In "The Marble Faun" Hawthorne's genius took a more daring and impressive range than ever before, and showed conclusively--what, without this testimony, would most likely have been questioned, or even by some denied--that his previous works had given the arc of a circle which no English or American writer of prose fiction besides himself has even begun to span. It is not alone that he plucks from a prehistoric time--"a period when man's affinity with nature was more strict, and his fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear"--this conception of Donatello, the fresh, free, sylvan man untouched by sin or crime. Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations which has nearly become extinct among modern writers: he belongs to the world of Caliban, Puck, and Ariel. But besides this unique creation, the book reveals regions of thought wide, ruin-scarred, and verdurously fair as the Campagna itself, winning the mind back through history to the primitive purity of man and of Christianity. I recoil from any attempt at adequate analysis of this marvellous production, for it is one of those works of art which are also works of nature, and will present to each thoughtful reader a new set of meanings, according to his individuality, insight, or experience. The most obvious part of the theme is that which is represented in the title, the study of the Faun's nature; and this embraces the whole question of sin and crime, their origin and distinction. But it is not the case, as has been assumed, that in this study the author takes the position of advocate to a theory that sin was requisite to the development of soul in man. For, though he shows that remorse developed in Donatello "a more definite and nobler individuality," he also reminds us that "sometimes the instruction comes without the sorrow, and oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abides with us"; and he illustrates this in the exquisite height of spirituality to which Hilda has attained through sinlessness. He is not, I say, the advocate of a theory: this charge has been made by self-confident critics, who saw only the one idea,--that of a Beneficence which has so handled sin, that, instead of destroying man, "it has really become an instrument most effective in the education of intellect and soul." This idea is several times urged by Miriam and Kenyon, but quickly rejected each time; first by Kenyon, and then by Hilda; so that, while it is suggested, it is also shown to be one which human nature cannot trust itself to dwell upon. But the real function of the author is that of a profound religious teacher. The "Romance of Monte Beni" is, as Miriam plainly says, the story of the fall of man repeated. It takes us with fearless originality to the source of all religious problems, affirming,--as one interpreter [Footnote: See an unsigned article, "The Genius of Hawthorne," in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1868.] has said,--"the inherent freedom of man," and