In “The House of Seven Gables,” we perceive the same far-reaching and deep-seeing vision into the duskiest corners of the human mind, and the same grasp of objective laws, but the interest is less intense, and the subject admits of more relief. There is more of character in it, delineated however on some neutral ground between the grotesque and the picturesque, and with flashes of supernatural light darting occasionally into the picture, revealing, by glimpses, the dread foundations on which the whole rests. It contains more variety of power than “The Scarlet Letter,” and in the characters of Clifford and Phebe exhibits the extreme points of Hawthorne’s genius. The delineation of Clifford evinces a metaphysical power, a capacity of watching the most remote movements of thought, and of resolving into form the mere film of consciousness—of exhibiting the mysteries of the mind in as clear a light as ordinary novelists exhibit its common manifestations—which might excite the wonder of Kant or Hegel. Phebe, on the contrary, though shaped from the finest materials, and implying a profound insight into the subtilest sources or genial feeling, is represented dramatically, is a pure embodiment, and may be deemed Hawthorne’s most perfect character. The sunshine of the book all radiates from her; and there is hardly a “shady place” in that weird “House,” into which it does not penetrate. “The Blithedale Romance,” just published, seems to us the most perfect in execution of any of Hawthorne’s works, and as a work of art, hardly equaled by any thing else which the country has produced. It is a real organism of the mind, with the strict unity of one of Nature’s own creations. It seems to have grown up in the author’s nature, as a tree or plant grows from the earth, in obedience to the law of its germ. This unity cannot be made clear by analysis; it is felt in the oneness of impression it makes on the reader’s imagination. The author’s hold on the central principle is never relaxed; it never slips from his grasp; and yet every thing is developed with a victorious ease which adds a new charm to the interest of the materials. The romance, also, has more thought in it than either of its predecessors; it is literally crammed with the results of most delicate and searching observation of life, manners and character, and of the most piercing imaginative analysis of motives and tendencies; yet nothing seems labored, but the profoundest reflections glide unobtrusively into the free flow of the narration and description, equally valuable from their felicitous relation to the events and persons of the story, and for their detached depth and power. The work is not without a certain morbid tint in the general coloring of the mood whence it proceeds; but this peculiarity is fainter than is usual with Hawthorne.