atic of something else." "Do not stick at any strangeness or preternaturality. It can be softened down to any extent, however wild in its first conception."

In reading this unconscious record we are once more impressed by what we may call the mastery of Hawthorne over the situation,with his deep ethical insight and the healthy cheerfulness of his mind while dealing with the most tragic and painful themes. He knows the artistic effect of the somber, but it must not be too somber. Elsie must glimmer "through the story, and illuminate it with a healthy, natural light."

The story is to open in America-in Charter street, Salem. Living together in the same house are the old doctor, with his gigantic and venomous spider, the boy Etheredge, who is to connect the American with the English part of the story, and the girl Elsie. In England there are the Lord of Braithwaite Hall, who is the Italian-English successor to the title, the old pensioner, who is the true heir, Etheredge grown to manhood, and others. In an early part of the notes, Hawthorne writes: "The great gist of the story ought to be the natural hatred of men and the particular hatred of Americans to an aristocracy; and, at the same time, doing a good degree of justice to the aristocratic system by depicting its grand, beautiful, and noble characteristics." Again: "It must be shown, I think, throughout, that there is an essential difference between English and American character, and that the former must assimilate itself to the latter, if there is to be any union."

We leave untouched the very interesting first half of the notes (except for the few words quoted in the preceding paragraph), and, beginning about the middle, give our readers (with two slight omissions) all of the last half of the series.

Editor of The Century Magazine.

THIS wretched old pensioner keeps recurring to me, insisting that I have not sufficiently provided for him, nor given him motive enough or any, indeed. At present, therefore, the stubborn old devil will not move. Take him at his death-hour, and work backward from that. He has been smitten with death in the old manor-house, surrounded by Etheredge, Elsie, the Warden, the ItalianEnglishman, and other personages of the drama. The scene takes place in the stately hall of the mansion, surrounded by antique associations of arms or furniture, carvings, etc. The old man, as his last moment draws on, becomes invested with a strange aspect and port of dignity and majesty. At the same

time the development of the plot is taking place. Up to this hour, the probabilities have seemed to strengthen that Etheredge is the heir of the estate and name; but, at the very last, a slight circumstance shall be counterchanged, which shall at once make it evident that the old pensioner is the true heir, and the spirit of his ancestors shall display itself. *** He may be a sort of reformer, whose principles are entirely against hereditary distinction. The object of the book, to find the treasure-chest, which the silver key found in the grave-yard will suit. This at last turns out to be the coffin of a young lady, which, being opened, it proves to be filled with golden locks of her hair. But this quest must be merely incidental. Under the hair, or upon. it, is a roll of obliterated writing. This nonsense must be kept subordinate, however. 'Twont do. Crambo, Mary Mumpson, Cunkey, Miss Blagden, Miss Ingersoll, Mr. Roberts, Marshall Rynders, President Buchanan of this United States. *

Take the old man from his earliest original: the family name had been changed in America; his ancestor was the second son of the old family, and was thrust out of the paternal mansion; there are conflicting testimonies wherefor. One account says that he was a wild and bloody religionist, and, with his own [hand], beheaded the king, and got the bloody footstep by treading in a pool of his blood on the scaffold. Another account bears that he was a Quaker, or somebody on the George Fox principle; and that his bloody footstep came from his being violently and wounded thrust from his paternal home. Others say it was of much earlier time. Well, this race turns up in America with some vague traditions among themselves of their descent; they are not Quakers; at least, have ceased to be so long before the epoch of this story; but still something of the spirit of their peaceful ancestor has remained in them throughout this length of time. They keep up their traditions. At length there is born an imaginative one, who marries early in life, and loses his wife; his affections being thus balked, he leaves his son under the charge of a friend (the Doctor), and goes to England to enter upon a quest into his lineage. He becomes slightly insane, and, getting more and more gaged in this delusive enterprise, he remains abroad all the rest of his life, in poverty, in solitude; meanwhile his son has grown up, married, and left a daughter, whom the Doctor has taken charge of. On the Doctor's death, he divides his property between the girl and Etheredge; and the girl, as soon as she is at her own disposal, comes

en

abroad in quest of her grandfather, to whom the Doctor's papers have given her a clew.

