The history of the little industrial and intellectual association which formed itself at this time in one of the suburbs of Boston has not, to my knowledge, been written; though it is assuredly a curious and interesting chapter in the domestic annals of New England. It would of course be easy to overrate the importance of this ingenious attempt of a few speculative1 persons to improve the outlook of mankind. The experiment came and went very rapidly and quietly, leaving very few traces behind it. It became simply a charming personal reminiscence for the small number of amiable2 enthusiasts3 who had had a hand in it. There were degrees of enthusiasm, and I suppose there were degrees of amiability4; but a certain generous brightness of hope and freshness of conviction pervaded5 the whole undertaking6 and rendered it, morally speaking, important to an extent of which any heed7 that the world in general ever gave to it is an insufficient8 measure. Of course it would be a great mistake to represent the episode of Brook9 Farm as directly related to the manners and morals of the New England world in general — and in especial to those of the prosperous, opulent, comfortable part of it. The thing was the experiment of a coterie11 — it was unusual, unfashionable, unsuccessful. It was, as would then have been said, an amusement of the Transcendentalists — a harmless effusion of Radicalism12. The Transcendentalists were not, after all, very numerous; and the Radicals13 were by no means of the vivid tinge14 of those of our own day. I have said that the Brook Farm community left no traces behind it that the world in general can appreciate; I should rather say that the only trace is a short novel, of which the principal merits reside in its qualities of difference from the affair itself. The Blithedale Romance is the main result of Brook Farm; but The Blithedale Romance was very properly never recognised by the Brook Farmers as an accurate portrait of their little colony.
Nevertheless, in a society as to which the more frequent complaint is that it is monotonous15, that it lacks variety of incident and of type, the episode, our own business with which is simply that it was the cause of Hawthorne’s writing an admirable tale, might be welcomed as a picturesque16 variation. At the same time, if we do not exaggerate its proportions, it may seem to contain a fund of illustration as to that phase of human life with which our author’s own history mingled17 itself. The most graceful18 account of the origin of Brook Farm is probably to be found in these words of one of the biographers of Margaret Fuller: “In Boston and its vicinity, several friends, for whose character Margaret felt the highest-honour, were earnestly considering the possibility of making such industrial, social, and educational arrangements as would simplify economies, combine leisure for study with healthful and honest toil20, avert21 unjust collisions of caste, equalise refinements22, awaken24 generous affections, diffuse25 courtesy, and sweeten and sanctify life as a whole.” The reader will perceive that this was a liberal scheme, and that if the experiment failed, the greater was the pity. The writer goes on to say that a gentleman, who afterwards distinguished26 himself in literature (he had begun by being a clergyman), “convinced by his experience in a faithful ministry27 that the need was urgent for a thorough application of the professed28 principles of Fraternity to actual relations, was about staking his all of fortune, reputation, and influence, in an attempt to organize a joint-stock company at Brook Farm.” As Margaret Fuller passes for having suggested to Hawthorne the figure of Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance, and as she is probably, with one exception, the person connected with the affair who, after Hawthorne, offered most of what is called a personality to the world, I may venture to quote a few more passages from her Memoirs29 — a curious, in some points of view almost a grotesque30, and yet, on the whole, as I have said, an extremely interesting book. It was a strange history and a strange destiny, that of this brilliant, restless, and unhappy woman — this ardent31 New Englander, this impassioned Yankee, who occupied so large a place in the thoughts, the lives, the affections, of an intelligent and appreciative32 society, and yet left behind her nothing but the memory of a memory. Her function, her reputation, were singular, and not altogether reassuring33: she was a talker, she was the talker, she was the genius of talk. She had a magnificent, though by no means an unmitigated, egotism; and in some of her utterances34 it is difficult to say whether pride or humility36 prevails — as for instance when she writes that she feels “that there is plenty of room in the Universe for my faults, and as if I could not spend time in thinking of them when so many things interest me more.” She has left the same sort of reputation as a great actress. Some of her writing has extreme beauty, almost all of it has a real interest, but her value, her activity, her sway (I am not sure that one can say her charm), were personal and practical. She went to Europe, expanded to new desires and interests, and, very poor herself, married an impoverished37 Italian nobleman. Then, with her husband and child, she embarked38 to return to her own country, and was lost at sea in a terrible storm, within sight of its coasts. Her tragical39 death combined with many of the elements of her life to convert her memory into a sort of legend, so that the people who had known her well, grew at last to be envied by later comers. Hawthorne does not appear to have been intimate with her; on the contrary, I find such an entry as this in the American Note–Books in 1841: “I was invited to dine at Mr. Bancroft’s yesterday, with Miss Margaret Fuller; but Providence40 had given me some business to do; for which I was very thankful!” It is true that, later, the lady is the subject of one or two allusions42 of a gentler cast. One of them indeed is so pretty as to be worth quoting:—
“After leaving the book at Mr. Emerson’s, I returned through the woods, and, entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclining near the path which bends along its verge43. It was Margaret herself. She had been there the whole afternoon, meditating44 or reading, for she had a book in her hand with some strange title which I did not understand and have forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude45, and was just giving utterance35 to a theory that no inhabitant of Concord46 ever visited Sleepy Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the sacred precincts. Most of them followed a path which led them away from us; but an old man passed near us, and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the ground and me standing47 by her side. He made some remark upon the beauty of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood. Then we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the woods, and about the crows, whose voices Margaret had heard; and about the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains48 upon the character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and about other matters of high and low philosophy.”
