Still the studies of historical environment were more promising in themselves and also confirmed that attempt to realise the locality, as it were, of the present or the immediate past which emerges as _genre_ or local color. The intention of Miss Sedgwick’s _Reminiscence of Federalism_ (1835) is the same as that of Miss Wilkins’s stories of the same environment. Her _Mary Dyre_ comes as near in form as Hawthorne’s _Gentle Boy_ to extracting the essence of Quakerdom. Where her studies fail is in that vital intensity which depends most of all on compression of place and time. Now an easier way toward this was open through the more descriptive sketch of local manners. To realise the genius of a place is a single aim; to keep the tale on the one spot is almost a necessity; to keep it within a brief time by focusing on one significant situation is a further counsel of unity which, though it had not occurred to American writers often, could not be long delayed. Thus, before 1835, Albert Pike had so far focused his picturesque incidents of New Mexico as to burn an impression of that colored frontier life; and James Hall, in spite of the bungling, unnecessary time-lapse, had so turned his _French Village_ (1829) as to give a single picture of French colonial manners. Hawthorne, indeed, had gone further. His affecting _Wives of the Dead_ (1832) is brought within the compass of a single night. If the significance of this experiment was clear to Hawthorne, then he must have abandoned deliberately what Poe seized as vital; for he recurred to the method but now and then. The trend of his work is quite different. But there is room to believe that the significance of the form escaped him; for as to literary method, as to form, Hawthorne seems not to see much farther than the forgotten writers whose tales stand beside his in the annuals. An obvious defect of these short fictions is in measure. The writers do not distinguish between what will make a good thirty-page story and what will make a good three-hundred-page story. They cannot gauge their material. Austin’s _Peter Rugg_ is too long for its best effect; it is definitely a short-story plot. Many of the others are far too short for any clear effect; they are definitely not short-story plots, but novel plots; they demand development of character or revolution of incidents. Aristotle’s distinction between simple and complex plots[17] underlies the difference between the two modern forms. Now even Hawthorne seems not quite aware of this difference. The conception of _Roger Malvin’s Burial_ (1832) demands more development of character than is possible within its twenty-eight pages. The sense of artistic unity appears in the expiation at the scene of guilt; but the deficiency of form also appears in the long time-lapse. _Alice Doane’s Appeal_ (1835) is the hint of a tragedy, a conception not far below that of the _Scarlet Letter_. For lack of scope the tragic import is obscured