The Doctor, an old, humorous bachelor, had likewise adopted another child, a boy, who struck his fancy in an alms-house, whither he had come, attended by an old woman. He does this partly because the name is that of the family to which his friend really belonged. This boy is really the descendant of the third son of the old family, but he imagines himself to be the descendant of the old bloody footstep man, in respect to whom he adopts the wicked version of the story. He also has inherited traditions of noble descent, together with certain documents, which carry proofs of his birth far upward to the original emigrant, who really came over in quest of his lost brother, because he is penitent for his treatment of him, or because, from some family arrangement, it was necessary to find him. But he met with impediments, such as being carried away by the Indians, etc., and ultimately settled in Virginia, whence the family emigrated to New England. Before he goes to England (the present representative I mean), he gets his pedigree authenticated, showing, through all vicissitudes, that he is descended from the second brother. This he holds in his possession, and is ready to display it on occasion. Meanwhile, the family in England is represented by a descendant of the youngest brother. There have been traditions of other heirs; and messengers, at various times, have been sent over to America in quest of them, and in hope to find that there were none now existing. Also, by the [— -] of the family, there is an old custom of keeping a place at the family board, and a bed-chamber ready.

The old man? Yes! I cannot consent to such a degradation of his character as is implied in his seeking the estate and title. He must all along have been conscious that it was his right; but a peculiar philosophy has taught him that he must not take it. No, there must be some specific cause; a curse, for instance, imposed upon his race if they ever assert their right. Why? Something that should have made his rank and station hateful to him-that might be; but how might that hate-feeling be continued to his descendants? So that they should prefer poverty and obscurity to name and high position. True. This pensioner is the first one, for two centuries, who has known of his descent; the knowledge of it came to him through the Doctor's researches, and he went to England to investigate it, with a desire to know his relatives and hereditary seat, but not to claim them. The Doctor must have a great agency in these doings, both of the pensioner and

Etheredge, making tissues of cobweb out of men's life-threads; he must have the air, in the romance, of a sort of magician, without being called so; and even after his death, his influence must still be felt. Hold on to this. A dark, subtle manager, for the love of managing- like a spider sitting in the center of his web, which stretches far to east and west. Who is he then? What interest had he in this? Some speculative and philosphical interest, if any, and he dies before it is gratified. I doubt whether 'twill do, but his enterprises go on after his death, and produce strange effects without him to control them. He shall have stretched out his hand to England, and be operating there, making people his puppets who little think they are so. He must have traveled over England in his youth, and there have fallen in love and been jilted by a lady of this family; hence his spite against the family, and his determination to ruin it. He shall have sought out, with all his might, an heir, and educated Etheredge for that purpose. There may be a germ in this-I don't know. Perhaps the Doctor himself might be an English misanthrope, who had a spite against this family. He must be somebody who knows all about the English part of the family; and he has some plot against them in full concoction, calculated to take effect years hence, when he suddenly dies (perhaps of the poison of his great spider), and leaves his plot to operate as it may, by itself. Make his character very weird indeed, and develop it in dread and mystery, with as much of the grotesque as can be wrought into it. He may himself be a member of the familypossibly the heir. He shall have meant Étheredge as his tool, certainly; but, in the end, he shall prove to have no ancestry,-an American son of nobody, evolving the moral that we are to give up all those prejudices of birth and blood which have been so powerful in past ages; at any rate, there shall be but vague reasons to believe that Etheredge is of that descent, and it shall be a rebuke to him for giving up the noble principle that a man ought to depend on his own individuality, instead of deriving anything from his ancestors. The pauper must be the true heir. Then why should not the Doctor have made him out to be so? True. He shall have made a mistake, owing to his lack of acquaintance with the traditions of this pauper, with whom they shall have been a family secret ; but his interest and imagination shall have been awakened by what the Doctor said, so that he shall have gone to England to investigate the matter. It is a snarled skein, truly; but I half fancy there is a way to unravel the threads, by dint of breaking one or two.

