The Hawthorne Centenary Celebration. (Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., Boston, U.S.A.
5s. net.)—This "celebration" was held at the 'Wayside.' Concord, Massachusetts, on July 4th-Ith in 1904. The 'Wayside' once belonged to Amos Bronson Alcott. Hawthorne pur- chased it in 1852. There have been other changes of ownership ; but the genius loci has been duly honoured; and there was probably nothing that could offend those who best remembered Hawthorne when they attended this commemorative ceremony. Here we have the addresses given and the letters received on the occasion. Of these it is sufficient to say that they are worthy of the time. We have found the most interesting and informing of the whole number to be that delivered by C. F. Adams, all the more valuable because the speaker never loses what we may call his detachment. The passage (pp. 52-60) on the power of great writers to produce types of character is especially good. It is curiously true that the power was in abeyance for the greater part of the literary history of the world ; that we do not find a type between Homer and Rabelais; that from Hector, Helen, Ajax, and Ulysses we have to jump to Pantagruel, Don Quixote, Hamlet, and Falstaff. Next to Mr. Adams's contribution, while naturally of a wholly different character, we should place that of Julian Hawthorne.
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