n was merely a possibility. In the Puritan religion, believers dutifully recognized the negative aspects of their humanity rather than the gifts they possessed. (Preston Harper, 2000 April) This shadow of distrust would have a direct influence on early American New England and on many of its historians and writers, one of which was Nathaniel Hawthorne.Major writers include Nathaniel Hawthorn, James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving. Because Hawthorn is the central figure of American Romanticism, this paper will concentrate on him and his works.
             2. Biographical background of Hawthorn¡ªa familial puritan tradition.
             Born in a family with Puritan tradition in England and although he himself was not a Puritan, Hawthorne could not escape the influence of Puritan society, not only from residing with his father's devout Puritan family as a child but also due to Hawthorne's study of his own family history. The first of his ancestors, William Hathorne, is described in Hawthorne's "The Custom House" as arriving with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 "with his Bible and his sword"(Nathaniel Hawthorn, 1979:26). A further connection can also be seen in his more notable ancestor John Hathorne, who exemplified the level of zealousness in Puritanism with his role as persecutor in the Salem Witch Trials.
             3. Puritan influence on Hawthorn¡¯s writing
             3.1.General religious characteristics in Hawthorn¡¯s writing
             The influence of Puritan religion, culture and education along with the setting of his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts, is a common topic in Nathaniel Hawthorne's works. Puritan style speculation penetrates every line of his writing and a Puritan thinking framework restricted his choice of themes. Different from those Puritan writers who customarily takes a direct moral-teaching approach, Hawthorn conveys implicitly his religious thought in his novels by those natural and eternal
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