It is safe to assume that Hawthorne could not on the whole have had a high relish49 for the very positive personality of this accomplished50 and argumentative woman, in whose intellect high noon seemed ever to reign51, as twilight52 did in his own. He must have been struck with the glare of her understanding, and, mentally speaking, have scowled53 and blinked a good deal in conversation with her. But it is tolerably manifest, nevertheless, that she was, in his imagination, the starting-point of the figure of Zenobia; and Zenobia is, to my sense, his only very definite attempt at the representation of a character. The portrait is full of alteration54 and embellishment; but it has a greater reality, a greater abundance of detail, than any of his other figures, and the reality was a memory of the lady whom he had encountered in the Roxbury pastoral or among the wood-walks of Concord, with strange books in her hand and eloquent55 discourse56 on her lips. The Blithedale Romance was written just after her unhappy death, when the reverberation57 of her talk would lose much of its harshness. In fact, however, very much the same qualities that made Hawthorne a Democrat58 in polities — his contemplative turn and absence of a keen perception of abuses, his taste for old ideals, and loitering paces, and muffled59 tones — would operate to keep him out of active sympathy with a woman of the so-called progressive type. We may be sure that in women his taste was conservative.
It seems odd, as his biographer says, “that the least gregarious60 of men should have been drawn61 into a socialistic community;” but although it is apparent that Hawthorne went to Brook Farm without any great Transcendental fervour, yet he had various good reasons for casting his lot in this would-be happy family. He was as yet unable to marry, but he naturally wished to do so as speedily as possible, and there was a prospect62 that Brook Farm would prove an economical residence. And then it is only fair to believe that Hawthorne was interested in the experiment, and that though he was not a Transcendentalist, an Abolitionist, or a Fourierite, as his companions were in some degree or other likely to be, he was willing, as a generous and unoccupied young man, to lend a hand in any reasonable scheme for helping63 people to live together on better terms than the common. The Brook Farm scheme was, as such things go, a reasonable one; it was devised and carried out by shrewd and sober-minded New Englanders, who were careful to place economy first and idealism afterwards, and who were not afflicted64 with a Gallic passion for completeness of theory. There were no formulas, doctrines65, dogmas; there was no interference whatever with private life or individual habits, and not the faintest adumbration67 of a rearrangement of that difficult business known as the relations of the sexes. The relations of the sexes were neither more nor less than what they usually are in American life, excellent; and in such particulars the scheme was thoroughly68 conservative and irreproachable69. Its main characteristic was that each individual concerned in it should do a part of the work necessary for keeping the whole machine going. He could choose his work and he could live as he liked; it was hoped, but it was by no means demanded, that he would make himself agreeable, like a gentleman invited to a dinner-party. Allowing, however, for everything that was a concession70 to worldly traditions and to the laxity of man’s nature, there must have been in the enterprise a good deal of a certain freshness and purity of spirit, of a certain noble credulity and faith in the perfectibility of man, which it would have been easier to find in Boston in the year 1840, than in London five-and-thirty years later. If that was the era of Transcendentalism, Transcendentalism could only have sprouted71 in the soil peculiar72 to the general locality of which I speak — the soil of the old New England morality, gently raked and refreshed by an imported culture. The Transcendentalists read a great deal of French and German, made themselves intimate with George Sand and Goethe, and many other writers; but the strong and deep New England conscience accompanied them on all their intellectual excursions, and there never was a so-called “movement” that embodied73 itself, on the whole, in fewer eccentricities74 of conduct, or that borrowed a smaller licence in private deportment. Henry Thoreau, a delightful75 writer, went to live in the woods; but Henry Thoreau was essentially76 a sylvan77 personage and would not have been, however the fashion of his time might have turned, a man about town. The brothers and sisters at Brook Farm ploughed the fields and milked the cows; but I think that an observer from another clime and society would have been much more struck with their spirit of conformity78 than with their déréglements. Their ardour was a moral ardour, and the lightest breath of scandal never rested upon them, or upon any phase of Transcendentalism.
A biographer of Hawthorne might well regret that his hero had not been more mixed up with the reforming and free-thinking class, so that he might find a pretext79 for writing a chapter upon the state of Boston society forty years ago. A needful warrant for such regret should be, properly, that the biographer’s own personal reminiscences should stretch back to that period and to the persons who animated80 it. This would be a guarantee of fulness of knowledge and, presumably, of kindness of tone. It is difficult to see, indeed, how the generation of which Hawthorne has given us, in Blithedale, a few portraits, should not at this time of day be spoken of very tenderly and sympathetically. If irony82 enter into the allusion41, it should be of the lightest and gentlest. Certainly, for a brief and imperfect chronicler of these things, a writer just touching83 them as he passes, and who has not the advantage of having been a contemporary, there is only one possible tone. The compiler of these pages, though his recollections date only from a later period, has a memory of a certain number of persons who had been intimately connected, as Hawthorne was not, with the agitations84 of that interesting time. Something of its interest adhered to them still — something of its aroma85 clung to their garments; there was something about them which seemed to say that when they were young and enthusiastic, they had been initiated86 into moral mysteries, they had played at a wonderful game. Their usual mark (it is true I can think of exceptions) was that they seemed excellently good. They appeared unstained by the world, unfamiliar87 with worldly desires and standards, and with those various forms of human depravity which flourish in some high phases of civilisation88; inclined to simple and democratic ways, destitute89 of pretensions90 and affectations, of jealousies92, of cynicism, of snobbishness93. This little epoch94 of fermentation has three or four drawbacks for the critic — drawbacks, however, that may be overlooked by a person for whom it has an interest of association. It bore, intellectually, the stamp of provincialism; it was a beginning without a fruition, a dawn without a noon; and it produced, with a single exception, no great talents. It produced a great deal of writing, but (always putting Hawthorne aside, as a contemporary but not a sharer) only one writer in whom the world at large has interested itself. The situation was summed up and transfigured in the admirable and exquisite96 Emerson. He expressed all that it contained, and a good deal more, doubtless, besides; he was the man of genius of the moment; he was the Transcendentalist par10 excellence97. Emerson expressed, before all things, as was extremely natural at the hour and in the place, the value and importance of the individual, the duty of making the most of one’s self, of living by one’s own personal light and carrying out one’s own disposition98. He reflected with beautiful irony upon the exquisite impudence99 of those institutions which claim to have appropriated the truth and to dole100 it out, in proportionate morsels101, in exchange for a subscription102. He talked about the beauty and dignity of life, and about every one who is born into the world being born to the whole, having an interest and a stake in the whole. He said “all that is clearly due today is not to lie,” and a great many other things which it would be still easier to present in a ridiculous light. He insisted upon sincerity103 and independence and spontaneity, upon acting104 in harmony with one’s nature, and not conforming and compromising for the sake of being more comfortable. He urged that a man should await his call, his finding the thing to do which he should really believe in doing, and not be urged by the world’s opinion to do simply the world’s work. “If no call should come for years, for centuries, then I know that the want of the Universe is the attestation105 of faith by my abstinence. . . . If I cannot work, at least I need not lie.” The doctrine66 of the supremacy106 of the individual to himself, of his originality107 and, as regards his own character, unique quality, must have had a great charm for people living in a society in which introspection, thanks to the want of other entertainment, played almost the part of a social resource.
