Editing Mosses from an Old Manse (section)

==Analysis==
Many of the tales collected in ''Mosses from an Old Manse'' are [[allegory|allegories]] and, typical of Hawthorne, focus on the negative side of human nature. Hawthorne's friend [[Herman Melville]] noted this aspect in his review "[[Hawthorne and His Mosses]]":
{{blockquote|This black conceit pervades him through and through. You may be witched by his sunlight,—transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds over you; but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his bright gildings but fringe and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds.<ref>{{cite book|author= Crew, Frederick|title= The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes|location= Berkeley|publisher= University of California Press|date= 1989|page= [https://archive.org/details/sinsoffathershaw1881crew/page/8 8]|isbn= 0-520-06817-3|url= https://archive.org/details/sinsoffathershaw1881crew/page/8}}</ref>}}

[[William Henry Channing]] noted in his review of the collection, in ''[[The Phalanx|The Harbinger]]'',  its author "had been baptized in the deep waters of ''Tragedy''", and his work was dark with only brief moments of "serene brightness" which was never brighter than "dusky twilight".<ref>{{cite book|author= Delano, Sterling F.|title= Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia|location= Cambridge, Massachusetts|publisher= The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press|date= 2004|pages= [https://archive.org/details/brookfarm00ster/page/233 233–234]|isbn= 0-674-01160-0|url= https://archive.org/details/brookfarm00ster/page/233}}</ref>