Tone

tone: similar to mood, tone describes the author's attitude toward his or her material, the audience, or both. Tone is easier to determine in spoken than in written language

"Alas, poor Clifford! You are old, and worn with troubles that ought never to have befallen you. You are partly crazy, and partly imbecile; a ruin, a failure, as almost everybody is-though some in less degree, or less perceptibly, than their fellows. Fate has no happiness in store for you; unless your quiet home in the old family residence, with the faithful Hepzibah, and your long summer afternoons with Phoebe, and these Sabbath festivals with Uncle Venner and the Daguerreotypist, deserve to be called happiness! Why not? If not the thing itself, it is marvelously like it, and the more so for that ethereal and intangible quality, which causes it all to vanish at too close an introspection. Take it, therefore, while you may! Murmur not- question not- but make the most of it!"
                                                                                    -The House of the Seven Gables
                                                                                           by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne's tone throughout his novel is that of a sympathetic commentator. He feels sorry for Hepzibah and Clifford, they are a dying breed, and the book showcases this transition. However, Hawthorne also speaks highly of, and has a sort of hopeful tone with, Phoebe and the Daguerreotypist. This is to show what the future holds. He is communicating that the societal classes and all of their pomp and circumstance are passing away, while a new vibrant love for all and equality for all is being born. He wants the reader to rejoice in this, but not scorn the old, therefore adopting the admiring and sympathetic tones.