In the United States, in those days, there were no great things to look out at (save forests and rivers); life was not in the least spectacular; society was not brilliant; the country was given up to a great material prosperity, a homely108 bourgeois109 activity, a diffusion110 of primary education and the common luxuries. There was therefore, among the cultivated classes, much relish for the utterances of a writer who would help one to take a picturesque view of one’s internal possibilities, and to find in the landscape of the soul all sorts of fine sunrise and moonlight effects. “Meantime, while the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles111 of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely — it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction but provocation112 that I can receive from another soul.” To make one’s self so much more interesting would help to make life interesting, and life was probably, to many of this aspiring113 congregation, a dream of freedom and fortitude114. There were faulty parts in the Emersonian philosophy; but the general tone was magnificent; and I can easily believe that, coming when it did and where it did, it should have been drunk in by a great many fine moral appetites with a sense of intoxication115. One envies, even, I will not say the illusions, of that keenly sentient116 period, but the convictions and interests — the moral passion. One certainly envies the privilege of having heard the finest of Emerson’s orations117 poured forth118 in their early newness. They were the most poetical119, the most beautiful productions of the American mind, and they were thoroughly local and national. They had a music and a magic, and when one remembers the remarkable120 charm of the speaker, the beautiful modulation121 of his utterance, one regrets in especial that one might not have been present on a certain occasion which made a sensation, an era — the delivery of an address to the Divinity School of Harvard University, on a summer evening in 1838. In the light, fresh American air, unthickened and undarkened by customs and institutions established, these things, as the phrase is, told.
Hawthorne appears, like his own Miles Coverdale, to have arrived at Brook Farm in the midst of one of those April snow-storms which, during the New England spring, occasionally diversify122 the inaction of the vernal process. Miles Coverdale, in The Blithedale Romance, is evidently as much Hawthorne as he is any one else in particular. He is indeed not very markedly any one, unless it be the spectator, the observer; his chief identity lies in his success in looking at things objectively and spinning uncommunicated fancies about them. This indeed was the part that Hawthorne played socially in the little community at West Roxbury. His biographer describes him as sitting “silently, hour after hour, in the broad old-fashioned hall of the house, where he could listen almost unseen to the chat and merriment of the young people, himself almost always holding a book before him, but seldom turning the leaves.” He put his hand to the plough and supported himself and the community, as they were all supposed to do, by his labour; but he contributed little to the hum of voices. Some of his companions, either then or afterwards, took, I believe, rather a gruesome view of his want of articulate enthusiasm, and accused him of coming to the place as a sort of intellectual vampire123, for purely124 psychological purposes. He sat in a corner, they declared, and watched the inmates125 when they were off their guard, analysing their characters, and dissecting126 the amiable ardour, the magnanimous illusions, which he was too cold-blooded to share. In so far as this account of Hawthorne’s attitude was a complaint, it was a singularly childish one. If he was at Brook Farm without being of it, this is a very fortunate circumstance from the point of view of posterity127, who would have preserved but a slender memory of the affair if our author’s fine novel had not kept the topic open. The complaint is indeed almost so ungrateful a one as to make us regret that the author’s fellow-communists came off so easily. They certainly would not have done so if the author of Blithedale had been more of a satirist128. Certainly, if Hawthorne was an observer, he was a very harmless one; and when one thinks of the queer specimens130 of the reforming genus with which he must have been surrounded, one almost wishes that, for our entertainment, he had given his old companions something to complain of in earnest. There is no satire131 whatever in the Romance; the quality is almost conspicuous132 by its absence. Of portraits there are only two; there is no sketching133 of odd figures — no reproduction of strange types of radicalism; the human background is left vague. Hawthorne was not a satirist, and if at Brook Farm he was, according to his habit, a good deal of a mild sceptic, his scepticism was exercised much more in the interest of fancy than in that of reality.
There must have been something pleasantly bucolic134 and pastoral in the habits of the place during the fine New England summer; but we have no retrospective envy of the denizens135 of Brook Farm in that other season which, as Hawthorne somewhere says, leaves in those regions, “so large a blank — so melancholy136 a deathspot — in lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time.” “Of a summer night, when the moon was full,” says Mr. Lathrop, “they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light and shadow, while sundry137 of the younger men sang old ballads138, or joined Tom Moore’s songs to operatic airs. On other nights there would be an original essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakspeare, with the parts distributed to different members; and these amusements failing, some interesting discussion was likely to take their place. Occasionally, in the dramatic season, large delegations139 from the farm would drive into Boston, in carriages and waggons140, to the opera or the play. Sometimes, too, the young women sang as they washed the dishes in the Hive; and the youthful yeomen of the society came in and helped them with their work. The men wore blouses of a checked or plaided stuff, belted at the waist, with a broad collar folding down about the throat, and rough straw hats; the women, usually, simple calico gowns and hats.” All this sounds delightfully141 Arcadian and innocent, and it is certain that there was something peculiar to the clime and race in some of the features of such a life; in the free, frank, and stainless142 companionship of young men and maidens143, in the mixture of manual labour and intellectual flights — dish-washing and ?sthetics, wood-chopping and philosophy. Wordsworth’s “plain living and high thinking” were made actual. Some passages in Margaret Fuller’s journals throw plenty of light on this. (It must be premised that she was at Brook Farm as an occasional visitor; not as a labourer in the Hive.)
