A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE

BY

GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. 

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CONTENTS. 

 I. POINT OF VIEW

 II. SALEM

 III. BOYHOOD. --COLLEGE DAYS. --FANSHAWE

 IV. TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES

 V. AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM

 VI. THE OLD MANSE

 VII. THE SCARLET LETTER. 

VIII. LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD

 IX. ENGLAND AND ITALY

 X. THE LAST ROMANCE

 XI. PERSONALITY

 XII. POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE

XIII. THE Loss AND THE GAIN

APPENDIX I. 

APPENDIX II. 

APPENDIX III. 

INDEX

A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE. 

I. 

POINT OF VIEW. 

This book was not designed as a biography, but is rather a portrait. And, to speak more carefully still, it is not so much this, as myconception of what a portrait of Hawthorne should be. For I cannot writewith the authority of one who had known him and had been formallyintrusted with the task of describing his life. On the other hand, I donot enter upon this attempt as a mere literary performance, but havebeen assisted in it by an inward impulse, a consciousness of sympathywith the subject, which I may perhaps consider a sort of inspiration. Myguide has been intuition, confirmed and seldom confuted by research. Perhaps it is even a favoring fact that I should never have seen Mr. Hawthorne; a personality so elusive as his may possibly yield its traitsmore readily to one who can never obtrude actual intercourse betweenhimself and the mind he is meditating upon. An honest report uponpersonal contact always has a value denied to the reviews of after-comers, yet the best criticism and biography is not always that ofcontemporaries. 

Our first studies will have a biographical scope, because a certaingrouping of facts is essential, to give point to the view which I amendeavoring to present; and as Hawthorne's early life has hitherto beenbut little explored, much of the material used in the earlier chaptersis now for the first time made public. The latter portion of the careermay be treated more sketchily, being already better known; thoughpassages will be found throughout the essay which have been developedwith some fulness, in order to maintain a correct atmosphere, compensating any errors which mere opinions might lead to. Specialemphasis, then, must not be held to show neglect of points which myspace and scope prevent my commenting on. But the first outlinerequiring our attention involves a distant retrospect. 

The history of Hawthorne's genius is in some sense a summary of all NewEngland history. 

From amid a simple, practical, energetic community, remarkable for itsactivity in affairs of state and religion, but by no means given todreaming, this fair flower of American genius rose up unexpectedlyenough, breaking the cold New England sod for the emission of a lightand fragrance as pure and pensive as that of the arbutus in our woods, in spring. The flower, however, sprang from seed that rooted in the oldcolonial life of the sternly imaginative pilgrims and Puritans. Thrusting itself up into view through the drift of a later day, it mustnot be confounded with other growths nourished only by that more recentdeposit; though the surface-drift had of course its own weightyinfluence in the nourishment of it. The artistic results of a period ofaction must sometimes be looked for at a point of time long subsequent, and this was especially sure to be so in the first phases of New Englandcivilization. The settlers in this region, in addition to the burdensand obstacles proper to pioneers, had to deal with the cares of forminga model state and of laying out for posterity a straight and solid pathin which it might walk with due rectitude. All this was in itself anample enough subject to occupy their powerful imaginations. They wereenacting a kind of sacred epic, the dangers and the dignity andexaltation of which they felt most fervently. The Bible, the Bay PsalmBook, Bunyan, and Milton, the poems of George Wither, Baxter's Saint'sRest, and some controversial pamphlets, would suffice to appeasewhatever yearnings the immense experiment of their lives failed tosatisfy. Gradually, of course, the native press and new-comers fromEngland multiplied books in a community which held letters in unusualreverence. But the continuous work of subduing a new country, thedependence upon the mother-land for general literature, and finally theexcitements of the Revolutionary period, deferred the opportunity forany aesthetic expression of the forces that had been at work here eversince Winthrop stepped from the Arbella on to the shore of the NewWorld, with noble manliness and sturdy statesmanship enough in him touphold the whole future of a great people. When Hawthorne came, therefore, his utterance was a culmination of the two precedingcenturies. An entire side of the richly endowed human nature to which weowe the high qualities of New England, --a nature which is often soeasily disposed of as meagre, cold, narrow, and austere, --this side, long suppressed and thrown into shade by the more active front, foundexpression at last in these pages so curiously compounded of variouselements, answering to those traits of the past which Hawthorne's geniusrevived. The sensuous substance of the early New England character hadpiously surrendered to the severe maxims which religion and prudenceimposed; and so complete was its suppression, that all this part ofPuritan nature missed recording itself, except by chance glimpsesthrough the history of the times. For this voluntary oblivion it hasbeen rarely compensated in the immortality it meets with throughHawthorne. Not that he set himself with forethought to the illustrationof it; but, in studying as poet and dramatist the past from which hehimself had issued, he sought, naturally, to light it up from theinterior, to possess himself of the very fire which burned in men'sbreasts and set their minds in movement at that epoch. In his own personand his own blood the same elements, the same capabilities stillexisted, however modified or differently ordered. The records ofMassachusetts Bay are full of suggestive incongruities between theideal, single-souled life which its founders hoped to lead, and thejealousies, the opposing opinions, or the intervolved passions ofindividuals and of parties, which sometimes unwittingly cloakedthemselves in religious tenets. Placing himself in the position of thesebeings, then, and conscious of all the strong and various potencies ofemotion which his own nature, inherited from them, held in curb, it wasnatural that Hawthorne should give weight to this contrast between theintense, prisoned life of shut sensibilities and the formal outwardappearance to which it was moulded. This, indeed, is the source ofmotive in much of his writing; notably so in "The Scarlet Letter. " It isthus that his figures get their tremendous and often terrible relief. They are seen as close as we see our faces in a glass, and brought sointimately into our consciousness that the throbbing of their passionssounds like the mysterious, internal beating of our own hearts in ourown ears. And even when he is not dealing directly with themes orsituations closely related to that life, there may be felt in his style, I think, --particularly in that of the "Twice-Told Tales, "--a union ofvigorous freedom, and graceful, shy restraint, a mingling of guardednesswhich verges on severity with a quick and delicately thrilledsensibility for all that is rich and beautiful and generous, which ishis by right of inheritance from the race of Non-conformist colonizers. How subtile and various this sympathy is, between himself and the pastof his people, we shall see more clearly as we go on. 

Salem was, in fact, Hawthorne's native soil, in all senses; asintimately and perfectly so as Florence was the only soil in which Danteand Michael Angelo could have had their growth. It is endlesslysuggestive, this way that historic cities have of expressing themselvesfor all time in the persons of one or two men. Silently and withmysterious precision, the genius comes to birth and ripens--sometimesdespite all sorts of discouragement--into a full bloom which we afterwardsee could not have reached its maturity at any other time, and wouldsurely have missed its most peculiar and cherished qualities if rearedin any other place. The Ionian intellect of Athens culminates in Plato;Florence runs into the mould of Dante's verse, like fluid bronze; Parissecures remembrance of her wide curiosity in Voltaire's settledexpression; and Samuel Johnson holds fast for us that London of theeighteenth century which has passed out of sight, in giving place to thecapital of the Anglo-Saxon race today. In like manner the sober littleNew England town which has played a so much more obscure, though in itsway hardly less significant part, sits quietly enshrined and preservedin Hawthorne's singularly imperishable prose. 

Of course, Salem is not to be compared with Florence otherwise thanremotely or partially. Florence was naturally the City of Flowers, in afigurative sense as well as in the common meaning. Its splendid, various, and full-pulsed life found spontaneous issue in magnificentworks of art, in architecture, painting, poetry, and sculpture, --thingsin which New England was quite sterile. Salem evolved the artisticspirit indirectly, and embodied itself in Hawthorne by the force ofcontrast: the weariness of unadorned life which must have oppressed manya silent soul before him at last gathered force for a revolt in hisperson, and the very dearth which had previously reigned was made tocontribute to the beauty of his achievement. The unique and delicateperfume of surprise with which his genius issued from its crevice stillhaunts his romances. A quality of homeliness dwells in their verystrangeness and rarity which endears them to us unspeakably, andcaptivates the foreign sense as well; so that one of Hawthorne's chiefand most enduring charms is in a measure due to that very barrenness ofhis native earth which would at first seem to offer only denial to hisdevelopment. It is in this direction that we catch sight of the analogybetween his intellectual unfolding and that of the great Florentines. Itconsists in his drawing up into himself the nourishment furnished by theground upon which he was born, and making the more and the lessproductive elements reach a climax of characteristic beauty. One markeddifference, however, is that there was no abundant and inspiritingmunicipal life of his own time which could enter into his genius: it wasthe consciousness of the past of the place that affected him. He himselfhas expressed as much: "This old town of Salem--my native place, thoughI have dwelt much away from it, both in boyhood and matureryears--possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affections, the force ofwhich I have never realized during my seasons of actual residencehere. .. . And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is withinme a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must becontent to call affection. .. . But the sentiment has likewise its moralquality. The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family traditionwith a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination asfar back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a kind ofhome-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to thepresent phase of the town. "

It is by briefly reviewing that past, then trying to reproduce inimagination the immediate atmosphere of Hawthorne's youth, and comparingthe two, that we shall best arrive at the completion of our proposedportrait. We have first to study the dim perspective and the suggestivecoloring of that historic background from which the author emerges, andthen to define clearly his own individual traits as they appear in hispublished works and Note-Books. 

The eagerness which admirers of such a genius show, to learn allpermissible details of his personal history, is, when freed from thevulgar and imbecile curiosity which often mars it, a sort of homage thatit is right to satisfy. It is a respect apt to be paid only to men whosewinning personal qualities have reached through their writing, andtouched a number of grateful and appreciative hearts. But two objectionsmay be urged against giving such details here: one is, that Hawthorneespecially disapproved the writing of a Life of himself; the other, thatthe history of Salem and the works of Hawthorne are easily accessible toany one, without intervention. 

Of the first it may frankly be said, indeed, that Hawthorne alone couldhave adequately portrayed his life for us; though in the same breath itshould be added that the idea of his undertaking to do it is almostpreposterous. To such a spirit as his, the plan would have had anexquisite absurdity about it, that might even have savored ofimposition. The mass of trivial details essential to the accurate andconsecutive account of an entire life could never have gained hisserious attention: his modesty would have made as little of them as ofboyish slate-scribblings, full of significance, fun, and character toobservers, but subjected to the sponge without a pang by their producer. There is something natural and fine in this. I confess that to me thespectacle presented by Goethe when dwelling on the minutest incidents ofhis childhood with senile vanity and persistence, and fashioning withavaricious care the silver shrine and crystal case in which--like a verydifferent sort of Saint Charles Borromeo--he hopes to have the reverentages view him, is one which increases my sense of his defective thoughsplendid personality. And yet I cannot suppress the opposite feeling, that the man of note who lets his riches of reminiscence be buried withhim inflicts a loss on the world which it is hard to take resignedly. Inthe Note-Books of Hawthorne this want is to a large extent made good. His shrinking sensitiveness in regard to the embalming process ofbiography is in these somewhat abated, so that they have been ofincalculable use in assisting the popular eye to see him as he reallywas. Other material for illustration of his daily life is somewhatmeagre; and yet, on one account, this is perhaps a cause for rejoicing. There is a halo about every man of large poetic genius which it isdifficult for the world to wholly miss seeing, while he is alive. Afterward, when the biographer comes, we find the actual dimensions, thephysical outline, more insisted upon. That is the biographer's business;and it is not altogether his fault, though partly so, that the publicregard is thus turned away from the peculiar but impalpable sign thatfloats above the poet's actual stature. But, under this subtileinfluence, forgetting that old, luminous hallucination (if it be one), we suddenly feel the want of it, are dissatisfied; and, not perceivingthat the cause lies largely with us, we fall to detracting from thesubject. Thus it is fortunate that we have no regular biography ofShakespere authoritative enough to fade our own private conceptions ofhim; and it is not an unmixed ill that some degree of similar mysteryshould soften and give tone to the life of Hawthorne. Not that Hawthornecould ever be seriously disadvantaged by a complete record; for behindthe greatness of the writer, in this case, there stands a person eminentfor strength and loveliness as few men are eminent in their privatelives. But it is with dead authors somewhat as it proved with thoseEtruscan warriors, who, seen through an eyehole lying in perfect statewithin their tombs, crumbled to a powder when the sepulchres wereopened. The contact of life and death is too unsympathetic. Whateverstuff the writer be made of, it seems inevitable that he should sufferinjury from exposure to the busy and prying light of subsequent life, after his so deep repose in death. 

"Would you have me a damned author?" exclaims Oberon, in "The Devil inManuscript, " [Footnote: See the Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales. ]"to undergo sneers, taunts, abuse, and cold neglect, and faint praisebestowed against the giver's conscience!. .. An outlaw from theprotection of the grave, --one whose ashes every careless foot mightspurn, unhonored in life, and remembered scornfully in death!" This, tobe sure, is a heated statement, in the mouth of a young author who isabout to cast his unpublished works into the fire; but the dreadexpressed here is by no means unfounded. Even the publication ofHawthorne's Note-Books has put it in the power of various writers of theday to assume an omniscience not altogether just, and far fromacceptable. Why, then, should further risk of this be incurred, byissuing the present work?

It is precisely to put a limit to misconstructions, as well as tomeet--however imperfectly--the desire of genuine appreciators, that ithas been written. If this study for a portrait fulfils its aim, it willat least furnish an outline, fix a definite shape, within which whateveris observed by others may find its place with a truer effect and morefitting relation. The mistakes that have been made, indeed, are in nowise alarming ones; and it would be difficult to find any author who hasbeen more carefully considered, on the whole, or with such generallyfair conclusions, as Hawthorne. Still, if one sees even minordistortions current, it can do no harm to correct them. Besides, therehas as yet been no thorough attempt at a consistent syntheticportraiture; and the differences of different critics' estimates needsome common ground to meet and be harmonized upon. If this can besupplied, there will be less waste of time in future studies of the samesubject. 

It will be seen, therefore, that my book makes no pretension to thecharacter of a Life. The wish of Hawthorne on this point would alone beenough, to prevent that. If such a work is to be undertaken, it shouldbe by another hand, in which the right to set aside this wish is muchmore certainly vested than in mine. But I have thought that an earnestsympathy with the subject might sanction the present essay. Sympathy, after all, is the talisman which may preserve even the formal biographerfrom giving that injury to his theme just spoken of. And if the insightwhich guides me has any worth, it will present whatever material hasalready been made public with a selection and shaping which allresearchers might not have time to bestow. 

Still, I am quite alive to the difficulties of my task; and I amconscious that the work may to some appear supererogatory. Stricture andpraise are, it will perhaps be said, equally impertinent to a fame sowell established. Neither have I any rash hope of adding a single ray tothe light of Hawthorne's high standing. But I do not fear the charge ofpresumption. Time, if not the present reader, will supply the rightperspective and proportion. 

On the ground of critical duty there is surely defence enough for suchan attempt as the one now offered; the relative rank of Hawthorne, andother distinctions touching him, seem to call for a fuller discussionthan has been given them. I hope to prove, however, that my aim is in nowise a partisan one. Criticism is appreciative estimation. It isinevitable that the judgments of competent and cultivated persons shouldflatly contradict each other, as well as those of incompetent persons;and this whether they are coeval or of different dates. At the last, itis in many respects matter of simple individual impression; and therewill always be persons of high intelligence whom it will be impossibleto make coincide with us entirely, touching even a single author. Sothat the best we can do is to set about giving rational explanation ofour diverse admirations. Others will explain theirs; and in this way, everything good having a fit showing, taste finds it easier to becomecatholic. 

