did not come from any depth within me,--neither my heart nor mind had anything to do with it." [Footnote: American Note-Books, Vol. II.] It is valuable, in this light, as a distinct boundary-mark in one direction. But the essay vein which had produced some of the clearest watered gems in the "Twice-Told Tales," begins in the "Mosses" to yield increase of brilliance and beauty; and we here find, with the gathering strength of imagination,--the enlarged power for bringing the most unreal things quite into the circle of realities,--a compensating richness in describing the simply natural, as in "Buds and Bird Voices," "Fire Worship," "The Old Apple-Dealer." Everything in these two volumes illustrates forcibly the brevity, the absolutely right proportion of language to idea, which from the first had marked Hawthorne with one trait, at least, quite unlike any displayed by the writers with whom he was compared, and entirely foreign to the mood of the present century. This _sense of form_, the highest and last attribute of a creative writer, provided it comes as the result of a deep necessity of his genius, and not as a mere acquirement of art, is a quality that has not been enough noticed in him; doubtless because it is not enough looked for anywhere by the majority of critics and readers, in these days of adulteration and of rapid manufacture out of shoddy and short-fibred stuffs. We demand a given measure of reading, good or bad, and producers of it are in great part paid for length: so that with much using of thin and shapeless literature, we have forgotten how good is that which is solid and has form. But, having attained this perfection in the short story, Hawthorne thereafter abandoned it for a larger mould.