“All Saturday I was off in the woods. In the evening we had a general conversation, opened by me, upon Education, in its largest sense, and on what we can do for ourselves and others. I took my usual ground:— The aim is perfection; patience the road. Our lives should be considered as a tendency, an approximation only. . . . Mr. R. spoke81 admirably on the nature of loyalty144. The people showed a good deal of the sans-culotte tendency in their manners, throwing themselves on the floor, yawning, and going out when they had heard enough. Yet as the majority differ with me, to begin with — that being the reason this subject was chosen — they showed on the whole more interest and deference145 than I had expected. As I am accustomed to deference, however, and need it for the boldness and animation146 which my part requires, I did not speak with as much force as usual. . . . Sunday.— A glorious day; the woods full of perfume; I was out all the morning. In the afternoon Mrs. R. and I had a talk. I said my position would be too uncertain here, as I could not work. —— said ‘they would all like to work for a person of genius.’ . . . ‘Yes,’ I told her; ‘but where would be my repose147 when they were always to be judging whether I was worth it or not?. . . . Each day you must prove yourself anew.’ . . . We talked of the principles of the community. I said I had not a right to come, because all the confidence I had in it was as an experiment worth trying, and that it was part of the great wave of inspired thought. . . . We had valuable discussion on these points. All Monday morning in the woods again. Afternoon, out with the drawing party; I felt the evils of the want of conventional refinement23, in the impudence with which one of the girls treated me. She has since thought of it with regret, I notice; and by every day’s observation of me will see that she ought not to have done it. In the evening a husking in the barn . . . a most picturesque scene. . . . I stayed and helped about half an hour, and then took a long walk beneath the stars. Wednesday. . . . In the evening a conversation on Impulse. . . . I defended nature, as I always do;— the spirit ascending148 through, not superseding149, nature. But in the scale of Sense, Intellect, Spirit, I advocated the claims of Intellect, because those present were rather disposed to postpone150 them. On the nature of Beauty we had good talk. —— seemed in a much more reverent151 humour than the other night, and enjoyed the large plans of the universe which were unrolled. . . . Saturday,— Well, good-bye, Brook Farm. I know more about this place than I did when I came; but the only way to be qualified152 for a judge of such an experiment would be to become an active, though unimpassioned, associate in trying it. . . . The girl who was so rude to me stood waiting, with a timid air, to bid me good-bye.”
The young girl in question cannot have been Hawthorne’s charming Priscilla; nor yet another young lady, of a most humble153 spirit, who communicated to Margaret’s biographers her recollections of this remarkable woman’s visits to Brook Farm; concluding with the assurance that “after a while she seemed to lose sight of my more prominent and disagreeable peculiarities154, and treated me with affectionate regard.”
Hawthorne’s farewell to the place appears to have been accompanied with some reflections of a cast similar to those indicated by Miss Fuller; in so far at least as we may attribute to Hawthorne himself some of the observations that he fathers upon Miles Coverdale. His biographer justly quotes two or three sentences from The Blithedale Romance, as striking the note of the author’s feeling about the place. “No sagacious man,” says Coverdale, “will long retain his sagacity if he live exclusively among reformers and progressive people, without periodically returning to the settled system of things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old standpoint.” And he remarks elsewhere that “it struck me as rather odd that one of the first questions raised, after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world, should relate to the possibility of getting the advantage over the outside barbarians155 in their own field of labour. But to tell the truth, I very soon became sensible that, as regarded society at large, we stood in a position of new hostility156 rather than new brotherhood157.” He was doubtless oppressed by the “sultry heat of society,” as he calls it in one of the jottings in the Note–Books. “What would a man do if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?” His biographer relates that one of the other Brook Farmers, wandering afield one summer’s day, discovered Hawthorne stretched at his length upon a grassy158 hillside, with his hat pulled over his face, and every appearance, in his attitude, of the desire to escape detection. On his asking him whether he had any particular reason for this shyness of posture159 —“Too much of a party up there!” Hawthorne contented160 himself with replying, with a nod in the direction of the Hive. He had nevertheless for a time looked forward to remaining indefinitely in the community; he meant to marry as soon as possible and bring his wife there to live. Some sixty pages of the second volume of the American Note–Books are occupied with extracts from his letters to his future wife and from his journal (which appears however at this time to have been only intermittent), consisting almost exclusively of descriptions of the simple scenery of the neighbourhood, and of the state of the woods and fields and weather. Hawthorne’s fondness for all the common things of nature was deep and constant, and there is always something charming in his verbal touch, as we may call it, when he talks to himself about them. “Oh,” he breaks out, of an October afternoon, “the beauty of grassy slopes, and the hollow ways of paths winding161 between hills, and the intervals162 between the road and wood-lots, where Summer lingers and sits down, strewing163 dandelions of gold and blue asters as her parting gifts and memorials!” He was but a single summer at Brook Farm; the rest of his residence had the winter-quality.