Whoever reverences something has a meaning. Shall he not record it? Butthere are two ways in which he may express himself, --through speech andthrough silence, --both of them sacred alike. Which of these we will useon any given occasion is a question much too subtle, too surely fraughtwith intuitions that cannot be formulated, to admit of arbitraryprescription. In preferring, here, the form of speech, I feel that Ihave adopted only another kind of silence. 

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II. 

SALEM. 

Let us now look more closely at the local setting. To understandHawthorne's youth and his following development, we must at oncetransport ourselves into another period, and imagine a very differentkind of life from the one we know best. It hardly occurs to readers, that an effort should be made to imagine the influences surrounding aman who has so recently passed away as Hawthorne. It was in 1864 that hedied, --little more than a decade since. But he was born sixty yearsbefore, which places his boyhood and early youth in the first quarter ofthe century. The lapse since then has been a long one in its effects;almost portentously so. The alterations in manners, relations, opportunities, have been great. Restless and rapid in their action, these changes have multiplied the mystery of distance a hundred-foldbetween us and that earlier time; so that there is really a considerablespace to be traversed before we can stand in thought where Hawthornethen stood in fact. Goldsmith says, in that passage of the Life ofParnell which Irving so aptly quotes in his biography of the writer: "Apoet while living is seldom an object sufficiently great to attract muchattention. .. . When his fame is increased by time, it is then too late toinvestigate the peculiarities of his disposition; the dews of morningare past, and we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridiansplendor. " The bustle of American life certainly does away with "thedews of morning" very promptly; and it is not quite a simple matter toreproduce the first growth of a life which began almost with thecentury. But there are resources for doing so. To begin with, we shallview Salem as it is. Vigorous and thriving still, the place hasfortunately not drifted so far from its moorings of seventy years sinceas to take us out of our bearings, in considering its present aspect. Pace its quiet, thoroughfares awhile, and you will find them leadingsoftly and easily into the past. 

You arrive in the ordinary way, by railroad, and at first the placewears a disappointingly commonplace aspect. It does not seemimpressively venerable; hacks and horse-cars rattle and tinkle along thestreets, people go about their affairs in the usual way, without any dueunderstanding that they ought to be picturesque and should devotethemselves to falling into effective groups posed in vistas of historicevents. Is antiquity, then, afraid to assert itself, even here in thisstronghold, so far as to appear upon the street? No. But one mustapproach these old towns with reverence, to get at their secrets. Theywill not yield inspiration or meaning save to an imaginative effort. Under the influence of that, the faded past, traced in sympathetic ink, as it were, revives and starts into distinctness. Passing down EssexStreet, or striking off from its modest bustle a little way, we comeupon shy, ungainly relics of other times. Gray gambrel-roofed housesstand out here and there, with thick-throated chimneys that seem to holdthe whole together. Again you pass buildings of a statelier cast, withcarved pilasters on the front and arched doorways bordered with somesimple, dainty line of carving; old plaster-covered urns, perhaps, standon the brick garden-wall, and the plaster is peeling off in flakes thathang long and reluctant before falling to the ground. There are quaintgardens everywhere, with sometimes an entrance arched with irongracefully wrought by some forgotten colonial Quentin Matsys, and alwayswith their paths bordered by prim and fragrant box, and grass that keepsrich and green in an Old World way, by virtue of some secret of growthcaught from fresher centuries than ours. If your steps have the rightmagic in them, you will encounter presently one of the ancient pumpslike to the Town Pump from which Hawthorne drew that clear and sparklinglittle stream of revery and picture which has flowed into so many andsuch distant nooks, though the pump itself has now disappeared, havingbeen directly in the line of the railroad. But, best of all, byascending Witch Hill you may get a good historic outlook over the pastand the present of the place. Looking down from here you behold theancient city spread before you, rich in chimneys and overshadowed bysoft elms. At one point a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a hugegravestone above the surrounding houses, terminating in a square top ora blunt dome; and yonder is another, more ideal in its look, risingslight and fine, and with many ascents and alternating pauses, to reacha delicate pinnacle at great height in the air. It is lighted atintervals with many-paned and glittering windows, and wears a probableaspect of being the one which the young dreamer would have chosen forthe standpoint of his "Sights from a Steeple"; and the two kinds ofspire seem to typify well the Puritan gloom and the Puritan aspirationthat alike found expression on this soil. Off beyond the gray andsober-tinted town is the sea, which in this perspective seems to riseabove it and to dominate the place with its dim, half-threatening blue;as indeed it has always ruled its destinies in great measure, bringingfirst the persecuted hither and then inviting so many successivegenerations forth to warlike expedition, or Revolutionary privateeringor distant commercial enterprise. With the sea, too, Hawthorne's nameagain is connected, as we shall presently notice. Then, quitting thebrimming blue, our eyes return over the "flat, unvaried surface coveredchiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend toarchitectural beauty, " with its "irregularity which is neitherpicturesque nor quaint, but only tame"; and retracing the line uponwhich Hawthorne has crowded the whole history of Salem, in "MainStreet, " [Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales. ] wefall to pondering upon the deeds that gave this hill its name. At itsfoot a number of tanneries and mills are grouped, from which there areexhalations of smoke and steam. The mists of superstition that onceoverhung the spot seem at last to have taken on that form. Behind it theland opens out and falls away in a barren tract known from the earliestperiod as the Great Pastures, where a solitude reigns almost as completeas that of the primitive settlement, and where, swinging cabalistic websfrom one to another of the arbor-vitae and dwarf-pine trees that growupon it, spiders enough still abide to furnish familiars for a worldfull of witches. But here on the hill there is no special suggestion ofthe dark memory that broods upon it when seen in history. An obligingIrish population has relieved the descendants of both the witches andtheir exterminators from an awkward task, by covering with their ownbarren little dwellings the three sides of the height facing the town. Still, they have not ventured beyond a certain line. One small area atthe summit is wholly unencroached upon. Whether or not through fear ofsome evil influence resting upon the spot, no house as yet disturbs thisspace, though the thin turf has been somewhat picked away by desultorysod-diggers. There is nothing save this squalid, lonely desolation tocommemorate the fact that such unhappy and needless deaths were hereendured. It is enough. Mere human sympathy takes us back with awfulvividness to that time when the poor victims looked their last fromthis, upon the bleak boundary-hills of the inland horizon and thathopeless semicircle of the sea on the other side. A terrible and fittingplace for execution, indeed! It looms up visible for many miles of lowercountry around; and as you stand upon the top, earth seems to fall awaywith such a fatal ease around it!

The stranger is naturally drawn hence to the Court House, where, bycalling a clerk from his routine in a room fairly lined and stuccoedwith bundles of legal papers, he may get a glimpse of the famous"witch-pins. " These are the identical little instruments which theafflicted children drew from different parts of their dress, in thetrial-room, declaring that some one of the accused had just caused themto be sharply inserted into their persons. The pins are kept in a smallglass bottle, and are thin and rudely made; and as one looks at thecurious, homely little relics, it is hard to know whether to laugh atthe absurdly insignificant sight, or shudder at the thought of whatdeadly harm they worked in the hands of the bewitched. So, while one ishesitating, one gives the bottle back to the clerk, who locks it upspeedily, and at the next instant is absorbed in the drawing up of somedocument; leaving the intruder free to pursue his search for antiquitieselsewhere. But the monuments and remains of the past are nowhere largeenough, in our American towns, to furnish the pilgrim a complete shelterand make an atmosphere of their own. The old Curwin Mansion, or "WitchHouse, " to be sure, with its jutting upper story, and its dark and grimyroom where witch-trials are rumored to have been held, is a solid scrapof antique gloom; but an ephemeral druggist's shop has been fastened onto a corner of the old building, and clings there like a wasp'snest, --as subversive, too, of quiet contemplation. The descendants ofthe first settlers have with pious care preserved the remains of theFirst Church of Salem, and the plain little temple may still be seen, though hidden away in the rear of the solid, brick-built EssexInstitute. Yet, after all, it is only the skeleton of the thing, theoriginal framework set into a modern covering for protection, --the wholechurch being about as large as a small drawing-room only. Into thislittle space a few dumb and shrinking witnesses of the past have beenhuddled: the old communion-table, two ancient harpsichords, a singlepew-door, a wooden samp-mortar, and a huge, half-ruinous loom; and someengraved portraits of ancient ministers hang upon the walls. When Ivisited the place, a party of young men and women were there, whohopelessly scattered any slight dust of revery that might have settledon me from the ancient beams, and sent the ghosts fleeing before theirlight laughter. The young women fingered the old harpsichords, andincontinently thrummed upon them; and one cried, "Play a waltz!" She wasa pretty creature; and, as her gay tone mingled with the rattle ofprotesting strings in the worn-out instrument, one might easily havedivined how dire a fate would have been hers, in the days when men notonly believed in bewitchment, but made it punishable. Then a young manwho had clung for guidance amid her spells to the little printedpamphlet that describes the church, read aloud from its pages, seriously: "'Nowhere else in this land may one find so ancient andworshipful a shrine. Within these walls, silent with the rememberedpresence of Endicott, Skelton, Higginson, Roger Williams, and theirgrave compeers, the very day seems haunted, and the sunshine falls butsoberly in. '"

"O don't!" besought the siren, again. "We're not in a solemn state. "

And, whether it was the spell of her voice or not, I confess thesunshine did not seem to me either haunted or sober. 

Thus, all through Salem, you encounter a perverse fate which will notlet you be alone with the elusive spirit of the past. Yet, onreflection, why should it? This perverse fate is simply the life ofto-day, which has certainly an equal right to the soil with that of ourdreams and memories. And before long the conflict of past and presentthus occasioned leads to a discovery. 

In the first place, it transpires that the atmosphere is more favorablethan at first appears for backward-reaching revery. The town holds itshistory in reverence, and a good many slight traces of antiquity, withthe quiet respect maintained for them in the minds of the inhabitants, finally make a strong cumulative attack on the imagination. The verymeagreness and minuteness of the physical witnesses to a formercondition of things cease to discourage, and actually become anincitement more effective than bulkier relics might impart. The delicacyof suggestion lends a zest to your dream; and the sober streets open outbefore you into vistas of austere reminiscence. The first night that Ipassed in Salem, I heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what itwas. It was the nine-o'clock bell; and it had been appointed to ringthus every night, a hundred years ago or more. How it reverberatedthrough my mind, till every brain-cell seemed like the empty chamber ofa vanished year! Then, in the room where I slept, there was rich andponderous furniture of the fashion of eld; the bed was draped andcanopied with hangings that seemed full of spells and dreamery; andthere was a mirror, tall, and swung between stately mahogany postsspreading their feet out on the floor, which recalled that fancy ofHawthorne's, in the tale of "Old Esther Dudley, " [Footnote: See alsoAmerican Note-Books, Vol. I. ; and the first chapter of The House of theSeven Gables. ] about perished dames and grandees made to sweep inprocession through "the inner world" of a glass. Such small matters asthese engage the fancy, and lead it back through a systematic review oflocal history with unlooked-for nimbleness. Gradually the mind gets toroving among scenes imaged as if by memory, and bearing some strangelyintimate relation to the actual scenes before one. The drift of clouds, the sifting of sudden light from the sky, acquire the import of historicchanges of adversity and prosperity. The spires of Salem, seen one daythrough a semi-shrouding rain, appeared to loom up through the mist ofcenturies; and the real antiquity of sunlight shone out upon me, atother times, with cunning quietude, from the weather-worn wood of old, unpainted houses. Every hour was full of yesterdays. Something ofprimitive strangeness and adventure seemed to settle into my mood, andthe air teemed with anticipation of a startling event; as if the deedsof the past were continually on the eve of returning. With all this, too, a certain gray shadow of unreality stole over everything. 

Then one becomes aware that this frame of mind, produced by actualcontact with Salem, is subtly akin to the mood from which so many ofHawthorne's visions were projected. A flickering semblance, perhaps, ofwhat to him must have been a constant though subdued and dreamy flamesummoning him to potent incantation over the abyss of time; but fromthis it was easy to conceive it deepened and intensified in him ahundred-fold. Moreover, in his youth and growing-time, the influenceitself was stronger, the suggestive aspect of the town more salient. Ifyou read even now, on the ground itself, the story of the settlement andthe first century's life of Salem and the surrounding places, a delicatesuffusion of the marvellous will insensibly steal over the severe factsof the record, giving them a half-legendary color. This arises partlyfrom the imaginative and symbolic way of looking at things of thefounders themselves. 

John White, the English Puritan divine, who, with the "DorchesterAdventurers, " established the first colony at Cape Ann, was moved tothis by the wish to establish in Massachusetts Bay a resting-place forthe fishermen who came over from Dorchester in England, so that theymight be kept under religious influences. This was the origin of Salem;for the emigrants moved, three years later, to this spot, then calledNaumkeag. In the Indian name they afterward found a proof, as theysupposed, that the Indians were an offshoot of the Jews, because it"proves to be perfect Hebrew, being called Nahum Keike; byinterpretation, the bosom of consolation. " Later, they named it Salem, "for the peace, " as Cotton Mather says, "which they had and hoped init"; and when Hugh Peters on one occasion preached at Great Pond, nowWenham, he took as his text, "At Enon, near to Salim, because there wasmuch water there. " This playing with names is a mere surface indicationof the ever-present scriptural analogy which these men were constantlytracing in all their acts. Cut off by their intellectual asceticism fromany exertion of the imagination in literature, and denying themselvesall that side of life which at once develops and rhythmically restrainsthe sense of earthly beauty, they compensated themselves by runningparallels between their own mission and that of the apostles, --alikeness which was interchangeable at pleasure with the fanciedresemblance of their condition to that of the Israelites. When oneconsiders the remoteness of the field from their native shores, theenormous energy needful to collect the proper elements for a population, and to provide artificers with the means of work; the almost impassablewildness of the woods; the repeated leagues of hostile Indians; thedepletions by sickness; and the internal dissensions with which they hadto struggle, --one cannot wonder that they invested their own unsurpassedfortitude, and their genius for government and war, with the quality ofa special Providence. But their faith was inwoven in the most singularway with a treacherous strand of credulity and superstition. Sometimesone is impressed with a sense that the prodigious force by which theysubdued the knotty and forest-fettered land, and overcame so many othermore dangerous difficulties, was the ecstasy of men made morbidly strongby excessive gloom and indifference to the present life. "When we are inour graves, " wrote Higginson, "it will be all one whether we have livedin plenty or penury, whether we have died in a bed of downe or lockes ofstraw. " And Hawthorne speaks of the Puritan temperament as"accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped solittle. " Yet, though they were not, as Winthrop says, "of those thatdreame of perfection in this world, " they surely had vast hopes atheart, and the fire of repressed imagination played around them andbefore them as a vital and guiding gleam, of untold value to them, andusing a mysterious power in their affairs. They were something morbid intheir imaginings, but that this morbid habit was a chief source of theirpower is a mistaken theory. It is true that their errors of imaginationwere so closely knit up with real insight, that they could notthemselves distinguish between the two. Their religious faith, theiroutlook into another life, though tinged by unhealthy terrorism, was asolid, energetic act of imagination; but when it had to deal withintricate tangles of mind and heart, it became credulity. That lurkingunhealthiness spread from the centre, and soon overcame their judgmententirely. The bodeful glare of the witchcraft delusion makes thisfearfully clear. Mr. Upham, in his "Salem Witchcraft, "--one of the mostvigorous, true, and thorough of American histories, without which no onecan possess himself of the subject it treats, --has shown conclusivelythe admirable character of the community in which that delusion brokeout, its energy, common-sense, and varied activity; but he points outfor us also the perilous state of the Puritan imagination in a matterwhere religion, physiology, and affairs touched each other so closely asin the witchcraft episode. The persecution at Salem did not come fromsuch deep degeneration as has been assumed for its source, and it wasnot at the time at all a result of uncommon bigotry. In the persecutionin England in 1645-46, Matthew Hopkins, the "witch-finder-general, "procured the death, "in one year and in one county, of more than threetimes as many as suffered in Salem during the whole delusion"; severalpersons were tried by water ordeal, and drowned, in Suffolk, Essex, andCambridgeshire, at the same time with the Salem executions; and capitalpunishments took place there some years after the end of the troublehere. It is well known, also, that persons were put to death forwitchcraft in two other American colonies. The excess in Salem washeightened by a well-planned imposture, but found quick sustenancebecause "the imagination, called necessarily into extraordinary actionin the absence of scientific certainty, was . .. Exercised in vainattempts to discover, unassisted by observation and experiment, theelements and first principles of nature, " [Footnote: Upham, I. 382] and"had reached a monstrous growth, " nourished by a copious literature ofmagic and demonology, and by the opinions of the most eminent and humanepreachers and poets. 