The lady whom the Doctor loved shall have died; the Doctor shall have treasured up a single lock of golden hair, which Etheredge, from some fanciful reason or other, brings with him to England. On opening a coffin with the silver key, it shall prove to be quite full of these golden locks, with the same peculiarity as this. The owner of the estate shall have betrayed the Doctor, and won his lady's love from him; so he, brooding along, shall have resolved to avenge himself in this way. The coffin, full of golden locks, shall be a symbol that there was nothing in this womannothing of her but her golden hair and other external beauty, and that a wise man threw himself away for that emptiness. He may himself (the Doctor) have been the proprietor of the estate. How?-why?-what sense? He shall have been at deadly enmity with the holder of it, and, being a wicked man and unscrupulous, shall have contemplated these means of avenging himself. Long after his death, Etheredge shall have found the papers which seem to him to prove his claim.

The great spider shall be an emblem of the Doctor himself; it shall be his craft and wickedness coming into this shape outside of him; and his demon; and I think a great deal may be made out of it. This shall be his venom, which has been gathering and swelling for thirty years; for, in all that time, those who knew the spider and the Doctor earlier, shall have seen the one was growing more swollen with spite, and the other with venom. It must be an unsuccessful and ill-treated passion that first caused this: he having loved the woman whom Braithwaite won from him and married. He shall have known the family tradition that there was an heir of the estate and title extant in America, and shall set out with the purpose of finding him. Then, when he cannot find out this heir, he bethinks himself that it will be yet sweeter revenge to substitute some nameless child for this longdescended heir; and looking about (being an unscrupulous man), he finds this boy, three or four years old, in the alms-house, without parents, of untraceable origin. Him he takes, educates, and the love that there is in him grows to this child and expends itself all on him.

Now, as for the girl? Shall she also be a filia nullius? or his own daughter? or a granddaughter of the pensioner? We must have her, and she must have a right in the book. Shall she be a niece of his? Well, she need not be very rigidly accounted for, but may have been consigned to his care, as the last remnant of his own family, the child of a younger sister. So he shall have taken her, perhaps not loving her as his wayward nature does the boy, whom he will feel as if he had

made with his own art and skill,—but still tolerating her in his house.

Now, the pensioner. He may have been, originally, a New England minister, or a religionist of some sort, who had an early dream of founding a sect of his own, deeming himself to have had a revelation. Or, being of a religious nature, he may have had a tradition in his early days, of a person in his family, long ago, who was of a most pious nature; his life and footsteps he shall have sought out, and this search shall lead him in the track of the bloody footstep; following which, he shall be led across the sea, and to the old mansion-house. There shall be a peculiar odor of sanctity for him in the spot where this saint and martyr was born and bred, and so he shall haunt around it, knowing of his claims, but entirely above asserting them,—at least, aside from them. All along he shall have in his possession the one thing that can prove his descent. What can that be? Some traditionary secret that explains a mystery which has been mysterious for two centuries. The unlocking of some door that had been locked for centuries. Some coffer? Could it not be contrived to have some antique, highly ornamented coffer treasured up in the old house, under the idea that it contained something of fatal importance to the family? It shall have two locks; one the pensioner shall have, transmitted from his ancestors; the other shall be the one that Etheredge found by the grave. On opening the coffer, it shall prove to be full of golden hair; for it was the coffin of a beautiful lady, who, by that strange process, has turned all to that feature by which she lives in the family legend. The New England Government shall have prosecuted the first emigrant, as being a non-conformist to their creed; possibly, they may have hanged him, though I hardly think so. Yet, if it will produce any good effect, hanged he shall be. What can he have had to do with the key of the lady's coffin? She must have been murdered then? It shall have been supposed in the family that she disappeared with him, as she disappeared about the same juncture. Well, this mystery might be left to conjecture, without being definitely solved. It shall explain why the lady never appeared again, certainly. The lady had been beloved by two brothers, and had loved the bloody footstep man; the other one had murdered her, and deposited her in this antique coffer, which was deposited in a secret chamber. At any rate, somehow or other, she shall be reposited in an antique coffer, or, it may be, in an old stone coffin; I think the former, because of the silver key. The lady being murdered, the

pensioner, though I do not see how. Perchance a religious character shall see the boy and girl together, and bless them, and make some allusion to the family history, being incited to this by the name which the old Doctor has given the boy. Something in this man's presence-something holy and beautiful, apostolic, religiously noble-shall touch the boy, and remain in his memory through life. Perhaps the old Doctor should be present, and take some part in the conversation; he shall not know the religionist, but something shall pass which shall indicate that the apostle knows something about the family history, though he and the Doctor shall not understand one another.