But if he returned to solitude, it was henceforth to be as the French say, a solitude à deux. He was married in July 1842, and betook himself immediately to the ancient village of Concord, near Boston, where he occupied the so-called Manse which has given the title to one of his collections of tales, and upon which this work, in turn, has conferred a permanent distinction. I use the epithets165 “ancient” and “near” in the foregoing sentence, according to the American measurement of time and distance. Concord is some twenty miles from Boston, and even to day, upwards166 of forty years after the date of Hawthorne’s removal thither167, it is a very fresh and well-preserved looking town. It had already a local history when, a hundred years ago, the larger current of human affairs flowed for a moment around it. Concord has the honour of being the first spot in which blood was shed in the war of the Revolution; here occurred the first exchange of musket-shots between the King’s troops and the American insurgents168. Here, as Emerson says in the little hymn169 which he contributed in 1836 to the dedication170 of a small monument commemorating171 this circumstance —
“Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
The battle was a small one, and the farmers were not destined172 individually to emerge from obscurity; but the memory of these things has kept the reputation of Concord green, and it has been watered, moreover, so to speak, by the life-long presence there of one of the most honoured of American men of letters — the poet from whom I just quoted two lines. Concord is indeed in itself decidedly verdant173, and is an excellent specimen129 of a New England village of the riper sort. At the time of Hawthorne’s first going there it must have been an even better specimen than today — more homogeneous, more indigenous174, more absolutely democratic. Forty years ago the tide of foreign immigration had scarcely begun to break upon the rural strongholds of the New England race; it had at most begun to splash them with the salt Hibernian spray. It is very possible, however, that at this period there was not an Irishman in Concord; the place would have been a village community operating in excellent conditions. Such a village community was not the least honourable175 item in the sum of New England civilisation. Its spreading elms and plain white houses, its generous summers and ponderous176 winters, its immediate164 background of promiscuous177 field and forest, would have been part of the composition. For the rest, there were the selectmen and the town-meetings, the town-schools and the self-governing spirit, the rigid178 morality, the friendly and familiar manners, the perfect competence179 of the little society to manage its affairs itself. In the delightful introduction to the Mosses180, Hawthorne has given an account of his dwelling181, of his simple occupations and recreations, and of some of the characteristics of the place. The Manse is a large, square wooden house, to the surface of which — even in the dry New England air, so unfriendly to mosses and lichens182 and weather-stains, and the other elements of a picturesque complexion183 — a hundred and fifty years of exposure have imparted a kind of tone, standing just above the slow-flowing Concord river, and approached by a short avenue of over-arching trees. It had been the dwelling-place of generations of Presbyterian ministers, ancestors of the celebrated184 Emerson, who had himself spent his early manhood and written some of his most beautiful essays there. “He used,” as Hawthorne says, “to watch the Assyrian dawn, and Paphian sunset and moonrise, from the summit of our eastern hill.” From its clerical occupants the place had inherited a mild mustiness of theological association — a vague reverberation of old Calvinistic sermons, which served to deepen its extra-mundane and somnolent185 quality. The three years that Hawthorne passed here were, I should suppose, among the happiest of his life. The future was indeed not in any special manner assured; but the present was sufficiently186 genial187. In the American Note–Books there is a charming passage (too long to quote) descriptive of the entertainment the new couple found in renovating188 and re-furnishing the old parsonage, which, at the time of their going into it, was given up to ghosts and cobwebs. Of the little drawing-room, which had been most completely reclaimed189, he writes that “the shade of our departed host will never haunt it; for its aspect has been as completely changed as the scenery of a theatre. Probably the ghost gave one peep into it, uttered a groan190, and vanished for ever.” This departed host was a certain Doctor Ripley, a venerable scholar, who left behind him a reputation of learning and sanctity which was reproduced in one of the ladies of his family, long the most distinguished woman in the little Concord circle. Doctor Ripley’s predecessor191 had been, I believe, the last of the line of the Emerson ministers — an old gentleman who, in the earlier years of his pastorate, stood at the window of his study (the same in which Hawthorne handled a more irresponsible quill) watching, with his hands under his long coat-tails, the progress of Concord fight. It is not by any means related, however, I should add, that he waited for the conclusion to make up his mind which was the righteous cause.
Hawthorne had a little society (as much, we may infer, as he desired), and it was excellent in quality. But the pages in the Note–Books which relate to his life at the Manse, and the introduction to the Mosses, make more of his relations with vegetable nature, and of his customary contemplation of the incidents of wood-path and way-side, than of the human elements of the scene; though these also are gracefully192 touched upon. These pages treat largely of the pleasures of a kitchen-garden, of the beauty of summer-squashes, and of the mysteries of apple-raising. With the wholesome193 aroma of apples (as is indeed almost necessarily the case in any realistic record of New England rural life) they are especially pervaded; and with many other homely and domestic emanations; all of which derive194 a sweetness from the medium of our author’s colloquial195 style. Hawthorne was silent with his lips; but he talked with his pen. The tone of his writing is often that of charming talk — ingenious, fanciful, slow-flowing, with all the lightness of gossip, and none of its vulgarity. In the preface to the tales written at the Manse he talks of many things and just touches upon some of the members of his circle — especially upon that odd genius, his fellow-villager, Henry Thoreau. I said a little way back that the New England Transcendental movement had suffered in the estimation of the world at large from not having (putting Emerson aside) produced any superior talents. But any reference to it would be ungenerous which should omit to pay a tribute in passing to the author of Walden. Whatever question there may be of his talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked196 one; but it was eminently197 personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial95 — he was parochial; it is only at his best that he is readable. But at his best he has an extreme natural charm, and he must always be mentioned after those Americans — Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Motley — who have written originally. He was Emerson’s independent moral man made flesh — living for the ages, and not for Saturday and Sunday; for the Universe, and not for Concord. In fact, however, Thoreau lived for Concord very effectually, and by his remarkable genius for the observation of the phenomena198 of woods and streams, of plants and trees, and beasts and fishes, and for flinging a kind of spiritual interest over these things, he did more than he perhaps intended toward consolidating199 the fame of his accidental human sojourn200. He was as shy and ungregarious as Hawthorne; but he and the latter appear to have been sociably201 disposed towards each other, and there are some charming touches in the preface to the Mosses in regard to the hours they spent in boating together on the large, quiet Concord river. Thoreau was a great voyager, in a canoe which he had constructed himself, and which he eventually made over to Hawthorne, and as expert in the use of the paddle as the Red men who had once haunted the same silent stream. The most frequent of Hawthorne’s companions on these excursions appears, however, to have been a local celebrity202 — as well as Thoreau a high Transcendentalist — Mr. Ellery Channing, whom I may mention, since he is mentioned very explicitly203 in the preface to the Mosses, and also because no account of the little Concord world would be complete which should omit him. He was the son of the distinguished Unitarian moralist, and, I believe, the intimate friend of Thoreau, whom he resembled in having produced literary compositions more esteemed204 by the few than by the many. He and Hawthorne were both fishermen, and the two used to set themselves afloat in the summer afternoons. “Strange and happy times were those,” exclaims the more distinguished of the two writers, “when we cast aside all irksome forms and strait-laced habitudes, and delivered ourselves up to the free air, to live like the Indians or any less conventional race, during one bright semicircle of the sun. Rowing our boat against the current, between wide meadows, we turned aside into the Assabeth. A more lovely stream than this, for a mile above its junction205 with the Concord, has never flowed on earth — nowhere indeed except to lave the interior regions of a poet’s imagination. . . . It comes flowing softly through the midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood which whispers it to be quiet; while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy borders, as if river and wood were hushing one another to sleep. Yes; the river sleeps along its course and dreams of the sky and the clustering foliage206. . . . ” While Hawthorne was looking at these beautiful things, or, for that matter, was writing them, he was well out of the way of a certain class of visitants whom he alludes207 to in one of the closing passages of this long Introduction. “Never was a poor little country village infested208 with such a variety of queer, strangely-dressed, oddly-behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves to be important agents of the world’s destiny, yet were simply bores of a very intense character.” “These hobgoblins of flesh and blood,” he says in a preceding paragraph, “were attracted thither by the wide-spreading influence of a great original thinker who had his earthly abode209 at the opposite extremity210 of our village. . . . People that had lighted on a new thought or a thought they fancied new, came to Emerson, as the finder of a glittering gem19 hastens to a lapidary211, to ascertain212 its quality and value.” And Hawthorne enumerates213 some of the categories of pilgrims to the shrine214 of the mystic counsellor, who as a general thing was probably far from abounding215 in their own sense (when this sense was perverted), but gave them a due measure of plain practical advice. The whole passage is interesting, and it suggests that little Concord had not been ill-treated by the fates — with “a great original thinker” at one end of the village, an exquisite teller216 of tales at the other, and the rows of New England elms between. It contains moreover an admirable sentence about Hawthorne’s pilgrim-haunted neighbour, with whom, “being happy,” as he says, and feeling therefore “as if there were no question to be put,” he was not in metaphysical communion. “It was good nevertheless to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffused217 about his presence, like the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension91, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he could impart!” One may without indiscretion risk the surmise218 that Hawthorne’s perception, of the “shining” element in his distinguished friend was more intense than his friend’s appreciation219 of whatever luminous220 property might reside within the somewhat dusky envelope of our hero’s identity as a collector of “mosses.” Emerson, as a sort of spiritual sun-worshipper, could have attached but a moderate value to Hawthorne’s cat-like faculty221 of seeing in the dark.
“As to the daily coarse of our life,” the latter writes in the spring of 1843, “I have written with pretty commendable222 diligence, averaging from two to four hours a day; and the result is seen in various magazines. I might have written more if it had seemed worth while, but I was content to earn only so much gold as might suffice for our immediate wants, having prospect of official station and emolument223 which would do away with the necessity of writing for bread. These prospects224 have not yet had their fulfilment; and we are well content to wait, for an office would inevitably225 remove us from our present happy home — at least from an outward home; for there is an inner one that will accompany us wherever we go. Meantime, the magazine people do not pay their debts; so that we taste some of the inconveniences of poverty. It is an annoyance226, not a trouble.” And he goes on to give some account of his usual habits. (The passage is from his Journal, and the account is given to himself, as it were, with that odd, unfamiliar explicitness227 which marks the tone of this record throughout.) “Every day I trudge228 through snow and slosh to the village, look into the post-office, and spend an hour at the reading-room; and then return home, generally without having spoken a word to any human being. . . . In the way of exercise I saw and split wood, and physically229 I was never in a better condition than now.” He adds a mention of an absence he had lately made. “I went alone to Salem, where I resumed all my bachelor habits for nearly a fortnight, leading the same life in which ten years of my youth flitted away like a dream. But how much changed was I! At last I had got hold of a reality which never could be taken from me. It was good thus to get apart from my happiness for the sake of contemplating230 it.”