The imagination which makes beauty out of evil, and that whichaccumulates from it the utmost intensity of terror, are well exemplifiedin Milton and Bunyan. Doubtless Milton's richly cultured faith, clothedin lustrous language as in princely silks that overhang his chain-mailof ample learning and argument, was as intense as the unlettered beliefof Bunyan; and perhaps he shared the prevalent opinions aboutwitchcraft; yet when he touches upon the superstitious element, thematerial used is so transfused with the pictorial and poetic qualitywhich Milton has distilled from the common belief, and then poured intothis _image_ of the common belief, that I am not sure he cared forany other quality in it. 

 "Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, call'd In secret, riding through the air she comes, Lured by the smell of infant blood, to dance With Lapland witches, while the laboring moon Ellipses at their charms. "

_Paradise Lost_, II. 662. 

Again, in Comus:--

 "Some say, no evil thing that walks by night, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart faery of the mine, Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity. "

How near these passages come to Shakespere, where he touches the samestring! And is it not clear that both poets exulted so in the_beauty_ born among dark, earthy depths of fear, that they wouldhave rejected any and every horror which failed to contribute somethingto the beautiful? Indeed, it may easily be that such high spirits acceptawful traditions and cruel theologies, merely because they possess atransmuting touch which gives these things a secret and relative valuenot intrinsically theirs; because they find here something to satisfy aninward demand for immense expansions of thought, a desire for all sortsof proportioned and balanced extremes. This is no superficialsuggestion, though it may seem so. But in such cases it is not thepositive horror and its direct effect which attract the poet: a deepersymbolism and an effect both aesthetic and moral recommend the elementto him. With Milton, however, there follows a curious result. Heproduces his manufactured myth of Sin and Death and his ludicrous Limboof Vanity with a gravity and earnestness as convincing as those whichurge home any part of his theme; yet we are aware that he is only makingpoetic pretence of belief; so that a certain distrust of his sinceritythroughout creeps in, as we read. How much, we ask, is allegory in thepoet's own estimation, and how much real belief? Now in Bunyan there isnothing of this doubt. Though the author declares his narrative to bethe relation of a dream, the figment becomes absolute fact to us; andthe homely realism of Giant Despair gives him a firmer hold upon me asan actual existence, than all the splendid characterization of Milton'sBeelzebub can gain. Even Apollyon is more real. Milton assumes thehistoric air of the epic poet, Bunyan admits that he is giving anallegory; yet of the two the humble recorder of Christian's progressseems the more worthy of credit. Something of this effect is doubtlessdue to art: the "Pilgrim's Progress" is more adequately couched in asingle and consistent strain than the "Paradise Lost. " Milton, byimplying veracity and then vaporing off into allegory, challengesdispute; but Bunyan, in humbly confessing himself a dreamer, disarms hisreader and traps him into entire assent. Certainly Bunyan was not thegreater artist: that supposition will not even bear a moment'scontemplation; but, as it happened, his weakness was his strength. Hehad but one chance. His work would have been nothing without allegory, and the simple device of the dream--which is the refuge of a manunskilled in composition, who feels that his figures cannot quite standas self-sufficient entities--happens to be as valuable to him as it wasnecessary; for the plea of unreality brings out, in the strong light ofsurprise, a contrast between the sincere substance of the story and itsassumed insubstantiality. Milton had many chances, many resources ofpower to rely on; but by grasping boldly at the effect of authenticityhe loses that one among the several prizes within his reach. I do notknow that I am right, but all this seems to me to argue a certaindividing and weakening influence exerted by the imagination which usesreligious or superstitious dread for the purposes of beauty; while thatwhich discourses confidently of the passage from this to another life, with all the several stages clearly marked, and floods the whole scenewith a vivid and inartificial light from "the powers and terrors of whatis yet unseen, " affects the mind with every atom of energy economizedand concentred. 

Leaving the literary question, we may bring this conclusion to bear uponthe Puritans and Salem, as their history affected Hawthorne. I have saidthat a gradual suffusion of the marvellous overspreads the comparativelyarid annals of the town, if one reviews them amid the proper influences;and I have touched upon the two phases of imagination which, playingover the facts, give them this atmosphere. Now if what I guess from thecontrast between Milton and Bunyan be true, the lower kind ofimagination--that is, imagination deformed to credulity--would be likelyto be the more impressive. This uncanny quality of superstition, then, is the one which insensibly exudes from the pages of New England's andperhaps especially of Salem's colonial history, as Hawthorne turns them. This is the dank effluence that, mingling with the sweeter and freer airof his own reveries, has made so many people shudder on entering thegreat romancer's shadowy but serene domain. 

And just here it is advisable to triangulate our ground, by bringingMilton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne together in a simultaneous view. Wideapart as the first two stand, they seem to effect a kind of union inthis modern genius; or, rather, their influence here conjoins, as therays from two far-separated stars meet in the eye of him who watches theheavens for inspiration. Something of the peculiar virtue of each ofthese Puritan writers seems to have given tone to Hawthorne's no lessindividual nature. In Bunyan, who very early laid his hand onHawthorne's intellectual history, we find a very fountain-head ofallegory. His impulse, of course, was supremely didactic, only so muchof mere narrative interest mixing itself with his work as wasinseparable from his native relish for the matter of fact; while inMilton's poetry the clear aesthetic pleasure held at least an exactbalance with the moral inspiration, and, as we have just seen, perhapsoutweighed it at times. The same powerful, unrelaxing grasp of allegoryis found in the American genius as in Bunyan, and there likewise comesto light in his mind the same delight in art for art's sake that addedsuch a grace to Milton's sinewy and large-limbed port. In special casesthe allegorical motive has distinctly got the upper hand, in Hawthorne'swork; yet even in those the artistic integument, that marvellous verbalstyle, those exquisite fancies, are not absent: on the contrary, in thevery instances where Hawthorne has most constantly and clearly held tothe illustration of a single idea, and made his fiction fit itself mostabsolutely to the jewelled truth it holds, --in these very causes, I say, the command of his genius over literary resources is generally shown byan unusual splendor of means applied to the ideal end in view. It ishere that, while resembling Bunyan, he is so unlike him. But morecommonly we find in Hawthorne the two moods, the ethical and theaesthetic, exerted in full force simultaneously; and the result seems tobe a perfection of unity. The opposing forces, like centripetal andcentrifugal attractions, produce a finished sphere. And in this, again, though recalling Milton, he differs from him also. In Milton's epic thetendency is to alternate these moods; and one works against the other. In short, the two elder writers undergo a good deal of refinement andproportioning, before mixing their qualities in Hawthorne's veins. However great a controversialist Milton may be held, too, the very factof his engaging in the particular discussions and in the manner hechose, while never to be deplored, may have something to do with thewant of fusion of the different qualities present in his poetry. We maysay, and doubtless it is so, that Hawthorne could never have writtensuch magnificent pamphlets as the "Eikonoklastes, " the "Apology, " the"Tetrachordon": I grant that his refinement, though bringing himsomething which Milton did not have, has cost him something else whichMilton possessed. But, for all that, the more deep-lying and inclusivetruths which he constantly entertained, and which barred him from thetemporary exertion of controversy, formed the sources of his completerharmony. There is a kind of analogy, too, between the omnipresence ofMilton in his work, and that of Hawthorne in his. The great Puritansinger cannot create persons: his Satan is Milton himself insinging-robes, assuming for mere argument's and epic's sake that side ofa debate which he does not believe, yet carrying it out in the mostmasterly way; his angels and archangels are discriminated, but stillthey are not divested of his informing quality; and "Comus" and "SamsonAgonistes, " howsoever diverse, are illustrations of the athletic primeand the autumnal strength of the poet himself, rather than anywisedramatic evolutions of his themes. Bunyan, with much less faculty forany subtle discrimination of characters, also fails to give his personsindividuality, though they stand very distinctly for a variety oftraits: it is with Bunyan as if he had taken an average human being, and, separating his impulses, good and evil, had tried to make a new manor woman out of each; so that there is hardly life-blood enough to goround among them. Milton's creatures are in a certain way more vital, though less real. Bunyan's characters being traits, the other's aremoods. Yet both groups seem to have been cast in a large, elementalmould. Now, Hawthorne is vastly more an adept than either Milton orBunyan in keeping the creatures of his spirit separate, whilemaintaining amongst them the bond of a common nature; but besides thisbond they are joined by another, by something which continually bringsus back to the author himself. It is like a family resemblance betweenwidely separated relatives, which suggests in the most opposite quartersthe original type of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. Thesecharacters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than thoseof the other two writers, are at the same time based on large andelementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodiedmoods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, andmade to endure unchanged for years together. Thus, while Hawthorne, aswe shall see more fully further on, is essentially a dramatic genius, Bunyan a simple allegorist, and Milton an odic poet of unparalleledstrength, --who, taking dramatic and epic subjects and failing to fillthem, makes us blame not _his_ size and shape, but the too minuteintricacies of the theme, --there is still a sort of undergroundconnection between all three. It is curious to note, further, therelation of Milton's majestic and multitudinous speech, thechancellor-like stateliness of his wit, in prose, to Hawthorne'sresonant periods, and dignity that is never weakened though admirablymodified by humor. Altogether, if one could compound Bunyan and Milton, combine the realistic imagination of the one with the other's passionfor ideas, pour the ebullient undulating prose style of the poet intothe veins of the allegorist's firm, leather-jerkined English, and make amodern man and author of the whole, the result would not be alien toHawthorne. 

Yet that native love of historic murkiness and mossy tradition which wehave been learning to associate with Salem would have to be present inthis compound being, to make the likeness complete. And this, with thetrains of revery and the cast of imagination which it must naturallybreed, would be the one thing not easily supplied, for it is thepredisposition which gives to all encircling qualities in Hawthornetheir peculiar coloring and charm. That predisposition did not find itssustenance only in the atmosphere of sadness and mystery that hangs overthe story of Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a wholelegacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, withmany well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worthwhile to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of thisenginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the wayfor some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark withsome exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causesto have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the oldhouses that stand endwise to the street, looking askant at thepasser, --especially if he is a stranger in town, --might be veritabletreasuries of this sort of material. Gray, close-shuttered, andretiring, they have not so much the look of death; it is more that theyare poor, widowed homes that have mournfully long outlived their lords. One would not have them perish; and yet there is something drearily sadabout them. One almost feels that the present tenants must be in dangerof being crowded out by ghosts, or at least that they must encounterstrange obstacles to living there. Are not their windows darkened by thelight of other days? An old mansion of brick or stone has more characterof its own, and is less easily overshadowed by its own antiquity; butthese impressible wooden abiding-places, that have managed to cling tothe soil through so many generations, seem rife with the inspirations ofmortality. They have a depressing influence, and must often mould theoccupants and leave a peculiar impress on them. We are all odd enough inour way, whatever our origin or habitation; but is it not possible thatin a town of given size, placed under specified conditions, there shouldbe a greater proportion of oddities produced than in another differentlycircumstanced? Certainly, if this be so, it has its advantages as wellas its drawbacks; a stability of surrounding and of association, whichperhaps affects individuals in the extreme, is still a source ofcontinuity in town character. And Salem is certainly remarkable forstrong, persistent, and yet unexhausted individuality, as a town, noless than for a peculiar dignity of character which has become apronounced trait in many of its children. But, on the other hand, it isfecund of eccentricities. Though many absorb the atmosphere of age totheir great advantage, there must be other temperaments among thedescendants of so unique and so impressionable a body of men as theearly settlers of this region, which would succumb to the awesome anddepressing influences that also lurk in the air; and these may easilypass from piquant personality into mere errant grotesqueness. Whetherfrom instinctive recognition of this or not, it has never seemed to meremarkable that people here should see apparitions of themselves, anddie within the year; it did not strike me as strange when I was told ofpersons who had gone mad with no other cause than that of inheritedinsanity, --as if, having tried every species of sane activity for two orthree hundred years, a family should take to madness from sheer disgustwith the monotony of being healthy; nor could any case of warpedidiosyncrasy, or any account of half-maniacal genius be instanced thatseemed at all out of keeping. One day I passed a house where a crazyman, of harmless temper, habitually amused himself with sitting at awindow near the ground, and entering into talk, from between thehalf-closed shutters, with any one on the sidewalk who would listen tohim. Such a thing, to be sure, might easily be met with in twenty otherplaces; but here it seemed natural and fitting. It was not apreposterous thought, that any number of other men in the neighborhoodmight quietly drop into a similar vein of decrepitude, and also attemptto palm off their disjointed fancies upon the orderly foot-passengers. Ido not by this mean to insinuate any excessive leaning toward mentalderangement on the part of the inhabitants; but it is as if the town, having lived long enough according to ordinary rules to be justified insinking into superannuation, and yet not availing itself of theprivilege, but on the contrary maintaining a life of great activity, hadcompensated itself in the persons of a few individuals. But when one hasreached this mood, one remembers that it is all embodied in "The Houseof the Seven Gables. " Though Hawthorne, in the Preface to that romance, takes precautions against injuring local sentiment, by the assurancethat he has not meant "to describe local manners, nor in any way tomeddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes aproper respect and a natural regard, " the book is not the less a genuineoutgrowth of Salem. Perhaps the aspect under which Salem presents itselfto me is tinged with fancy, though Hawthorne in the same story hascalled it "a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, andhome-loving inhabitants, . .. But in which, be it said, there are odderindividuals, and now and then stranger occurrences, than one meets withalmost anywhere else. " But it is certain that poor Hepzibah Pyncheon, and the pathetic Clifford, and quaint Uncle Venner, are types whichinevitably present themselves as belonging pre-eminently to this place. Not less subtle is the connection with it of the old wizard Maule, andthe manner of his death at the witchcraft epoch; for it is hinted in theromance that old Colonel Pyncheon joined in denouncing the poor man, urged by designs on a piece of land owned by Maule; and Mr. Upham'scareful research has shown that various private piques were undoubtedlymixed up in the witchcraft excitement, and swelled the list ofaccusations. Young Holgrave, the photographer, also, represents in acharacteristic way the young life of the place, the germ that keeps itfresh, and even dreams at times of throwing off entirely the visibleremains of the past. 

