"Italy, as the site of a romance, was chiefly valuable to him as < affording a sort of poetic or fairy precinct, where actualities would not be so terribly insisted on as they are, and must needs be, in America. No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart Republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin to make them grow." Now, what is to be understood from this passage? It assumes, in the first place, that a work of art, in order to be effective, must contain profound contrasts of light and shadow; and then it points out that the shadow, at least, is found ready to the hand in Europe. There is no hint of patriotic scruples as to availing one's self of such a "picturesque and gloomy" background; if it is to be had, then let it be taken; the main object to be considered is the work of art. Europe, in short, afforded an excellent quarry, from which, in Hawthorne's opinion, the American novelist might obtain materials which are conspicuously deficient in his own country, and which that country is all the better for not possessing. In the "Marble Faun" the author had conceived a certain idea, and he considered that he had been not unsuccessful in realizing it. The subject was new, and full of especial attractions to his genius, and it would manifestly have been impossible to adapt it to an American setting. There was one drawback connected with it, and this Hawthorne did not fail to recognize. He remarks in the preface that he had "lived too long abroad not to be aware that a foreigner seldom acquires that knowledge of a country at once flexible and profound, which may justify him in endeavoring to idealize its traits." But he was careful not to attempt "a portraiture of Italian manners and character." He made use of the Italian scenery and atmosphere just so far as was essential to the development of his idea, and consistent with the extent of his Italian knowledge; and, for the rest, fell back upon American characters and principles. The result has been long enough before the world to have met with a proper appreciation. I have heard regret expressed that the power employed by the author in working out this story had not been applied to a romance dealing with a purely American subject. But to analyze this objection is to dispose of it. A man of genius is not, commonly, enfeebled by his own productions; and, physical accidents aside, Hawthorne was just as