These compositions, which were so unpunctually paid for, appeared in the Democratic Review, a periodical published at Washington, and having, as our author’s biographer says, “considerable pretensions to a national character.” It is to be regretted that the practice of keeping its creditors231 waiting should, on the part of the magazine in question, have been thought compatible with these pretensions. The foregoing lines are a description of a very monotonous but a very contented life, and Mr. Lathrop justly remarks upon the dissonance of tone of the tales Hawthorne produced under these happy circumstances. It is indeed not a little of an anomaly. The episode of the Manse was one of the most agreeable he had known, and yet the best of the Mosses (though not the greater number of them) are singularly dismal232 compositions. They are redolent of M. Montégut’s pessimism233. “The reality of sin, the pervasiveness234 of evil,” says Mr. Lathrop, “had been but slightly insisted upon in the earlier tales: in this series the idea bursts up like a long-buried fire, with earth-shaking strength, and the pits of hell seem yawning beneath us.” This is very true (allowing for Mr. Lathrop’s rather too emphatic235 way of putting it); but the anomaly is, I think, on the whole, only superficial. Our writer’s imagination, as has been abundantly conceded, was a gloomy one; the old Puritan sense of sin, of penalties to be paid, of the darkness and wickedness of life, had, as I have already suggested, passed into it. It had not passed into the parts of Hawthorne’s nature corresponding to those occupied by the same horrible vision of things in his ancestors; but it had still been determined236 to claim this later comer as its own, and since his heart and his happiness were to escape, it insisted on setting its mark upon his genius — upon his most beautiful organ, his admirable fancy. It may be said that when his fancy was strongest and keenest, when it was most itself, then the dark Puritan tinge showed in it most richly; and there cannot be a better proof that he was not the man of a sombre parti-pris whom M. Montégut describes, than the fact that these duskiest flowers of his invention sprang straight from the soil of his happiest days. This surely indicates that there was but little direct connection between the products of his fancy and the state of his affections. When he was lightest at heart, he was most creative, and when he was most creative, the moral picturesqueness237 of the old secret of mankind in general and of the Puritans in particular, most appealed to him — the secret that we are really not by any means so good as a well-regulated society requires us to appear. It is not too much to say, even, that the very condition of production of some of these unamiable tales would be that they should be superficial, and, as it were, insincere. The magnificent little romance of Young Goodman Brown, for instance, evidently means nothing as regards Hawthorne’s own state of mind, his conviction of human depravity and his consequent melancholy; for the simple reason that if it meant anything, it would mean too much. Mr. Lathrop speaks of it as a “terrible and lurid238 parable239;” but this, it seems to me, is just what it is not. It is not a parable, but a picture, which is a very different thing. What does M. Montégut make, one would ask, from the point of view of Hawthorne’s pessimism, of the singularly objective and unpreoccupied tone of the Introduction to the Old Manse, in which the author speaks from himself, and in which the cry of metaphysical despair is not even faintly sounded?
We have seen that when he went into the village he often came home without having spoken a word to a human being. There is a touching entry made a little later, bearing upon his mild taciturnity. “A cloudy veil stretches across the abyss of my nature. I have, however, no love of secrecy240 and darkness. I am glad to think that God sees through my heart, and if any angel has power to penetrate241 into it, he is welcome to know everything that is there. Yes, and so may any mortal who is capable of full sympathy, and therefore worthy242 to come into my depths. But he must find his own way there; I can neither guide nor enlighten him.” It must be acknowledged, however, that if he was not able to open the gate of conversation, it was sometimes because he was disposed to slide the bolt himself. “I had a purpose,” he writes, shortly before the entry last quoted, “if circumstances would permit, of passing the whole term of my wife’s absence without speaking a word to any human being.” He beguiled243 these incommunicative periods by studying German, in Tieck and Bürger, without apparently244 making much progress; also in reading French, in Voltaire and Rabelais. “Just now,” he writes, one October noon, “I heard a sharp tapping at the window of my study, and, looking up from my book (a volume of Rabelais), behold245, the head of a little bird, who seemed to demand admittance.” It was a quiet life, of course, in which these diminutive246 incidents seemed noteworthy; and what is noteworthy here to the observer of Hawthorne’s contemplative simplicity247, is the fact that though he finds a good deal to say about the little bird (he devotes several lines more to it) he makes no remark upon Rabelais. He had other visitors than little birds, however, and their demands were also not Rabelaisian. Thoreau comes to see him, and they talk “upon the spiritual advantages of change of place, and upon the Dial, and upon Mr. Alcott, and other kindred or concatenated248 subjects.” Mr. Alcott was an arch-transcendentalist, living in Concord, and the Dial was a periodical to which the illuminated249 spirits of Boston and its neighbourhood used to contribute. Another visitor comes and talks “of Margaret Fuller, who, he says, has risen perceptibly into a higher state since their last meeting.” There is probably a great deal of Concord five-and-thirty years ago in that little sentence!
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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enthusiasts
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| n.热心人，热衷者( enthusiast的名词复数 ) | |
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amiability
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| n.和蔼可亲的，亲切的，友善的 | |
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pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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par
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| n.标准，票面价值，平均数量；adj.票面的，平常的，标准的 | |
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coterie
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| n.(有共同兴趣的)小团体，小圈子 | |
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radicalism
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| n. 急进主义, 根本的改革主义 | |
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radicals
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| n.激进分子( radical的名词复数 )；根基；基本原理；[数学]根数 | |
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tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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gem
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| n.宝石，珠宝；受爱戴的人 [同]jewel | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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avert
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| v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等) | |
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refinements
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| n.（生活）风雅；精炼( refinement的名词复数 )；改良品；细微的改良；优雅或高贵的动作 | |
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refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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diffuse
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| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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appreciative
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| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
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reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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impoverished
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| adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化 | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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tragical
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| adj. 悲剧的, 悲剧性的 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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concord
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| n.和谐；协调 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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scowled
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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reverberation
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| 反响； 回响； 反射； 反射物 | |
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democrat
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员 | |
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muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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60
gregarious
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| adj.群居的，喜好群居的 | |
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61
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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62
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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63
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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64
afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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66
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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67
adumbration
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| n.预示，预兆 | |
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68
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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69
irreproachable
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| adj.不可指责的，无过失的 | |
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70
concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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71
sprouted
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| v.发芽( sprout的过去式和过去分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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72
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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73
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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74
eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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75
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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76
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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77
sylvan
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| adj.森林的 | |
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78
conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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79
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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80
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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81
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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82
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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83
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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84
agitations
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| （液体等的）摇动( agitation的名词复数 )； 鼓动； 激烈争论； （情绪等的）纷乱 | |
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85
aroma
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| n.香气，芬芳，芳香 | |
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86
initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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87
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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88
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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89
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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90
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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91
pretension
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| n.要求；自命，自称；自负 | |
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92
jealousies
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| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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93
snobbishness
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| 势利； 势利眼 | |
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94
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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95
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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96
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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97
excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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98
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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99
impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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100
dole
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| n.救济，（失业）救济金；vt.（out）发放，发给 | |
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101
morsels
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| n.一口( morsel的名词复数 )；（尤指食物）小块，碎屑 | |
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102
subscription
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| n.预订，预订费，亲笔签名，调配法，下标（处方） | |
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103
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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104
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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105
attestation
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| n.证词 | |
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106
supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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107
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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108
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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109
bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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110
diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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111
oracles
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| 神示所( oracle的名词复数 )； 神谕； 圣贤； 哲人 | |
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112
provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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113
aspiring
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| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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114
fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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115
intoxication
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| n.wild excitement;drunkenness；poisoning | |
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116
sentient
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| adj.有知觉的，知悉的；adv.有感觉能力地 | |
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117
orations
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| n.（正式仪式中的）演说，演讲( oration的名词复数 ) | |
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118
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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119
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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120
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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121