It may be mentioned, at this point, as a coincidence, even if notshowing how Hawthorne insensibly drew together from a hundred nooks andcrannies, and formulated and embodied his impressions of this his nativeplace in "The House of the Seven Gables, " that the name of Thomas Maule(the builder of the house, and son of the Matthew brought to his deathby Colonel Pyncheon) appears in Felt's "Annals of Salem" as that of asympathizer with the Quakers. He was also author of a book called "TruthHeld Forth, " published in 1695; and of a later one, the title of which, "The Mauler Mauled, " shows that he had humor in him as well as pluck. Heseems to have led a long career of independent opinion, not altogetherin comfort, however, for in 1669 he was ordered to be whipped for sayingthat Mr. Higginson preached lies, and that his instruction was "thedoctrine of devils"; and his book of "Truth Held Forth, " which containedsevere reflections on the government for its treatment of the Quakers, was seized and suppressed. It is not improbable that at some timeHawthorne may have read of this person. At all events, he serves as aplausible suggestion of the Maule who so early in the romance utters hisprophecy of ill against Colonel Pyncheon, that he "shall have blood todrink. "

Another minor coincidence, and yet proper to be noted, is that of thelaboring-man Dixey, who appears in the opening of the story with somecomments upon Aunt Hepzibah's scheme of the cent-shop, and only comes inonce afterward, at the close, to touch upon the subject in a differentstrain. At first, unseen, but overheard by Miss Pyncheon, he prophesiesto a companion, "in a tone as if he were shaking his head, " that thecent-shop will fail; and when Clifford and Hepzibah drive off in theircarriage, at the end, he remarks sagaciously, "Good business, --goodbusiness. " It certainly is odd that this subordinate in the romanceshould find a counterpart in one William Dixy, appointed ensign of theSalem military company which John Hawthorne commanded, in 1645. 

The name Pyncheon, also, on which the imaginary Colonel and Judge castsuch a doubtful light, was a well-known name in old New England, andbecame the source of some annoyance to Hawthorne, after he had writtenthe "Seven Gables"; but of this we shall hear more, further on. It isenough, now, to recall these coincidences. I do not suppose that hesearched the names out and founded his use of them upon some suggestionalready connected with them; indeed, he expressly declared, whenremonstrated with on his use of the Pyncheons, that he did not know ofany person of that title connected with Salem history of that time; butthe circumstance of his using the other names is interesting as showingthat many minute facts must have gone to make up the atmosphere of thathalf-historic and half-imaginative area whereon so many of his shorttales and two of the romances were enacted. Maule and Dixey were verylikely absorbed into his mind and forgotten; but suddenly when hechanced to need these characters for the "Seven Gables, " they revivedand took shape with something of the historic impress still upon them. That their very names should have been reproduced finds explanation inthe statement once made by Hawthorne to a friend, that the mostvexatious detail of romance-writing, to him, was the finding of suitablenames for the _dramatis personae. _ Balzac used to look long amongthe shop-signs of Paris for the precise name needed by a preconceivedcharacter, and the absolute invention of such titles is doubtless veryrare; few fictionists are gifted with Dickens's fertility in thediscovering of names bearing the most forcible and occult relations tothe fleshless owners of them. And it is interesting to find thatHawthorne--somewhat as Scott drew from the local repertory of hiscountrymen's nomenclature--found many of his surnames among those of thesettlers of New England. Hooper, Prynne, Felton, Dolliver, Hunnewell, and others belong specially to these and to their descendants. RogerChillingworth, by the by, recalls the celebrated English divine andcontroversialist, William; and Bishop Miles Coverdale's name has beentransferred, in "Blithedale, " from the reign of Edward VI. To theexperimental era of Brook Farm. 

It has been urged as a singular deficiency of Hawthorne's, that he couldnot glorify the moral strength and the sweeter qualities of the Puritansand of their lives. But there was nothing in the direction of his geniusthat called him to this. As well urge against him that he did not writephilanthropic pamphlets, or give himself to the inditing of biographiesof benevolent men, or compose fictions on the plan of Sir CharlesGrandison, devoted to the illumination of praiseworthy characters. It isthe same criticism which condemns Dickens for ridiculing certainpreachers, and neglecting to provide the antidote in form of a modelapostle, contrasted in the same book. This is the criticism which wouldreduce all fiction to the pattern of the religious tract. Certain menhave certain things before them to do; they cannot devote a lifetime toproving in their published works that they appreciate the excellence ofother things which they have no time and no supreme command to do. Nothing, then, is more unsafe, than to imply from their silence thatthey are deficient in particular phases of sympathy. The exposition ofthe merits of the New England founders has been steadily in progressfrom their own time to the present; and they have found a worthymonument in the profound and detailed history of Palfrey. All the morereason, why the only man yet born who could fill the darker spaces ofour early history with palpitating light of that wide-eyed truth andeternal human consciousness which cast their deep blaze throughHawthorne's books, should not forego his immortal privilege! The eulogyis the least many-sided and perpetual of literary forms, and unlessHawthorne had made himself the eulogist of the Puritans, he would stillhave had to turn to our gaze the wrongs that, for good or ill, wereworked into the tissue of their infant state. But as it is, he has beenable to suggest a profounder view than is permitted either to the raceof historians or that of philosophers. It does not profess to be asatisfactory statement of the whole, nor is there the least ground forassuming that it does so. Its very absorption in certain phasesconstitutes its value, --a value unspeakably greater than that of anyother presentation of the Puritan life, because it rests upon theinsight of a poet who has sounded the darkest depths of human nature. Had Hawthorne passed mutely through life, these gloomy-grounded picturesof Puritanism might have faded from the air like the spectres of thingsseen in dazzling light, which flit vividly before the eye for a time, then vanish forever. 

But in order to his distinctive coloring, no distortion had to bepractised; and I do not see why Hawthorne should be reckoned to have hadno sight for that which he did not record. With his unique andpenetrating touch he marked certain salient and solemn features whichhad sunk deep into his sensitive imagination, and then filled in thesurface with his own profound dramatic emanations. But in his subtle andstrong moral insight, his insatiable passion for truth, he surelyrepresented his Puritan ancestry in the most worthy and obviouslysympathetic way. No New-Englander, moreover, with any depth of feelingin him, can be entirely wanting in reverence for the nobler traits ofhis stern forefathers, or in some sort of love for the whole body ofwhich his own progenitors formed a group. Partly for his romanticpurposes, and merely as an expedient of art, Hawthorne chose to treatthis life at its most picturesque points; and to heighten the elementsof terror which he found there was an aesthetic obligation with him. Butthere is even a subtler cause at work toward this end. The touches ofassumed repugnance toward his Puritan forefathers, which appear here andthere in his writings, are not only related to his ingrained shyness, which would be cautious of betraying his deeper and truer sentimentabout them, but are the ensigns of a proper modesty in discoursing ofhis own race, his own family, as it were. He shields an actualveneration and a sort of personal attachment for those brave earliergenerations under a harmless pretence that he does not think at all tootenderly of them. It is a device frequently and freely practised, and socharacteristically American, and especially Hawthornesque, that itshould not have been overlooked for even a moment. By these means, too, he takes the attitude of admitting the ancestral errors, and throwshimself into an understanding with those who look at New England and thePuritans merely from the outside. Here is a profound resort of art, toprepare a better reception for what he is about to present, by notseeming to insist on an open recognition from his readers of thereigning dignity and the noble qualities in the Puritan colony, which hehimself, nevertheless, is always quietly conscious of. And in this wayhe really secures a broader truth, while reserving the pride of localityand race intact; a broader truth, because to the world at large the mostpronounced feature of the Puritans is their austerity. 

But if other reason were wanted to account for his dwelling on theshadows and severities of the Puritans so intently, it might be found inhis family history and its aspects to his brooding mind. His owngenealogy was the gate which most nearly conducted him into the stilland haunted fields of time which those brave but stern religious exilespeopled. 

The head of the American branch of the Hathorne, or Hawthorne family, was Major William Hathorne, of Wigcastle, Wilton, Wiltshire, [Footnote:This name appears in the American Note-Books (August 22, 1837) asWigcastle, Wigton. I cannot find any but the Scotch Wigton, and havesubstituted the Wilton of Wiltshire as being more probable. Memorials ofthe family exist in the adjoining county of Somerset. (_A. N. B. _, October, 1836. )] in England, a younger son, who came to America withWinthrop and his company, by the Arbella, arriving in Salem Bay June 12, 1630. He probably went first to Dorchester, having grants of land there, and was made a freeman about 1634, and representative, or one of "theten men, " in 1635. Although a man of note, his name is not affixed tothe address sent by Governor Winthrop and several others from Yarmouth, before sailing, to their brethren in the English Church; but this iseasily accounted for by the fact that Hathorne was a determinedSeparatist, while the major part of his fellow-pilgrims still clung toEpiscopacy. In 1636, Salem tendered him grants of land if he wouldremove hither, considering that "it was a public benefit that he shouldbecome an inhabitant of that town. " He removed accordingly, and, in1638, he had additional lands granted to him "in consideration of hismany employments for towne and countrie. " Some of these lands weresituated on a pleasant rising ground by the South River, then held to bethe most desirable part of the town; and a street running through thatportion bears the name of Hathorne to this day. In 1645, he petitionedthe General Court that he might be allowed, with others, to form a"company of adventurers" for trading among the French; and in the sameyear he was appointed captain of a military company, the first regulartroop organized in Salem to "advance the military art. " From 1636 to1643 he had been a representative of the people, from Dorchester andSalem; and from 1662 to 1679 he filled the higher office of anassistant. It was in 1667 that he was empowered to receive for the towna tax of twenty pounds of powder per ton for every foreign vessel overtwenty tons trading to Salem and Marblehead, thus forestalling hisfamous descendant in sitting at the receipt of customs. Besides thesevarious activities, he officiated frequently as an attorney at law; andin the Indian campaign of 1676, in Maine, he left no doubt of hisefficiency as a military commander. He led a portion of the army oftwelve hundred men which the colony had raised, and in September of thisyear he surprised four hundred Indians at Cocheco. Two hundred of these"were found to have been perfidious, " and were sent to Boston, to besold as slaves, after seven or eight had been put to death. A couple ofweeks later, Captain Hathorne sent a despatch: "We catched an IndianSagamore of Pegwackick and the gun of another; we found him in manylies, and so ordered him to be put to death, and the Cocheco Indians tobe his executioners. " There was some reason for this severity, for incrossing a river the English had been ambuscaded by the savages. Thecaptain adds: "We have no bread these three days. " This early ancestorwas always prominent. He had been one of a committee in 1661, whoreported concerning the "patent, laws, and privileges and duties to hisMajesty" of the colonists, opposing all appeals to the crown asinconsistent with their charter, and maintained the right of theirgovernment to defend itself against all attempts at overthrow. Two yearslater he was charged by Charles's commissioners with seditious words, and apologized for certain "unadvised" expressions; but the committee of1661 reported at a critical time, and it needed a good deal ofstout-heartedness to make the declarations which it did; and on thewhole William Hathorne may stand as a sturdy member of the community. Heis perhaps the only man of the time who has left a special reputationfor eloquence. Eliot speaks of him as "the most eloquent man of theAssembly, a friend of Winthrop, but often opposed to Endicott, whoglided with the popular stream; as reputable for his piety as for hispolitical integrity. " And Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence, "naming the chief props of the state, says: "Yet through the Lord's mercywe still retain among our Democracy the godly Captaine William Hathorn, whom the Lord hath indued with a quick apprehension, strong memory, andRhetorick, volubility of speech, which hath caused the people to makeuse of him often in Publick Service, especially when they have had to dowith any foreign government. " It is instructive to find what ground hetook during the Quaker persecutions of 1657 to 1662. Endicott was aforward figure in that long-sustained horror; and if Hathorne naturallygravitated to the other extreme from Endicott, he would be likely, onesupposes, to have sympathized with the persecuted. The state was dividedin sentiment during those years; but James Cudworth wrote that "he thatwill not whip and lash, persecute, and punish men that differ in mattersof religion, must not sit on the bench nor sustain any office in thecommonwealth. " Cudworth himself was deposed; and it happens thatHathorne's terms of service, as recorded, seem at first to leave a gapbarely wide enough to include this troublesome period. But, in fact, heresumed power as a magistrate just in time to add at least one to thecopious list of bloody and distinguishing atrocities that so disfigureNew England history. 

Sewel relates [Footnote: History of the Quakers, I. 411, 412. ] that"Anne Coleman and four of her friends were whipped through Salem, Boston, and Dedham by order of Wm. Hawthorn, who before he was amagistrate had opposed compulsion for conscience; and when under thegovernment of Cromwell it was proposed to make a law that none shallpreach without license, he publicly said at Salem that if ever such alaw took place in New England he should look upon it as one of the mostabominable actions that were ever committed there, and that it would beas eminent a Token of God's having forsaken New England, as any couldbe. " His famous descendant, alluding to this passage, [Footnote: See"The Custom House, " introductory to "The Scarlet Letter. "] says that theaccount of this incident "will last longer, it is to be feared, than anyrecord of his better deeds, though these were many. " Yet it should notbe overlooked that Hathorne is the only one among the New Englandpersecutors whom Sewel presents to us with any qualifying remark as to aprevious more humane temper. Sole, too, in escaping the doom of suddendeath which the historian solemnly records in the cases of the rest. Sothat even if we had not the eminent example of Marcus Aurelius and SirThomas More, we might still infer from this that it is no less possiblefor the man of enlightened ability and culture, than for the ignorantbigot, to find himself, almost of necessity, a chief instrument ofreligious coercion. Doubtless this energetic Puritan denouncer ofpersecution never conceived of a fanaticism like that of the Friends, which should so systematically outrage all his deepest sense of decency, order, and piety, and--not content with banishment--should lead itssubjects to return and force their deaths, as it were, on thecommonwealth; as if a neighbor, under some mistaken zeal, were torepeatedly mix poison with our porridge, until his arrest and deathshould seem our only defence against murder. Perhaps he was even on thedissenting side, for a time, though there is no record of his saying, like one Edward Wharton of Salem, that the blood of the Quakers was tooheavy upon him, and he could not bear it. Wharton received twenty lashesfor his sensitiveness, and was fined twenty pounds, and subjected tomore torture afterward. But, whatever Hathorne's first feeling, afterfive years of disturbance, exasperation was added to the responsibilityof taking office, and he persecuted. It is easy to see his variousjustifications, now; yet one cannot wonder that his descendant wasoppressed by the act. That he was so cannot be regretted, if onlybecause of the authentic fact that his reading of Sewel inspired one ofhis most exquisite tales, "The Gentle Boy. "

William Hathorne, however, --whatever his taste in persecution, --makeshis will peacefully and piously in 1679-80: "_Imprimis_, I give mysoul into the hands of Jesus Christ, in whom I hope to bind forevermoremy body to the earth in hope of a glorious resurrection with him, whomthis vile body shall be made like unto his glorious body; and for theestate God hath given me in this world. .. . I do dispose of asfolloweth. " Then he bequeaths various sums of money to divers persons, followed by "all my housing and land, orchard and appurtenances lying inSalem, " to his son John. Among other items, there is one devising his"farm at Groton" to "Gervice Holwyse my gr. Ch. [grandchild] if he cancome over and enjoy it. " Here, by the way, is another bit of coincidencefor the curious. _Gervase Helwyse_ is the name of the young man whoappears in "Lady Eleanor's Mantle, " [Footnote: Twice-Told Tales, Vol. II. ] bereft of reason by his love for the proud and fatal heroine ofthat tale. [Footnote: In the English Note-Books, May 20, 1854, will befound some facts connected with this name, unearthed by Mr. Hawthornehimself. He there tells of the marriage of one _Gervase Elwes_, sonof Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet of Stoke, in Suffolk. This Gervase diedbefore his father; his son died without issue; and thus John MaggottTwining, grandson of the second Gervase through a daughter, came intothe baronetcy. This Twining assumed the name of Elwes. "He was thefamous miser, and must have had Hawthorne blood in him, " says Mr. Hawthorne, "through his grandfather Gervase, whose mother was aHawthorne. " He then refers to William's devise, and says: "My ancestorcalls him his _nephew_. " The will says, "gr. Ch. "; and I supposethe mistake occurred through Mr. Hawthorne's not having that document athand, for reference. ] Captain Hathorne must have been well advanced inyears when he led his troops against the Indians at Cocheco in 1676; forit was only five years later that he disappeared from history and fromthis life forever. 

