...old Salem institution (1850). Hawthorne afterwards observed that " no author without a trial can see the difficulty of writing a romance about a country...commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight." Yet in " The Scarlet Letter" he had touched even the gloom of Puritanism with the glamour of romance,...

...old Salem institution (1850). Hawthorne afterwards observed that " no author without a trial can see the difficulty of writing a romance about a country...no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque aaJ gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight." Yet in "...

...insisted upon as they are, and must needs be, in America. No author, without a trial, can conceive the difficulty of writing a romance about a country...commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land." Mr. Henry James seems to accept Hawthorne's view...

...despairs of finding romance in the commonplace United States of the present. "No author," he says, "can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance...antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor any thing but a commonplace prosperity, as is happily the case with my dear native land." 1 Even here,...

...light upon Hawthorne's own view of his work. "No author," he says in the preface to The Marble Faun, "can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance...wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, as is happily the case with my dear native land." There is a touch of malicious irony in this last...

...shortcomings and in his preface to "The Marble Faun" has accounted for them. "No author," he writes, "without a trial can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where therp is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque or gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace...

...words. He thought that America was not an inspiring country for a writer of romance, because, he said, "there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong." Yet he seems to have been somewhat mistaken, as men of genius often are, and to have disproved his...

...where actualities would not be so terribly insisted upon, as they are, and must needs be, in America. No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty...common-place 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...

...which Italy, and especially Rome, become the dominating emblems. "No author," he continues at once, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of...wrong, nor anything but a common-place prosperity. tn broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long,...

...choice of Italy as the setting for his story, uses exactly Ruskin's language to show the impossibility of "writing a romance about a country where there...nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land." (We recognize today that Melville wrote...