There was nothing
genuine or commanding in the metaphysical dilettanteism of Bulwer: the
philosophical speculations of Georges Sand are the least permanently
interesting feature of her writings; and the same might in some measure be
affirmed of George Eliot, whose gloomy wisdom finally confesses its
inability to do more than advise us rather to bear those ills we have than
fly to others that we know not of. As to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he cannot
properly be instanced in this connection; for he analyzed chiefly those
parts of human nature which remain substantially unaltered in the face of
whatever changes of opinion, civilization, and religion. The truth that he
brings to light is not the sensational fact of a fashion or a period, but
a verity of the human heart, which may foretell, but can never be affected
by, anything which that heart may conceive. In other words, Hawthorne
belonged neither to this nor to any other generation of writers further
than that his productions may be used as a test of the inner veracity of
all the rest.
But of late years a new order of things has been coming into vogue, and
the new novelists have been among the first to reflect it; and of these
the Americans have shown themselves among the most susceptible.
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