His son John inherited, together with housing and land, a good deal ofthe first Hathorne's various energy and eminence. He was a freeman in1677, representative from 1683 to 1686, and assistant or counsellor, from 1684 to 1712, except the years of Andros's government. After thedeposition of Andros, he was called to join Bradstreet's Council ofSafety pending the accession of William of Orange; a magistrate for someyears; quartermaster of the Essex companies at first, and afterward, in1696, the commander of Church's troops, whom he led against St. John. Heattacked the enemy's fort there, but, finding his force too weak, drewoff, and embarked for Boston. As his father's captaincy had somehowdeveloped into the dignity of major, so John found himself a colonel in1711. But in 1717 he, too, died. And now there came a change in thefortunes of the Hathorne line. Colonel John, during his magistracy, hadpresided at the witchcraft trials, and had shown himself severe, bigoted, and unrelenting in his spirit toward the accused persons. Something of this may be seen in Upham's volumes. One woman was broughtbefore him, whose husband has left a pathetic record of her suffering. "She was forced to stand with her arms stretched out. I requested that Imight hold one of her hands, but it was declined me; then she desired meto wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat from her face, which Idid; then she desired that she might lean herself on me, saying sheshould faint. Justice Hathorne replied she had strength enough totorment these persons, and she should have strength enough to stand. Irepeating something against their cruel proceedings, they commanded meto be silent, or else I should be turned out of the room. " [Footnote:Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. P. 85. ] It is not strange thatthis husband should have exclaimed, that God would take revenge upon hiswife's persecutors; and perhaps he was the very man whose curse was saidto have fallen upon the justice's posterity. 

From this time, at all events, the family lost its commanding positionin Salem affairs. Justice Hathorne's son Joseph subsided into the quietof farm-life. The only notable association with his name is, that hemarried Sarah Bowditch, a sister of the grandfather of the distinguishedmathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch. But it is in the beginning of theeighteenth century that the Hathornes begin to appear as mariners. Inthe very year of the justice's death, one Captain Ebenezer Hathorneearned the gloomy celebrity attendant on bringing small-pox to Salem, inhis brig just arrived from the Barbadoes. Possibly, Justice John mayhave died from this very infection; and if so, the curse would seem tohave worked with a peculiarly malign appropriateness, by making a memberof his own family the unwilling instrument of his end. By and by aCaptain Benjamin Hathorne is cast away and drowned on the coast, withfour other men. Perhaps it was his son, another Benjamin, who, in 1782, being one of the crew of an American privateer, "The Chase, " captured bythe British, escaped from a prison-ship in the harbor of Charleston, S. C. , with six comrades, one of whom was drowned. Thus, gradually, originated the traditional career of the men of this family, --"agray-headed shipmaster in each generation, " as the often-quoted passageputs it, "retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boyof fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast. " But the mosteminent among these hardy skippers is Daniel, the son of farmer Joseph, and grandfather of the author. 

Daniel Hathorne lived to be eighty-five, and expired only on April 18, 1796, eight years and a little more before his famous grandson came intothe world. Something of the old prowess revived in him, and being astout seafarer, and by inheritance a lover of independence, he becamecommander of a privateer during our Revolution; indeed, it is said hecommanded several. His guns have made no great noise in history, buttheir reverberation has left in the air a general tradition of hisbravery. The only actual account of his achievements which I have metwith is the following ballad, written by the surgeon of his ship, whowas perhaps better able than any one else to gauge the valor of hiscountryman and commander, by the amount of bloodshed on his piraticalcraft:--

BRIG "FAIR AMERICAN": DANIEL HATHORNE, COMMANDER. 

 The twenty-second of August, before the close of day, All hands on board our privateer, we got her under weigh. We kept the Eastern shore on board for forty leagues or more, When our departure took for sea, from the Isle of Monhegan shore. 

 Bold Hathorne was commander, a man of real worth, Old England's cruel tyranny induced him to go forth; She with relentless fury was plundering all the coast, And thought because her strength was great, our glorious cause was lost. 

 Now farewell to America, --farewell our friends and wives, We trust in Heaven's peculiar care, for to protect their lives, To prosper our intended cruise upon the raging main, And to preserve our dearest friends till we return again. 

 The wind it being leading and bore us on our way, As far unto the Eastward as the Gulf of Florida, When we fell in with a British ship hound homeward from the main; We gave her two bow-chasers, and she returned the same. 

 We hauled up our courses and prepared for fight; The contest held four glasses, [*] until the dusk of night; Then having sprung our mainmast, and had so large a sea, We dropped astern, and left our chase till the returning day. 

[* The time consumed in the emptying of a half-hour glass four times, --two hours. ]

 Next day we fished our mainmast, the ship still being nigh, All hands was for engaging, our chance once more to try; But wind and sea being boisterous, our cannon would not bear; We thought it quite imprudent, and so we left her there. 

 We cruised to the Eastward, near the coast of Portuigale: In longitude of twenty-seven we saw a lofty sail. We gave her chase, and soon perceived she was a British scow Standing for fair America with troops for General Howe. 

 Our captain did inspect her with glasses, and he said:-- "My boys, she means to fight us, but be you not afraid; All hands repair to quarters, see everything is clear; We'll give him a broadside, my boys, as soon as she comes near. "

 She was prepared with nettings, and her men were well secured, And bore directly for us, and put us close on board, When the cannons roared like thunder, and the muskets fired amain; But soon we were alongside, and grappled to her chain. 

 And now the scene is altered, --the cannon ceased to roar; We fought with swords and boarding-pikes one glass and something more; The British pride and glory no longer dared to stay, But cut the Yankee grappling, and quickly bore away. 

 Our case was not so desperate, as plainly might appear, Yet sudden death did enter on board our privateer; Mahany, Clew, and Clemmans, the valiant and the brave, Fell glorious in the contest, and met a watery grave!

 Ten other men were wounded, among our warlike crew, With them our noble captain, to whom all praise is due. To him and all our officers let's give a hearty cheer! Success to fair America and our good privateer!

This ballad is as long as the cruise, and the rhythm of it seems to showthat the writer had not quite got his sea-legs on, in boarding thepoetic craft. Especially is he to be commiserated on that unhappynecessity to which the length of the verse compels him, of keeping "theEastern shore on board for forty leagues, " in the first stanza; but itwas due to its historic and associative value to give it entire. 

Perhaps, after all, it was a shrewd insight that caused the Hathornes totake to the sea. Salem's greatest glory was destined for a term to liein that direction. Many of these old New England seaports havemagnificent recollections of a commercial grandeur hardly to be guessedfrom their aspect to-day. Castine, Portsmouth, Wiscasset, Newburyport, and the rest, --they controlled the carrying of vast regions, andfortune's wheel whirled amid their wharves and warehouses with a merryand reassuring sound. Each town had its special trade, and kept themonopoly. Portsmouth and Newburyport ruled the trade with Martinique, Guadaloupe, and Porto Rico, sending out fish and bringing back sugar;Gloucester bargained with the West Indies for rum, and brought coffeeand dye-stuffs from Surinam; Marblehead had the Bilboa business; andSalem, most opulent of all, usurped the Sumatra, African, East Indian, Brazilian, and Cayenne commerce. By these new avenues over the oceanmany men brought home wealth that literally made princes of them, andhas left permanent traces in the solid and stately homes they built, still crowded with precious heirlooms, as well as in the refinementnurtured therein, and the thrifty yet generous character they gave tothe town. Among these successful merchants was Simon Forrester, whomarried Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-aunt Rachel, and died in 1817, leaving an immense property. Him Hawthorne speaks of in "The CustomHouse"; alluding to "old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old SimonForrester, and many another magnate of his day; whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain-pile of wealthbegan to dwindle. " But Nathaniel's family neither helped to underminethe heap, nor accumulated a rival one. However good the forecast thathis immediate ancestors had made, as to the quickest and broadest roadto wealth, they travelled long in the wake of success without everwinning it, themselves. The malediction that fell on Justice Hathorne'shead might with some reason have been thought to still hang over hisrace, as Hawthorne suggests that its "dreary and unprosperous condition. .. For many a long year back" would show. Indeed, the tradition of sucha curse was kept alive in his family, and perhaps it had its share indeveloping that sadness and reticence which seem to have belonged to hisfather. 

It is plain from these circumstances how the idea of "The House of theSeven Gables" evolved itself from the history of his own family, withimportant differences. The person who is cursed, in the romance, uses aspecial spite toward a single victim, in order to get hold of a propertywhich he bequeaths to his own heirs. Thus a double and treble wrong isdone, and the notion of a curse working upon successive generations issubordinate to the conception of the injury which a man entails to hisown descendants by forcing on them a stately house founded upon a sin. The parallel of the Hathorne decline in fortune is carried out; but itmust be observed that the peculiar separateness and shyness, whichdoubtless came to be in some degree a trait of all the Hathornes, istransferred in the book from the family of the accursed to that ofMaule, the utterer of the evil prophecy. "As for Matthew Maule'sposterity, " says the romancer, "to all appearance they were a quiet, honest, well-meaning race of people"; but "they were generallypoverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working with unsuccessfuldiligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the seaas sailors before the mast"; and "so long as any of the race were to befound, they had been marked out from other men--not strikingly, nor aswith a sharp line, but with an effect that was felt, rather than spokenof--by an hereditary character of reserve. Their companions, or thosewho endeavored to become such, grew conscious of a circle round aboutthe Maules, within the sanctity or the spell of which, in spite of anexterior of sufficient frankness and good-fellowship, it was impossiblefor any man to step. " The points of resemblance here may be easilydistinguished. In the "American Note-Books" occurs an anecdote whichrecalls the climax of the romance. It concerns Philip English, who hadbeen tried for witchcraft by John Hathorne, and became his bitter enemy. On his death-bed, he consented to forgive him; "But if I get well, " saidhe, "I'll be damned if I forgive him!" One of English's daughters (hehad no sons) afterward married a son of John Hathorne. How masterly isthe touch of the artist's crayon in this imaginative creation, basedupon the mental and moral anatomy of actual beings! It is a delicatestudy of the true creative art to follow out this romantic shape, andcontrast it with the real creatures and incidents to which it has a sortof likeness. With perfect choice, the artist selects, probably notconsciously, but through association, whatever he likes from the real, and deviates from it precisely where he feels this to be fitting; adds atrait here, and transfers another there; and thus completes somethinghaving a unity and inspiration of its own, neither a simple reproductionnor an unmixed invention, the most subtile and harmonious product of thecreative power. It is in this way that "The House of the Seven Gables"comes to be not merely fancifully a romance typical of Salem, but in themost essentially true way representative of it. Surely no one could havebetter right to thus embody the characteristics of the town thanHawthorne, whose early ancestors had helped to magnify it and defend it, and whose nearer progenitors had in their fallen fortunes almostforeshadowed the mercantile decline of the long-lived capital. Surely noone can be less open to criticism for illustrating various phases of histownsmen's character and exposing in this book, as elsewhere, thoughalways mildly, the gloomier traits of the founders, than this deep-eyedand gentle man, whose forefathers notably possessed "all the Puritanictraits, both good and evil, " and who uses what is as much to thedisadvantage of his own blood as to that of others, with such absolute, admirable impartiality. 

[Illustration]

III. 

BOYHOOD. --COLLEGE DAYS. --FANSHAWE. 

1804-1828. 

With such antecedents behind him, and such associations awaiting him, Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, July 4, 1804. 

His father, the captain of a trading-vessel, was one of three sons ofthe privateersman Daniel, and was born in 1776; so that both father andson, it happens, are associated by time of birth with the year and theday that American independence has made honorable and immemorial. Theelder Nathaniel wore his surname in one of several fashions that hispredecessors had provided, --for they had some eight different ways ofwriting, though presumably but one of pronouncing it, --and calledhimself Hathorne. It was not long after the birth of his only boy, second of his three children, however, that he left the name to thismale successor, with whom it underwent a restoration to the morepicturesque and flowered form of Hawthorne. Nathaniel, the son ofDaniel, died in Surinam, in the spring of 1808, of a fever, it isthought, and left his widow stricken with a lifelong grief, his familysuddenly overwhelmed with sorrow and solitude. I think I cannot conveythe sadness of this more fully than by simply saying it. Yet sombre asthe event is, it seems a fit overture to the opening life of this spiritso nobly sad whom we are about to study. The tradition seems to havebecome established that Captain Nathaniel was inclined to melancholy, and very reticent; also, that though he was an admirable shipmaster, hehad a vigorous appetite for reading, and carried many books with him onhis long voyages. Those who know the inheritances that come with thePuritan blood will easily understand the sort of dark, underlyingdeposit of unutterable sadness that often reminds such persons of theiraustere ancestry; but, in addition to this, the Hathornes had now firmlyimbibed the belief that their family was under a retributive ban for itsshare in the awful severities of the Quaker and the witchcraft periods. It was not to them the symbolic and picturesque thing that it is to us, but a real overhanging, intermittent oppressiveness, that must oftenhave struck across their actions in a chilling and disastrous way. Theiringrained reticence was in itself, when contrasted with Major Hathorne'sfame in oratory, a sort of corroboration of the idea that fate wasmaking reprisals upon them. The captain's children felt this; and theson, when grown to manhood, was said to greatly resemble his father inappearance, as well. Of the Endicotts, who also figured largely in themaritime history of Salem, it is told that in the West Indies the namegrew so familiar as being that of the captain of a vessel, that itbecame generic; and when a new ship arrived, the natives would ask, "Whois the Endicott?" Very likely the Hathornes had as fixed a fame in theports where they traded. At all events, some forty years after thecaptain's death at Surinam, a sailor one day stopped Mr. SurveyorHawthorne on the steps of the Salem Custom House, and asked him if hehad not once a relative--an uncle or a father--who died in Surinam atthe date given above. He had recognized him by his likeness to thefather, of whom Nathaniel probably had no memory at all. 

But he inherited much from his mother, too. She has been described by agentleman who saw her in Maine, as very reserved, "a very pious woman, and a very minute observer of religious festivals, " of "feasts, fasts, new moons, and Sabbaths, " and perhaps a little inclined to superstition. Such an influence as hers would inevitably foster in the son that strainof reverence, and that especial purity and holiness of thought, whichpervade all that he has written. Those who knew her have said also, thatthe luminous, gray, magnificent eyes that so impressed people inHawthorne were like hers. She had been Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, the daughter of Richard Manning, whose ancestors came to New Englandabout 1680, and sister of Richard and of Robert Manning, a well-knownpomologist of the same place. After the death of her husband, thisbrother Robert came to her assistance, Captain Hathorne having left butlittle property: he was only thirty-two when he died. 

Nathaniel had been born in a solid, old-fashioned little house on UnionStreet, which very appropriately faced the old shipyard of the town in1760; and it appears that in the year before his birth, the Custom Houseof that time had been removed to a spot "opposite the long brickbuilding owned by W. S. Gray, and Benjamin H. Hathorne, "--as if thefuture Surveyor's association with the revenue were already drawingnearer to him. The widow now moved with her little family to the houseof her father, in Herbert Street, the next one eastward from Union. Theland belonging to this ran through to Union Street, adjoining the housethey had left; and from his top-floor study here, in later years, Hawthorne could look down on the less lofty roof under which he wasborn. The Herbert Street house, however, was spoken of as being on UnionStreet, and it is that one which is meant in a passage of the "AmericanNote-Books" (October 25, 1838), which says, "In this dismal chamber FAMEwas won, " as likewise in the longer revery in the same volume, datedOctober 4, 1840. 