Matters being sufficiently in train, the Doctor dies unsuddenly, and, it is suspected, by the bite of his great spider, who, being the devil, has probably got his soul. His death-scene shall make it appear that he had something on his mind which he had half a mind to reveal; but yet he could not bear to give up a revengeful purpose of many years; neither, at the moment of death, can he do what remains needful toward carrying it into execution. There is, therefore, a portentous struggle and uncertainty, which shall much increase the mystification of the plot. It shall be mentioned, however, that his will makes Etheredge inherit an amount of property sufficient to educate and establish him in America; there is likewise provision for the girl; and here ensues an interval of perhaps fifteen years. There are among his papers much that seems to indicate Etheredge's heirships, pedigrees, genealogies, coats-of-arms, what seem to be authenticated proofs of American descent, but nothing absolutely proved.

The curtain next rises in England. It should be added to the last preceding part that more than one messenger came from England making inquiries which seemed to have reference to the heirship of the estate; for the branch of the family heretofore in possession had died [out], and a new heir had to be looked for, both for the estate and a dormant title. This heir shall have been found in a branch which had emigrated with the Stuarts, and become Italianized. This man, somehow or other-it need [not] be exactly indicated how -had got notice of Etheredge's arrival in England, and shall suppose it is to assert his rights. He procures him to be dogged in his wanderings, and, finding that he comes to the estate, he hires (Italian fashion) an assassin to murder him on the precincts of the estate, in some place that shall have been described by the Doctor in his story. The old pensioner rescues him or finds him bleeding, conveys him to his apartments, where Eth

eredge vaguely recognizes the holy presence that has never quite died out of his memory. Much suggestive conversation may ensue between them, at various times, mystifying, enlightening. Then the Warden is introduced, and Etheredge is taken into his house, as before. From the antiquarian and genealogical disclosures of the Warden, the books in his library, and a variety of ingeniously arranged circumstances, Etheredge is more and more confirmed in the idea that he is the heir. Yet various recollections of something ambiguous in the old Doctor's conduct, and of his dying scene, shall make him hesitate to assert himself, and so shall his democratic education and pride. He shall meditate making a confidant of the Warden, but shall hesitate, on account of the latter's position in respect to the family. Hammond, the Doctor's old agent, appears, and his demeanor shall throw Etheredge into still greater perplexity; although it is possible that Hammond must more than strongly suspect the Doctor's fraud. Possibly he may hint that money is necessary. He must startle Etheredge with the dread of something dishonorable.

There must be various interviews with the girl, who has come back to England, and is living in respectability on what the Doctor left, in a poor way,-perhaps as governess, or lady's gentlewoman. Perhaps the Italian heir is in love with her.

Then ensues the Warden's grand dinner, where Etheredge (now made an ambassador) is the principal guest; and here he meets the Italian heir, who recognizes him as perhaps a relative (from his name), and invites him to the hall. Etheredge accepts the invitation and goes thither; and here ensues, in the romance, much description and talk about old English dwellings, and the difference between English and American social life; how we have given up certain delightful possibilities forever, and must content ourselves with other things.

Meanwhile the Italian shall have made a plot to poison Etheredge, believing him to be truly the heir; for perhaps Hammond may have played him false and betrayed his project, and it will be policy to murder him before he takes any public steps. Just at that time poison was as fashionable in England as it had ever been in Italy. This somehow comes to the knowledge of the girl, who tells it to the old pensioner, who interferes to prevent it. He comes to the Hall and is admitted, he being known to the heir as one who has much knowledge of the genealogy; then he takes state upon himself, announces himself as the American heir, so long expected [and], produces his proofs. At the same