



Produced by David Widger.  HTML version by Al Haines.









                     MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE

                      By Nathaniel Hawthorne

                       THE HALL OF FANTASY



It has happened to me, on various occasions, to find myself
in a certain edifice which would appear to have some of the
characteristics of a public exchange.  Its interior is a spacious
hall, with a pavement of white marble.  Overhead is a lofty dome,
supported by long rows of pillars of fantastic architecture, the
idea of which was probably taken from the Moorish ruins of the
Alhambra, or perhaps from some enchanted edifice in the Arabian
tales.  The windows of this hall have a breadth and grandeur of
design and an elaborateness of workmanship that have nowhere been
equalled, except in the Gothic cathedrals of the Old World.  Like
their prototypes, too, they admit the light of heaven only through
stained and pictured glass, thus filling the hall with many-colored
radiance and painting its marble floor with beautiful or grotesque
designs; so that its inmates breathe, as it were, a visionary
atmosphere, and tread upon the fantasies of poetic minds.  These
peculiarities, combining a wilder mixture of styles than even an
American architect usually recognizes as allowable,--Grecian,
Gothic, Oriental, and nondescript,--cause the whole edifice to give
the impression of a dream, which might be dissipated and shattered
to fragments by merely stamping the foot upon the pavement.  Yet,
with such modifications and repairs as successive ages demand, the
Hall of Fantasy is likely to endure longer than the most substantial
structure that ever cumbered the earth.

It is not at all times that one can gain admittance into this
edifice, although most persons enter it at some period or other of
their lives; if not in their waking moments, then by the universal
passport of a dream.  At my last visit I wandered thither unawares
while my mind was busy with an idle tale, and was startled by the
throng of people who seemed suddenly to rise up around me.

"Bless me!  Where am I?" cried I, with but a dim recognition of the
place.

"You are in a spot," said a friend who chanced to be near at hand,
"which occupies in the world of fancy the same position which the
Bourse, the Rialto, and the Exchange do in the commercial world.
All who have affairs in that mystic region, which lies above, below,
or beyond the actual, may here meet and talk over the business of
their dreams."

"It is a noble hall," observed I.

"Yes," he replied.  "Yet we see but a small portion of the edifice.
In its upper stories are said to be apartments where the inhabitants
of earth may hold converse with those of the moon; and beneath our
feet are gloomy cells, which communicate with the infernal regions,
and where monsters and chimeras are kept in confinement and fed with
all unwholesomeness."

In niches and on pedestals around about the hall stood the statues
or busts of men who in every age have been rulers and demigods in
the realms of imagination and its kindred regions. The grand old
countenance of Homer; the shrunken and decrepit form but vivid face
of AEsop; the dark presence of Dante; the wild Ariosto; Rabelais's
smile of deep-wrought mirth, the profound, pathetic humor of
Cervantes; the all-glorious Shakespeare; Spenser, meet guest for an
allegoric structure; the severe divinity of Milton; and Bunyan,
moulded of homeliest clay, but instinct with celestial fire,--were
those that chiefly attracted my eye.  Fielding, Richardson, and
Scott occupied conspicuous pedestals.  In an obscure and shadowy
niche was deposited the bust of our countryman, the author of Arthur
Mervyn.

"Besides these indestructible memorials of real genius," remarked my
companion, "each century has erected statues of its own ephemeral
favorites in wood."

"I observe a few crumbling relics of such," said I.  "But ever and
anon, I suppose, Oblivion comes with her huge broom and sweeps them
all from the marble floor.  But such will never be the fate of this
fine statue of Goethe."

"Nor of that next to it,--Emanuel Swedenborg," said he.  "Were ever
two men of transcendent imagination more unlike?"

In the centre of the hall springs an ornamental fountain, the water
of which continually throws itself into new shapes and snatches the
most diversified lines from the stained atmosphere around.  It is
impossible to conceive what a strange vivacity is imparted to the
scene by the magic dance of this fountain, with its endless
transform