"Certainly, " the sister of Hawthorne writes to me of him, "no man everneeded less a formal biography. " But the earlier portion of his life, ofwhich so little record has been made public, must needs bear sointeresting a relation to his later career, that I shall examine it withas much care as I may. 

Very few details of his early boyhood have been preserved; but these goto show that his individuality soon appeared. "He was a pleasant child, quite handsome, with golden curls, " is almost the first news we have ofhim; but his mastering sense of beauty soon made itself known. Whilequite a little fellow, he is reported to have said of a woman who wastrying to be kind to him, "Take her away! She is ugly and fat, and has aloud voice!" When still a very young school-boy, he was fond of takinglong walks entirely by himself; was seldom or never known to have acompanion; and in especial, haunted Legg's Hill, a place some miles fromhis home. The impression of his mother's loss and loneliness must havetaken deep and irremovable hold upon his heart; the wide, bleak, uncomprehended fact that his father would never return, that he shouldnever see him, seems to have sunk into his childish reveries like acabalistic spell, turning thought and feeling and imagination towardmournful and mysterious things. Before he had passed from his mother'scare to that of the schoolmaster, it is known that he would break outfrom the midst of childish broodings, and exclaim, "There, mother! I isgoing away to sea, some time"; then, with an ominous shaking of thehead, "and I'll never come back again!" The same refrain lurked in hismind when, a little older, he would tell his sisters fantastic tales, and give them imaginary accounts of long journeys, which he should takein future, in the course of which he flew at will through the air; onthese occasions he always ended with the same hopeless prophecy of hisfailing to return. No doubt, also, there was a little spice of boyishmischief in this; and something of the fictionist, for it enabled him tomake a strong impression on his audience. He brought out the_dénouement_ in such a way as to seem--so one of those who heardhim has written--to enjoin upon them "the advice to value him the morewhile he stayed with" them. This choice of the lugubrious, however, seems to have been native to him; for almost before he could speakdistinctly he is reported to have caught up certain lines of "RichardIII. " which he had heard read; and his favorite among them, alwaysdeclaimed on the most unexpected occasions and in his loudest tone, was, --

 "Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass!"

Though he has nowhere made allusion to the distant and sudden death ofhis father, Hawthorne has mentioned an uncle lost at sea, in the"English Notes, " [Footnote: June 30, 1854]--a startling passage. "If itis not known how and when a man dies, " he says "it makes a ghost of himfor many years thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is anexample; also the Emperor Frederic [Barbarossa] and other famous men whowere thought to be alive ages after their disappearance. So with privateindividuals. I had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about thebeginning of the War of 1812, and has never returned to this hour. Butas long as his mother lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave upthe hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories of personswhose descriptions answered to his. Some people actually affirmed thatthey had seen him in various parts of the world. Thus, so far as herbelief was concerned, he still walked the earth. And even to this day Inever see his name, which is no very uncommon one, without thinking thatthis may be the lost uncle. " At the time of that loss Hawthorne was buteight years old; he wrote this memorandum at fifty; and all that timethe early impression had remained intact, and the old semi-hallucinationabout the uncle's being still alive hung about his mind through fortyyears. When we change the case, and replace the uncle in whom he had novery distinct interest with the father whose decease had so overcloudedhis mother's life, and thwarted the deep yearnings of his own youngheart, we may begin to guess the depth and persistence of the emotionswhich must have been awakened in him by this awful silence and absenceof death, so early thrown across the track of his childish life. Iconceive those lonely school-boy walks, overblown by shadow-freightingmurmurs of the pine and accompanied by the far-off, muffled roll of thesea, to have been full of questionings too deep for words, too sacredfor other companionship than that of uninquisitive Nature;--questioningsnot even shaped and articulated to his own inner sense. 

Yet, whatever half-created, formless world of profound and tenderspeculations and sad reflections the boy was moulding within himself, this did not master him. The seed, as time went on, came to miraculousissue; but as yet the boy remained, healthily and for the most parthappily, a boy still. A lady who, as a child, lived in a house whichlooked upon the garden of the widow's new abiding-place, used to see himat play there with his sisters, a graceful but sturdy little figure; anda little incident of his school-days, at the same time that it shows howsoon he began to take a philosophical view of things, gives a hint ofhis physical powers. He was put to study under Dr. J. E. Worcester, thefamous lexicographer, (who, on graduating at Yale, in 1811, had come toSalem and taken a school there for a few years;) and it is told of himat this time, on the best authority, that he frequently came home withaccounts of having fought with a comrade named John Knights. 

"But why do you fight with him so often?" asked one of his sisters. 

"I can't help it, " he said. "John Knights is a boy of very quarrelsomedisposition. "

Something in the judicial, reproving tone of the reply seems to hintthat Hawthorne had taken the measure of his rival, physically as well asmentally, and had found himself more than a match for the poor fellow. All that is known of his bodily strength in maturer boyhood and atcollege weighs on this side; and Horatio Bridge, [Footnote: SeePrefatory Note to The Snow Image. ] his classmate and most intimatefriend at Bowdoin College, tells me that, though remarkablycalm-tempered, any suspicion of disrespect roused him into readiness togive the sort of punishment that his athletic frame warranted. 

But one of the most powerful influences acting on this healthy, unsuspected, un-self-suspecting genius must have been that of books. Thehouse in Herbert Street was well provided with them, and he was allowedto make free choice. His selection was seldom, if ever, questioned; andthis was well, for he thus drew to himself the mysterious aliment onwhich his genius throve. Shakespere, Milton, Pope, and Thomson arementioned among the first authors with whom he made acquaintance onfirst beginning to read; and "The Castle of Indolence" seems to havebeen one of his favorite poems while a boy. He is also known to haveread, before fourteen, more or less of Rousseau's works, and to havegone through, with great diligence, the whole of "The Newgate Calendar, "which latter selection excited a good deal of comment among his familyand relatives, but no decisive opposition. A remark of his has come downfrom that time, that he cared "very little for the history of the worldbefore the fourteenth century"; and he had a judicious shyness of whatwas considered useful reading. Of the four poets there is of course butlittle trace in his works; Rousseau, with his love of nature andimpressive abundance of emotion, seems to stand more directly related tothe future author's development, and "The Newgate Calendar" must havesupplied him with the most weighty suggestions for those deep ponderingson sin and crime which almost from the first tinged the pellucid currentof his imagination. There is another book, however, early and familiarlyknown to him, which indisputably affected the bent of his genius in animportant degree. This is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress. "

Being a healthy boy, with strong out-of-door instincts planted in him byinheritance from his seafaring sire, it might have been that he wouldnot have been brought so early to an intimacy with books, but for anaccident similar to that which played a part in the boyhoods of Scottand Dickens. When he was nine years old he was struck on the foot by aball, and made seriously lame. The earliest fragment of his writing nowextant is a letter to his uncle Robert Manning, at that time in Raymond, Maine, written from Salem, December 9, 1813. It announces that his footis no better, and that a new doctor is to be sent for. "May be, " the boywrites, "he will do me some good, for Dr. B---- has not, and I don'tknow as Dr. K---- will. " He adds that it is now four weeks since he hasbeen to school, "and I don't know but it will be four weeks longer. "This weighing of possibilities, and this sense of the uncertain future, already quaintly show the disposition of the man he is to grow into;though the writing is as characterless as extreme youth, exaggerateddistinctness, and copy-books could make it. The little invalid has notyet quite succumbed, however, for the same letter details that he hashopped out into the street once since his lameness began, and been "outin the office and had four cakes. " But the trouble was destined to lastmuch longer than even the young seer had projected his gaze. There wassome threat of deformity, and it was not until he was nearly twelve thathe became quite well. Meantime, his kind schoolmaster, Dr. Worcester (atwhose sessions it may have been that Hawthorne read Enfield's "Speaker, "the name of which had "a classical sound in his ears, " long, longafterward, when he saw the author's tombstone in Liverpool), came tohear him his lessons at home. The good pedagogue does not figure afterthis in Hawthorne's boyish history; but a copy of Worcester's Dictionarystill exists and is in present use, which bears in a tremulous writingon the fly-leaf the legend: "Nathaniel Hawthorne, Esq. , with therespects of J. E. Worcester. " For a long time, in the worst of hislameness, the gentle boy was forced to lie prostrate, and choosing thefloor for his couch, he would read there all day long. He was extremelyfond of cats, --a taste which he kept through life; and during thisillness, forced to odd resorts for amusement, he knitted a pair ofstockings for the cat who reigned in the household at the time. Whentired of reading, he diverted himself with constructing houses of booksfor the same feline pet, building walls for her to leap, and perhapserecting triumphal arches for her to pass under. In this period he musthave taken a considerable range in literature, for his age; and onewould almost say that Nature, seeing so rare a spirit in a sound bodythat kept him sporting and away from reading, had devised a seeminglyharsh plan of luring him into his proper element. 

It was more likely after this episode than before, that Bunyan took thathold upon him so fraught with consequences. He went every Sunday to hisgrandmother Hathorne's, and every Sunday he would lay hands upon thebook; then, going to a particular three-cornered chair in a particularcorner of the room, "he would read it by the hour, without oncespeaking. " I have already suggested the relations of the three minds, Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne. The more obvious effect of this readingis the allegorical turn which it gave the boy's thoughts, manifest inmany of his shorter productions while a young man; the most curious andcomplete issue being that of "The Celestial Railroad, " in the "Mosses, "where Christian's pilgrimage is so deftly parodied in a railroad routeto the heavenly goal. Full of keen satire, it does not, as it might atfirst seem, tend to diminish Bunyan's dignity, but inspires one with anovel sense of it, as one is made to gradually pierce the shams ofcertain modern cant. But a more profound consequence was the directionof Hawthorne's expanding thought toward sin and its various and occultmanifestations. Imagine the impression upon a mind so fine, soexquisitely responsive, and so well prepared for grave revery asHawthorne's, which a passage like the following would make. In hisdiscourse with Talkative, Faithful says: "A man may cry out against sin, of policy; but he cannot abhor it but by virtue of a godly antipathy. Ihave heard many cry out against sin in the pulpit, who can abide it wellenough in the heart, house, and conversation. "

Here is almost the motive and the moral of "The Scarlet Letter. " ButHawthorne refined upon it unspeakably, and probed many fathoms deeper, when he perceived that there might be motives far more complex than thatof policy, a condition much more subtly counterfeiting the mien ofgoodness and spirituality. Talkative replies, "You lie at a catch, Iperceive, "--meaning that he is sophistical. "No, not I, " says Faithful;"I am only for setting things right. " Did not this desire of settingthings right stir ever afterward in Hawthorne's consciousness? It is nota little singular to trace in Bunyan two or three much more direct linkswith some of Hawthorne's work. When Christiana at the Palace Beautifulis shown one of the apples that Eve ate of, and Jacob's ladder with someangels ascending upon it, it incites one to turn to that marvellouslycomplete "Virtuoso's Collection, " [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II. ] where Hawthorne has preserved Shelley's skylark and the steedRosinante, with Hebe's cup and many another impalpable marvel, in thewarden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read Great-Heart'sanalysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, "He had, I think, a Slough ofDespond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, " wecan detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of "The BosomSerpent. " [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II. ] I cannotrefrain from copying here some passages from this same portion whichrecall in an exceptional way some of the traits of Hawthorne, enough, atleast, to have given them a partially prophetic power over hischaracter. Mr. Great-Heart says of Mr. Fearing: "He desired much to bealone; yet he always loved good talk, and often would get behind thescreen to hear it. " (So Hawthorne screened himself behind his genialreserve. ) "He also loved much to see ancient things, and to be ponderingthem in his mind. " What follows is not so strictly analogous throughout. Mr. Honest asks Great-Heart why so good a man as Fearing "should be allhis days so much in the dark. " And he answers, "There are two sorts ofreasons for it. One is, the wise God will have it so: some must pipe, and some must weep. .. . And for my part, I care not at all for thatprofession which begins not in heaviness of mind. The first string thatthe musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all intune. God also plays upon this string first, when he sets the soul intune for himself. Only there was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing; hecould play upon no other music but this, till towards his latter end. "Let the reader by no means imagine a moral comparison between Hawthorneand Bunyan's Mr. Fearing. The latter, as his creator says, "was a goodman, though much down in spirit"; and Hawthorne, eminent in uprightness, was also overcast by a behest to look for the most part at the darkerphases of human thinking and feeling; yet there could not have been theslightest real similarity between him and the excellent but weak-kneedMr. Fearing, whose life is made heavy by the doubt of his inheritance inthe next world. Still, though the causes differ, it could be said ofHawthorne, as of Master Fearing, "Difficulties, lions, or Vanity Fair, he feared not at all; it was only sin, death, and hell that were to hima terror. " I mean merely that Hawthorne may have found in thischaracter-sketch--Bunyan's most elaborate one, for the typical subjectof which he shows an evident fondness and leniency--something peculiarlyfascinating, which may not have been without its shaping influence forhim. But the intimate, affectionate, and lasting relation betweenBunyan's allegory and our romancer is something to be perfectly assuredof. The affinity at once suggests itself, and there are allusions in the"Note-Books" and the works of Hawthorne which recall and sustain it. Solate as 1854, he notes that "an American would never understand thepassage in Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going astray along aby-path into the grounds of Giant Despair, from there being no stilesand by-paths in our country. " Rarely, too, as Hawthorne quotes from oralludes to other authors, there is a reference to Bunyan in "TheBlithedale Romance, " and several are found in "The Scarlet Letter": itis in that romance that the most powerful suggestion of kinship betweenthe two imaginations occurs. After Mr. Dimmesdale's interview withHester, in the wood, he suffers the most freakish temptations to variousblasphemy on returning to the town: he meets a deacon, and desires toutter evil suggestions concerning the communion-supper; then a pious andexemplary old dame, fortunately deaf, into whose ear a mad impulse urgeshim to whisper what then seemed to him an "unanswerable argument againstthe immortality of the soul, " and after muttering some incoherent words, he sees "an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed likethe _shine of the celestial city_ on her face. " Then comes the mostfrightful temptation of all, as he sees approaching him a maiden newlywon into his flock. "She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed inParadise. The minister knew well that he himself was enshrined withinthe stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains abouthis image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love areligious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor younggirl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway ofthis sorely tempted, or--shall we not rather say?--this lost anddesperate man. As she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered to him tocondense into small compass and drop into her tender bosom a germ ofevil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruitbetimes. " Now, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, "poor Christian wasso confounded, that he did not know his own voice. .. . Just when he wascome over against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked onesgot behind him and stepped up softly to him, and, whisperingly, suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought hadproceeded from his own mind. " I need not enlarge upon the similar driftof these two extracts; still less mark the matured, detailed, andvividly human and dramatic superiority of Hawthorne's use of the elementcommon to both. 

For other reading in early boyhood he had Spenser (it is said that thefirst book which he bought with his own money was "The Faery Queen, " forwhich he kept a fondness all his life), Froissart's "Chronicles, " andClarendon's "History of the Rebellion. " The incident of Dr. Johnson'spenance in Uttoxeter Market dwelt so intimately in Hawthorne's mind (hehas treated it in the "True Stories, " and touches very tenderly upon itin "Our Old Home, " where he says that he "has always been profoundlyimpressed" by it), that I fancy a childish impression must have endearedit to him; and Boswell may have been one of his acquisitions at thistime. Perhaps Dr. Worcester made the book known to him; and he would notbe at a loss to find endless entertainment there. 