modulation
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| n.调制 | |
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122
diversify
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| v.（使）不同，（使）变得多样化 | |
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123
vampire
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| n.吸血鬼 | |
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124
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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125
inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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126
dissecting
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| v.解剖（动物等）( dissect的现在分词 )；仔细分析或研究 | |
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127
posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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128
satirist
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| n.讽刺诗作者，讽刺家，爱挖苦别人的人 | |
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129
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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130
specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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131
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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132
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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133
sketching
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| n.草图 | |
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134
bucolic
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| adj.乡村的；牧羊的 | |
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135
denizens
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| n.居民，住户( denizen的名词复数 ) | |
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136
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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137
sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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138
ballads
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| 民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴 | |
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139
delegations
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| n.代表团( delegation的名词复数 )；委托，委派 | |
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140
waggons
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| 四轮的运货马车( waggon的名词复数 )； 铁路货车； 小手推车 | |
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141
delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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142
stainless
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| adj.无瑕疵的，不锈的 | |
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143
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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144
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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145
deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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146
animation
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| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
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147
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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148
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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149
superseding
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| 取代，接替( supersede的现在分词 ) | |
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150
postpone
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| v.延期，推迟 | |
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151
reverent
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| adj.恭敬的，虔诚的 | |
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152
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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153
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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154
peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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155
barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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156
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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157
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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158
grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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159
posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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160
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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161
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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162
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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163
strewing
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| v.撒在…上( strew的现在分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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164
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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165
epithets
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| n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 ) | |
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166
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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167
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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168
insurgents
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| n.起义，暴动，造反( insurgent的名词复数 ) | |
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169
hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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170
dedication
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| n.奉献，献身，致力，题献，献辞 | |
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171
commemorating
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| v.纪念，庆祝( commemorate的现在分词 ) | |
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172
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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173
verdant
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| adj.翠绿的，青翠的，生疏的，不老练的 | |
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174
indigenous
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| adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的 | |
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175
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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176
ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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177
promiscuous
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| adj.杂乱的，随便的 | |
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178
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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179
competence
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| n.能力，胜任，称职 | |
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180
mosses
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| n. 藓类, 苔藓植物 名词moss的复数形式 | |
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181
dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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182
lichens
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| n.地衣( lichen的名词复数 ) | |
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183
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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184
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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185
somnolent
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| adj.想睡的，催眠的；adv.瞌睡地；昏昏欲睡地；使人瞌睡地 | |
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186
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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187
genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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188
renovating
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| 翻新，修复，整修( renovate的现在分词 ) | |
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189
reclaimed
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| adj.再生的；翻造的；收复的；回收的v.开拓( reclaim的过去式和过去分词 )；要求收回；从废料中回收（有用的材料）；挽救 | |
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190
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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191
predecessor
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| n.前辈，前任 | |
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192
gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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193
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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194
derive
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| v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自 | |
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195
colloquial
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| adj.口语的，会话的 | |
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196
crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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197
eminently
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| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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198
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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199
consolidating
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| v.（使）巩固， （使）加强( consolidate的现在分词 )；（使）合并 | |
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200
sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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201
sociably
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| adv.成群地 | |
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202
celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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203
explicitly
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| ad.明确地，显然地 | |
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204
esteemed
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| adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 )；敬重；认为；以为 | |
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205
junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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206
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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207
alludes
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| 提及，暗指( allude的第三人称单数 ) | |
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208
infested
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| adj.为患的，大批滋生的（常与with搭配）v.害虫、野兽大批出没于( infest的过去式和过去分词 )；遍布于 | |
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209
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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210
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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211
lapidary
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| n.宝石匠；adj.宝石的；简洁优雅的 | |
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212
ascertain
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| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
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213
enumerates
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| v.列举，枚举，数( enumerate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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214
shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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215
abounding
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| adj.丰富的，大量的v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的现在分词 ) | |
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216
teller
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| n.银行出纳员；(选举)计票员 | |
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217
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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218
surmise
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| v./n.猜想，推测 | |
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219
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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220
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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221
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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222
commendable
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| adj.值得称赞的 | |
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223
emolument
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| n.报酬，薪水 | |
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224
prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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225
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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226
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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227
explicitness
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228
trudge
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| v.步履艰难地走；n.跋涉，费力艰难的步行 | |
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229
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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230
contemplating
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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231
creditors
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| n.债权人，债主( creditor的名词复数 ) | |
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232
dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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233
pessimism
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| n.悲观者，悲观主义者，厌世者 | |
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234
pervasiveness
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| n.无处不在，遍布 | |
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235
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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236
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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237
picturesqueness
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238
lurid
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| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
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239
parable
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| n.寓言，比喻 | |
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240
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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241
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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242
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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243
beguiled
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| v.欺骗( beguile的过去式和过去分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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244
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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245
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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246
diminutive
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| adj.小巧可爱的，小的 | |
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247
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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248
concatenated
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| v.把 （一系列事件、事情等）联系起来( concatenate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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249
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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