in gushes of sad, persuasive eloquence.  Oftenest persuasive, but sometimes terrible!  The people knew not the power that moved them thus.  They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness.  They fancied him the mouth-piece of Heaven’s messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love.  In their eyes, the very ground on which he trod was sanctified.  The virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims of a passion so imbued with religious sentiment, that they imagined it to be all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as their most acceptable sacrifice before the altar.  The aged members of his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale’s frame so feeble, while they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would go heavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children that their old bones should be buried close to their young pastor’s holy grave.  And all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!

It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him.  It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow-like, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their life.  Then what was he?—­a substance?—­or the dimmest of all shadows?  He longed to speak out from his own pulpit at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was.  “I, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood—­I, who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion in your behalf with the Most High Omniscience—­I, in whose daily life you discern the sanctity of Enoch—­I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the Pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided to the regions of the blest—­I, who have laid the hand of baptism upon your children—­I, who have breathed the parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen sounded faintly from a world which they had quitted—­I, your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!”

More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose never to come down its steps until he should have spoken words like the above.  More than once he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul.  More than once—­nay, more than a hundred times—­he had actually spoken!  Spoken!  But how?  He had told his hearers that he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity, and that the only wonder was that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes by the burning wrath of the Almighty!  Could there be plainer speech