It was in November, 1813, that the accident at ball disabled him. InJune of the same year an event had taken place which must have enteredstrongly into his heart, as into that of many another Salem boy. YoungLawrence, of the American navy, --who had won honors for himself atTripoli and in the then prevailing war with Great Britain, --had justbeen promoted, for gallant achievements off the coast of Brazil, to acaptaincy, and put in command of the frigate "Chesapeake, " at Boston. ABritish frigate, the "Shannon, " had been cruising for some time in theneighborhood, seeking an encounter with the "Chesapeake, " and thevaliant Lawrence felt compelled to go out and meet her, though he hadonly just assumed command, had had no time to discipline his crew (someof whom were disaffected), and was without the proper complement ofcommissioned officers. Americans know the result; how the "Chesapeake"was shattered and taken in a fifteen minutes' fight off Marblehead, andhow Lawrence fell with a mortal wound, uttering those unforgotten words, "Don't give up the ship. " The battle was watched by crowds of peoplefrom Salem, who swarmed upon the hillsides to get a glimpse of theresult. 

When the details at last reached the town, many days afterward, CaptainGeorge Crowninshield fitted out a flag of truce, sailed for Halifax withten shipmasters on board, and obtained the bodies of Lawrence and hislieutenant, Ludlow. Late in August they returned, and the city gaveitself to solemnities in honor of the lost heroes, with the martialdignity of processions and the sorrowing sound of dirges. Cannonreverberated around them, and flags drooped above them at half-mast, shorn of their splendor. Joseph Story delivered an eloquent oration overthem, and there was mourning in the hearts of every one, mixed with thatspiritualized sense of national grandeur and human worth that comes athours like this. Among the throngs upon the streets that day must havestood the boy Nathaniel Hawthorne; not too young to understand, andimbibing from this spectacle, as from many other sources, that profoundlove of country, that ingrained, ineradicable American quality, whichmarked his whole maturity. 

I have not found any distinct corroboration of the report that Nathanielagain lost the use of his limbs, before going to Maine to live. Inanother brief, boyish letter dated "Salem, Monday, July 21, 1818" (allthese documents are short, and allude to the writer's inability to findanything more to say), he speaks of wanting to "go to dancing-school alittle longer" before removing with his mother to the house which hisuncle is building at Raymond. He has also, he says, been to Nahant, which he likes, because "fish are very thick there"; both items seemingto show a proper degree of activity. There has been a tendency amongpersons who have found nothing to obstruct the play of their fancies, toestablish a notion of almost ill-balanced mental precocity in thispowerful young genius, who seems to have advanced as well in muscular asin intellectual development. 

It was in October, 1818, that Mrs. Hathorne carried her family toRaymond, to occupy the new house, a dwelling so ambitious, gauged by theprimitive community thereabouts, that it gained the title of "Manning'sFolly. " Raymond is in Cumberland County, a little east of Sebago Lake, and the house, which is still standing, mossy and dismantled, is nearwhat has since been called Radoux's Mills. Though built by RobertManning, it was purchased afterward by his brother Richard, whose widowmarried Mr. Radoux, the owner of these mills. Richard Manning's willprovided for the establishing of a meeting-house in the neighborhood, and his widow transformed the Folly into a Tabernacle; but, thecommunity ceasing to use it after a few years, it has remaineduntenanted and decaying ever since, enjoying now the fame of beinghaunted. Lonely as was the region then, it perhaps had a more livelyaspect than at present: A clearing probably gave the inmates of theFolly a clear sweep of vision to the lake; and to the northwest, beyondthe open fields that still lie there, frown dark pine slopes, rangingand rising away into "forest-crowned hills; while in the far distanceevery hue of rock and tree, of field and grove, melts into the soft blueof Mount Washington. " This weird and woodsy ground of Cumberland becamethe nurturing soil of Hawthorne for some years. He stayed only onetwelvemonth at Sebago Lake, returning to Salem after that for collegepreparation. But Brunswick, where his academic years were passed, liesless than thirty miles from the home in the woods, and within the samecounty: doubtless, also, he spent some of his summer vacations atRaymond. The brooding spell of his mother's sorrow was perhaps evendeepened in this favorable solitude. I know not whether the faith ofwomen's hearts really finds an easier avenue to such consecration asthis of Mrs. Hathorne's, in Salem, than elsewhere. I happen lately tohave heard of a widow in that same neighborhood who has remainedbereaved and uncomforted for more than seventeen years. With patheticenergy she spends the long days of summer, in long, incessant walks, sorrow-pursued, away from the dwellings of men. But, however this be, Ithink this divine and pure devotion to a first love, though it may haveimpregnated Hawthorne's mind too keenly with the mournfulness ofmortality, was yet one of the most cogent means of entirely clarifyingthe fine spirit which he inherited, and that he in part owes to thisexquisite example his marvellous, unsurpassed spirituality. A woman thustrue to her highest experience and her purest memories, by living in asacred communion with the dead, annihilates time and is already set inan atmosphere of eternity. Ah, strong and simple soul that knew not howto hide your grief under specious self-comfortings and maxims ofconvenience, and so bowed in lifelong prostration before the knowledgeof your first, unsullied love, be sure the world will sooner or laterknow how much it owes to such as you!

More than once has Nathaniel Hawthorne touched the delicate fibres ofthe heart that thrill again in this memorial grief of his mother's; and, incongruous as is the connection of the following passage out of one ofthe Twice-Told Tales, it is not hard to trace the origin of thesensibility and insight which prompted it: "It is more probably thefact, " so it runs, "that while men are able to reflect upon their lostcompanions as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the otherhand, are _conscious that a portion of their being has gone with thedeparted, whithersoever he has gone_" [Footnote: "drippings with aChisel, " in Vol. II. Of the Twice-Told Tales. ] But the most perfectexample of his sympathy with this sorrow of widowhood is that brief, concentrated, and seemingly slight tale, "The Wives of the Dead, "[Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales. ] than whichI know of nothing more touching and true, more exquisitely proportionedand dramatically wrought out among all English tales of the same scopeand length. It pictures the emotions of "two young and comely women, "the "recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman; and twosuccessive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chancesof Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic. " The action occupiesthe night after the news, and turns upon the fact that each sister isroused, unknown to the other, at different hours, to be told that thereport about her husband is false. One cannot give its beauty withoutthe whole, more than one can separate the dewdrop from the morning-glorywithout losing the effect they make together. It is a completepresentment, in little, of all that dwells in widowhood. One sentence Imay remind the reader of, nevertheless: "Her face was turned partly inwardto the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionlesscontentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within it. " Even ashis widowed mother's face looked, to the true-souled boy, when they dweltthere together in the forest of pines, beside the placid lake!

Yet clear and searching as must then have been his perceptions, he hadnot always formulated them or made them his chief concern. On May 16, 1819 (the first spring after coming to the new abode), he writes to hisuncle Robert that "we are all very well"; and "the grass and some of thetrees look very green, the roads are very good, there is no snow onLymington mountains. The fences are all finished, and the garden is laidout and planted. .. . I have shot a partridge and a henhawk, and caughteighteen large trout out of our brooke. I am sorry you intend to send meto school again. " Happy boy! he thinks he has found his vocation: it is, to shoot henhawks and catch trout. But his uncle, fortunately, isotherwise minded, though Nathaniel writes, in the same note: "Mothersays she can hardly spare me. " The sway of outdoor life must have beenvery strong over this stalwart boy's temperament. One who saw a greatdeal of him has related how in the very last year of his life Hawthornereverted with fondness, perhaps with something of a sick and sinkingman's longing for youthful scenes, to these early days at Sebago Lake;"Though it was there, " he confessed, "I first got my cursed habits ofsolitude. " "I lived in Maine, " he said, "like a bird of the air, soperfect was the freedom I enjoyed. " During the moonlight nights ofwinter he would skate until midnight all alone upon Sebago Lake, withthe deep shadows of the icy hills on either hand. When he found himselffar away from his home and weary with the exercise of skating, he wouldsometimes take refuge in a log-cabin, where half a tree would be burningon the broad hearth. He would sit in the ample chimney, and look at thestars through the great aperture through which the flames went roaringup. "Ah, " he said, "how well I recall the summer days, also, when withmy gun I roamed at will through the woods of Maine!. .. Everything isbeautiful in youth, for all things are allowed to it then!" The samewriter mentions the author's passion for the sea, telling how, on thereturn from England in 1860, Hawthorne was constantly saying in hisquiet, earnest way: "I should like to sail on and on forever, and nevertouch the shore again. " I have it from his sister that he used todeclare that, had he not been sent to college, he should have become amariner, like his predecessors. Indeed, he had the fresh air and thesalt spray in his blood. 

Still it is difficult to believe that by any chance he could have missedcarrying out his inborn disposition toward literature. After we haveexplained all the fostering influences and formative forces thatsurround and stamp a genius of this sort, we come at last to theinexplicable mystery of that interior impulse which, if it does not findthe right influences at first, presses forth, breaks out to right andleft and keeps on pushing, until it feels itself at ease. It cannotwholly _make_ its own influences, but it fights to the death beforeit will give up the effort to lay itself open to these; that is, to getinto a proper surrounding. The surrounding may be as far as possiblefrom what we should prescribe as the fit one; but the being in whomperception and receptivity exist in that active state which we callgenius will adapt itself, and will instinctively discern whether theconditions of life around it can yield a bare nourishment, or whether itmust seek other and more fertile conditions. Hawthorne had an ancestrybehind him connected with a singular and impressive history, hadremarkable parents, and especially a mother pure and lofty in spirit;lived in a suggestive atmosphere of private sorrow and amid a communityof much quaintness; he was also enabled to know books at an early age;yet these things only helped, and not produced, his genius. Sometimesthey helped by repression, for there was much that was uncongenial inhis early life; yet the clairvoyance, the unconscious wisdom, of thatinterior quality, _genius_, made him feel that the adjustment ofhis outer and his inner life was such as to give him a chance ofunfolding. Had he gone to sea, his awaking power would have comeviolently into contact with the hostile conditions of sailor-life: hewould have revolted against them, and have made his way into literatureagainst head-wind or reluctant tiller-rope alike. It may, of course, besaid that this prediction is too easy. But there are evidences of themastering bent of Hawthorne's mind, which show that it would have ruledin any case. 

As we have seen, he returned to Salem in 1819, to school; and on March7, 1820, he wrote thus to his mother:--

"I have left school, and have begun to fit for College under Benjm. L. Oliver, Lawyer. So you are in great danger of having one learned man inyour family. Mr. Oliver thought I could enter College next commencement, but Uncle Robert is afraid I should have to study too hard. I get mylessons at home, and recite them to him [Mr. Oliver] at 7 o'clock in themorning. .. . Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? Aminister I will not be. " This is the first dawn of the question of acareer, apparently. Yet he still has a yearning to escape the solution. "I am extremely homesick, " he says, in one part of the letter; and atthe close he gives way to the sentiment entirely: "O how I wish I wasagain with you, with nothing to do but to go a gunning. But the happiestdays of my life are gone. .. . After I have got through college, I willcome down to learn E---- Latin and Greek. " (Is it too fanciful to notethat at this stage of the epistle "college" is no longer spelt with alarge C?) The signature to this letter shows the boy so amiably that Iappend it. 

"I remain, " he says, "Your Affectionate and Dutiful son, and Most Obedient and Most Humble Servant, and Most Respectful and Most Hearty Well-wisher, NATHANIEL HATHORNE. "

A jesting device this, which the writer, were he now living, wouldperhaps think too trivial to make known; yet why should we not recallwith pleasure the fact that in his boyish days he could make thisharmless little play, to throw an unexpected ray of humor and gladnessinto the lonely heart of his mother, far away in the Maine woods? Andwith this pleasure, let there be something of honor and reverence forhis pure young heart. 

In another letter of this period [Footnote: This letter, long in thepossession of Miss E. P. Peabody, Mr. Hawthorne's sister-in-law, unfortunately does not exist any longer. The date has thus beenforgotten, but the passage is clear in Miss Peabody's recollection. ] hehad made a long stride towards the final choice, as witness thisextract:--

"I do not want to be a doctor and live by men's diseases, nor a ministerto live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So, Idon't see that there is anything left for me but to be an author. Howwould you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written byyour son, with 'Hawthorne's Works' printed on their backs?"

But, before going further, it will be well to look at certain "EarlyNotes, " purporting to be Hawthorne's, and published in the Portland"Transcript" at different times in 1871 and 1873. A mystery overhangsthem; [Footnote: See Appendix I. ] and it has been impossible, up to thistime, to procure proof of their genuineness. Most of the persons namedin them have, nevertheless, been identified by residents of CumberlandCounty, who knew them in boyhood, and the internal evidence ofauthorship seems to make at least some of them Hawthorne's. On the firstleaf of the manuscript book, said to contain them, was written (asreported by the discoverer) an inscription, to the effect that the bookhad been given to Nathaniel Hawthorne by his uncle Richard Manning, "with the advice that he write out his thoughts, some every day, in asgood words as he can, upon any and all subjects, as it is one of thebest means of his securing for mature years command of thought andlanguage"; and this was dated at Raymond, June 1, 1816. This account, iftrue, puts the book into the boy's hands at the age of twelve. He didnot go to Raymond to live until two years later, but had certainly beenthere, before, and his Uncle Richard was already living there in 1816. So that the entries may have begun soon after June, of that year, thoughtheir mature character makes this improbable. In this case, they mustcover more than a year's time. The dates were not given by the furnisherof the extracts, and only one item can be definitely provided with adate. This must have been penned in or after 1819; and yet it seems alsoprobable that the whole series was written before the author's collegedays. If genuine, then, they hint the scope and quality of Hawthorne'sperceptions during a few years antecedent to his college-course, and--whether his own work or not--they picture the sort of life which hemust have seen at Raymond. 

"Two kingbirds have built their nest between our house and themill-pond. The male is more courageous than any creature that I knowabout. He seems to have taken possession of the territory from the greatpond to the small one, and goes out to war with every fish-hawk thatflies from one to the other, over his dominion. The fish-hawks must bemiserable cowards, to be driven by such a speck of a bird. I have notyet seen one turn to defend himself. 

"Swapped pocket knives with Robinson Cook yesterday. Jacob Dingley saysthat he cheated me, but I think not, for I cut a fishing pole thismorning, and did it well; besides, he is a Quaker, and they nevercheat. "

Richard Manning had married Susan Dingley; this Jacob was probably hernephew. In this allusion to Quakers one might fancy a germ of tolerancewhich ripened into "The Gentle Boy. "

"Captain Britton from Otisfield was at Uncle Richard's today. Not longago, uncle brought here from Salem a new kind of potatoes called 'LongReds. ' Captain Britton had some for seed, and uncle asked how he likedthem. He answered, 'They yield well, grow very long, --one end is verypoor, and the other good for nothing. ' I laughed about it after he wasgone, but uncle looked sour and said there was no wit in his answer, andthat the saying was 'stale. ' It was new to me, and his way of saying itvery funny. Perhaps uncle did not like to hear his favorite potatospoken of in that way, and that if the captain had praised it he wouldhave been called witty. "

"Captain Britton promised to bring 'Gulliver's Travels' for me to read, the next time he comes this way, which is every time he goes toPortland. Uncle Richard has not the book in his library. 

"This morning the bucket got off the chain, and dropped back into thewell. I wanted to go down on the stones and get it. Mother would notconsent, for fear the wall might cave in, but hired Samuel Shane to godown. In the goodness of her heart, she thought the son of old Mrs. Shane not quite so valuable as the son of the Widow Hawthorne. God blessher for all her love for me, though it may be some selfish. We are tohave a pump in the well, after this mishap. 

