Mr. Copeland spoke last evening in Sever 11 on "The Life and Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne."

Mr. Copeland began the lecture by stating briefly the birth, lineage and circumstances of the author of "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven Gables," "The Blithedale Romance," and "The Marble Faun," Hawthorne was descended from William Hathorne, who came over to New England with Governor Winthrop. Both this first American ancestor and his son John were men of mark in the little colony. But they were also infamously noted, one for causing Shaker women to be whipped, the other for his cruel treatment of the Salem witches. John Hathorne, it is credibly reported, was cursed by one of the victims of his cruelty, and popular superstition always believed that prosperity left the Hathornes from that hour and on account of that curse. True it is, at all events, that from the time of John Hathorne down through a long line of Salem-dwelling and seafaring descendants to the time of Nathaniel, who added a "w" to the family name and genius to the family possessions, nothing like good luck had visited the race.

Mr. Henry James, in his brief biography of Hawthorne, has lamented the bleakness and restriction of the New England environment, and has implied that richer and more complex surroundings and a more diversified experience of the world, would have strengthened the romancer's; genius in some of its most important elements. On the contrary, said Mr. Copeland, what could be more fortunate for a writer of romances, as distinguished from solidly founded novels of contemporary life, than a single and definite tradition, a homogeneous descent, and an imaginative sympathy with the bleak but stimulating past of his own country.

Mr. Copeland said a few words about each of the four famous novels, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun. The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne's masterpiece, and is, in the lecturer's opinion, the greatest literary work of the imagination produced on this side of the water. The Blithedale Romance differs from all of Hawthorne's other works in containing Zenobia, the one dramatically conceived and completely expressed character which this author has offered us. But in many of their traits both the novels and the shorter tales are alike. The sense of sin is the cardinal motive and the dominant quality of all Hawthorne's work. But his treatment of sin never strikes upon the conscience. He uses the conscience rather as a fantastic yet serious play ground for his genius. He is the chief American man of letters. In order to write what he did, and as he did, it was necessary to be a master of style, a genius, and an American.