Abstract
T HE SKETCH Fire Worship, which Hawthorne contributed to the Democratic Review in December, i843, and then included in Mosses from an Old Manse three years later, has had only one enthusiastic admirer. Was ever the hearth so glorified into an altar before ? challenged Herman Melville, reviewing the Mosses in the Literary World.' It is not at once apparent what caught the attention of this first critic; one is hardly suprised that later commentators ignored the piece as another of Hawthorne's exercises in the vogue made popular by Irving, admirable perhaps for limpid style and cultivated whimsy, but no more. Yet Hawthorne, as Melville warned, is least to be trusted when he seems most transparent.2 Fire Worship is more interesting than first appears. Patently, it is a bit of humorous complaint against the introduction of stoves to replace the cheery open fireplace. Hawthorne plays upon this little domestic theme with ingenuity and charm, and seems to be giving it a deliberate comic dignity by the pretended gravity of his mood and the loftiness of his observations:
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