"Washington Longley has been taking lessons of a drumming master. He wasin the grist-mill to day, and practised with two sticks on thehalf-bushel. I was astonished at the great number of strokes in asecond, and if I had not seen that he had but two sticks, should havesupposed that he was drumming with twenty. "

"Major Berry went past our house with a large drove of sheep yesterday. One, a last spring's lamb, gave out; could go no farther. I saw him downnear the bridge. The poor dumb creature looked into my eyes, and Ithought I knew just what he would say if he could speak, and so askedMr. Berry what he would sell him for. 'Just the price of his pelt, andthat will bring sixty-five cents, ' was the answer. I ran and petitionedmother for the money, which she soon gave me, saying with a smile thatshe tried to make severe, but could not, that I was 'a greatspendthrift. ' The lamb is in our orchard now, and he made a bow (withouttaking off his hat) and thanked me this morning for saving him from thebutcher. 

"Went yesterday in a sail-boat on the Great Pond, with Mr. Peter Whiteof Windham. He sailed up here from White's Bridge to see CaptainDingley, and invited Joseph Dingley and Mr. Ring to take a boat-ride outto the Dingley Islands and to the Images. He was also kind enough to saythat I might go (with my mother's consent), which she gave after muchcoaxing. Since the loss of my father she dreads to have any onebelonging to her go upon the water. It is strange that this beautifulbody of water is called a 'Pond. ' The geography tells of many inScotland and Ireland not near so large that are called 'Lakes. ' It isnot respectful to speak of so noble, deep, and broad a collection ofclear water as a 'Pond'; it makes a stranger think of geese, and then ofgoose-pond. Mr. White, who knows all this region, told us that thestreams from thirty-five ponds, large and small, flow into this, and hecalls it Great Basin. We landed on one of the small islands that CaptainDingley cleared for a sheep pasture when he first came to Raymond. Mr. Ring said that he had to do it to keep his sheep from the bears andwolves. A growth of trees has started on the island, and makes a groveso fine and pleasant, that I wish almost that our house was there. Onthe way from the island to the Images Mr. Ring caught a black spottedtrout that was almost a whale, and weighed before it was cut open, afterwe got back to Uncle Richard's store, eighteen and a half pounds. Themen said that if it had been weighed as soon as it came out of the waterit would have been nineteen pounds. This trout had a droll-lookinghooked nose, and they tried to make me believe, that if the line hadbeen in my hands, that I should have been obliged to let go, or havebeen pulled out of the boat. They were men, and had a right to say so. Iam a boy, and have a right to think differently. We landed at theImages, when I crept into the cave and got a drink of cool water. Incoming home we sailed over a place, not far from the Images, where Mr. White has, at some time, let down a line four hundred feet withoutfinding bottom. This seems strange, for he told us, too, that his boat, as it floated, was only two hundred and fifty feet higher than the boatsin Portland Harbor, and that if the Great Pond was pumped dry, a manstanding on its bottom, just under where we then were, would be morethan one hundred and fifty feet lower than the surface of the water atthe Portland wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, had a good view ofRattlesnake Mountain, and it seemed to me wonderfully beautiful as thealmost setting sun threw over its western crags streams of fiery light. If the Indians were very fond of this part of the country, it is easy tosee why; beavers, otters, and the finest fish were abundant, and thehills and streams furnished constant variety. I should have made a goodIndian, if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we madethe old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill Brook just beforesunset, and sent a _boy_ ashore with a hawser, and was soon safelymoored to a bunch of alders. After we got ashore Mr. White allowed me tofire his long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not surethat I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, that Iwas watching for the noise that I was about to make. Mr. Ring said thatwith practice I could be a gunner, and that now, with a very heavycharge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight paces. Mr. White wentto Uncle Richard's for the night, and I went home and amused my motherwith telling how pleasantly the day had passed. When I told her what Mr. Ring said about my killing a horse, she said he was making fun of me. Ihad found that out before. 

"Mr. March Gay killed a rattlesnake yesterday not far from his house, that was more than six feet long and had twelve rattles. This morningMr. Jacob Mitchell killed another near the same place, almost as long. It is supposed that they were a pair, and that the second one was on thetrack of its mate. If every rattle counts a year, the first one wastwelve years old. Eliak Maxfield came down to mill to-day and told meabout the snakes. 

"Mr. Henry Turner of Otisfield took his axe and went out betweenSaturday and Moose ponds to look at some pine-trees. A rain had justtaken off enough of the snow to lay bare the roots of a part of thetrees. Under a large root there seemed to be a cavity, and on examiningclosely something was exposed very much like long black hair. He cut offthe root, saw the nose of a bear, and killed him, pulled out the body;saw another, killed that, and dragged out its carcass, when he foundthat there was a third one in the den, and that he was thoroughly awake, too; but as soon as the head came in sight it was split open with theaxe, so that Mr. Turner, alone with only an axe, killed three bears inless than half an hour, the youngest being a good-sized one, and whathunters call a yearling. This is a pretty great bear story, but probablytrue, and happened only a few weeks ago; for John Patch, who was herewith his father Captain Levi Patch, who lives within two miles of theSaturday Pond, told me so yesterday. 

"A young man named Henry Jackson, Jr. , was drowned two days ago, up inCrooked River. He and one of his friends were trying which could swimthe faster. Jackson was behind but gaining; his friend kicked at him infun, thinking to hit his shoulder and push him back, but missed, and hithis chin, which caused him to take in water and strangle, and before hisfriend could help or get help, poor Jackson was (Elder Leach says)beyond the reach of mercy. I read one of the Psalms to my mother thismorning, and it plainly declares twenty-six times that 'God's mercyendureth forever. ' I never saw Henry Jackson; he was a young man justmarried. Mother is sad, says that she shall not consent to my swimmingany more in the mill-pond with the boys, fearing that in sport my mouthmight get kicked open, and then sorrow for a dead son be added to thatfor a dead father, which she says would break her heart. I love to swim, but I shall not disobey my mother. 

 * * * * *

"Fishing from the bridge to-day, I caught an eel two thirds as long asmyself. Mr. Watkins tried to make me believe that he thought it a watermoccasin snake. Old Mr. Shane said that it was a 'young sea-sarpintsure. ' Mr. Ficket, the blacksmith, begged it to take home for its skin, as he said for buskin-strings and flail-strings. So ends my day'sfishing. 

 * * * * *

"Went over to-day to see Watkins make bricks. I have always thoughtthere was some mystery about it, but I can make them myself. Why did theIsraelites complain so much at having to make bricks without straw? Ishould not use straw if I was a brick-maker; besides, when they areburned in the kiln, the straw will burn out and leave the bricks full ofholes. 

 * * * * *

"I can, from my chamber window, look across into Aunt Manning's garden, this morning, and see little Betty Tarbox, flitting among therose-bushes, and in and out of the arbor, like a tiny witch. She willnever realize the calamity that came upon her brothers and sisters thatterrible night when her father and mother lay within a few rods of eachother, in the snow, freezing to death. I love the elf, because of herloss; and still my aunt is much more to her than her own mother, in herpoverty, could have been. "

 * * * * *

This little girl was the child of some poor people of the neighborhoodwho were frozen to death one March night, in 1819. In a letter to hisuncle Robert, March 24, 1819, Nathaniel says: "I suppose you have notheard of the death of Mr. Tarbox and his wife, who were froze to deathlast Wednesday. They were brought out from the Cape on Saturday, andburied from Captain Dingley's on Sunday. " This determines the time ofwriting the last-quoted extract from the journal. 

 * * * * *

"This morning I saw at the grist-mill a solemn-faced old horse, hitchedto the trough. He had brought for his owner some bags of corn to beground, who, after carrying them into the mill, walked up to UncleRichard's store, leaving his half-starved animal in the cold wind withnothing to eat, while the corn was being turned to meal. I felt sorry, and nobody being near, thought it best to have a talk with the old nag, and said, 'Good morning, Mr. Horse, how are you to-day?' 'Good morning, youngster, ' said he, just as plain as a horse can speak, and then said, 'I am almost dead, and I wish I was quite. I am hungry, have had nobreakfast, and must stand here tied by the head while they are grindingthe corn, and until master drinks two or three glasses of rum at thestore, then drag him and the meal up the Ben Ham Hill, and home, and amnow so weak that I can hardly stand. O dear, I am in a bad way'; and theold creature cried. I almost cried myself. Just then the miller wentdown stairs to the meal-trough; I heard his feet on the steps, and notthinking much what I was doing, ran into the mill, and taking thefour-quart toll-dish nearly full of corn out of the hopper, carried itout and poured it into the trough before the horse, and placed the dishback before the miller came up from below. When I got out, the horse waslaughing, but he had to eat slowly, because the bits were in his mouth. I told him that I was sorry, but did not know how to take them out, andshould not dare to if I did, for his master might come out and see whatI was about. 'Thank you, ' said he, 'a luncheon of corn with the bits inis much better than none. The worst of it is, I have to munch so slowly, that master may come before I finish it, and thrash me for eating hiscorn, and you for the kindness. ' I sat down on a stone out of the wind, and waited in trouble, for fear that the miller and the owner of thecorn would come and find out what I had done. At last the horse winkedand stuck out his upper lip ever so far, and then said, 'The last kernelis gone'; then he laughed a little, then shook one ear, then the other, then shut his eyes as if to take a nap. I jumped up and said: 'How doyou feel, old fellow; any better?' He opened his eyes, and looking at mekindly, answered 'very much, ' and then blew his nose exceedingly loud, but he did not wipe it. Perhaps he had no wiper. I then asked if hismaster whipped him much. He opened his eyes, and looking at me kindly, answered, 'Not much lately; he used to till my hide got hardened, butnow he has a white-oak goad-stick with an iron brad in its end, withwhich he jabs my hind quarters and hurts me awfully. ' I asked him why hedid not kick up, and knock his tormentor out of the wagon. 'I did tryonce, ' said he, 'but am old and was weak, and could only get my heelshigh enough to break the whiffletree, and besides lost my balance andfell down flat. Master then jumped down, and getting a cudgel struck meover the head, and I thought my troubles were over. This happened justbefore Mr. Ben Ham's house, and I should have been finished and readyfor the crows, if he had not stepped out and told master not to strikeagain, if he did he would shake his liver out. That saved my life, but Iwas sorry, though Mr. Ham meant good. ' The goad with the iron brad wasin the wagon, and snatching it out I struck the end against a stone, andthe stabber flew into the mill-pond. 'There, ' says I, 'old colt, ' as Ithrew the goad back into the wagon, 'he won't harpoon you again with_that_ iron. ' The poor old brute knew well enough what I said, forI looked him in the eye and spoke horse language. At that moment thebrute that owned the horse came out of the store, and down the hilltowards us. I slipped behind a pile of slabs. The meal was put in thewagon, the horse unhitched, the wagon mounted, the goad picked up and athrust made, but dobbin was in no hurry. Looking at the end of thestick, the man bawled, 'What little devil has had my goad?' and thenbegan striking with all his strength; but his steed only walked, shakinghis head as he went across the bridge; and I thought I heard the ancientEquus say as he went, 'Thrash as much as you please, for once you cannotstab. ' I went home a little uneasy, not feeling sure that the feedingthe man's corn to his horse was not stealing, and thinking that if themiller found it out, he would have me taken down before Squire Longley. 

 * * * * *

"Polly Maxfield came riding to mill to-day on horseback. She rode asgracefully as a Trooper. I wish with all my heart that I was as daring arider, or half so graceful. 

 * * * * *

"This morning walked down to the Pulpit Rock Hill, and climbed up intothe pulpit. It looks like a rough place to preach from, and does notseem so much like a pulpit when one is in it, as when viewing it fromthe road below. It is a wild place, and really a curiosity. I brought abook and sat in the rocky recess, and read for nearly an hour. This is apoint on the road known to all teamsters. They have a string of namesfor reference by which they tell each other where they metfellow-teamsters and where their loads got stuck, and I have learnedthem from those who stop for drinks at the store. One meets another nearour house, and says, 'Where did you meet Bill?' 'Just this side ofSmall's Brook, ' or 'At the top of Gray's Pinch, ' 'At the Dry Mill-Pond, ''Just the other side of Lemmy Jones's, ' 'On the long causeway, ' 'AtJeems Gowen's, ' 'Coming down the Pulpit Rock Hill, ' 'Coming down TarkillHill. ' I have heard these answers till I have them by heart, withouthaving any idea where any of the places are, excepting the one I haveseen to-day. While on the bridge near the Pulpit, Mr. West, who livesnot far away, came along and asked where I had been. On my telling him, he said that no money would hire him to go up to that pulpit; that theDevil used to preach from it long and long ago; that on a time whenhundreds of them were listening to one of his sermons, a great chieflaughed in the Devil's face, upon which he stamped his foot, and theground to the southwest, where they were standing, sunk fifty feet, andevery Indian went down out of sight, leaving a swamp to this day. Hedeclared that he once stuck a pole in there, which went down easilyseveral feet, but then struck the skull-bone of an Indian, wheninstantly all the hassocks and flags began to shake; he heard a yell asfrom fifty overgrown Pequots; that he left the pole and ran for life. Mr. West also said that no Indian had ever been known to go near thatswamp since, but that whenever one came that way, he turned out of theroad near the house of Mr. West, and went straight to Thomas Pond, keeping to the eastward of Pulpit Rock, giving it a wide berth. Mr. Westtalked as though he believed what he said. 

 * * * * *

"A pedler named Dominicus Jordan was to-day in Uncle Richard's store, telling a ghost-story. I listened intently, but tried not to seeminterested. The story was of a house, the owner of which was suddenlykilled. Since his death the west garret-window cannot be kept closed;though the shutters be hasped and nailed at night, they are invariablyfound open the next morning, and no one can tell when or how the nailswere drawn. There is also on the farm an apple-tree, the fruit of whichthe owner was particularly fond of, but since his death no one has beenable to get one of the apples. The tree hangs full nearly every year, but whenever any individual tries to get one, stones come in alldirections as if from some secret infernal battery, or hidden catapult, and more than once have those making the attempts been struck. What ismore strange, the tree stands in an open field, there being no shelternear from which tricks can be played without exposure. Jordan says thatit seems odd to strangers to see that tree loaded with apples when thesnow is four feet deep; and, what is a mystery, there are no apples inthe spring; no one ever sees the wind blow one off, none are seen on thesnow, nor even the vestige of one on the grass under the tree; and thatchildren may play on the grass under and around it while it is in theblossom, and until the fruit is large enough to tempt them, with perfectsafety; but the moment one of the apples is sought for, the air is fullof flying stones. He further says, that late one starlight night he waspassing the house, and looking up saw the phantom walk out of the garretwindow with cane in hand, making all the motions as if walking on_terra firma_, although what appeared to be his feet were at leastsix yards from the ground; and so he went walking away on nothing, andwhen nearly out of sight there was a great flash and an explosion as oftwenty field-pieces, then--nothing. This story was told with seemingearnestness, and listened to as though it was believed. How strange itis that almost all persons, old or young, are fond of hearing about thesupernatural, though it produces nervousness and fear! I should not bewilling to sleep in that garret, though I do not believe a word of thestory. 

 * * * * *

"The lumbermen from Saccarappa are getting their logs across the GreatPond. Yesterday a strong northwest wind blew a great raft of manythousands over almost to the mouth of the Dingley Brook. Their anchordragged for more than a mile, but when the boom was within twenty orthirty rods of the shore, it brought up, and held, as I heard some mensay who are familiar with such business. All the men and boys went fromthe mill down to the pond to see the great raft, and I among them. Theyhave a string of logs fastened end to end and surrounding the greatbody, which keeps them from scattering, and the string is called a boom. A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an uprightwindlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part ofthe boom. The small raft is called 'Head Works, ' and from it in ayawl-boat is carried the anchor, to which is attached a strong rope halfa mile long. The boat is rowed out the whole length of the rope, theanchor thrown over, and the men on the headworks wind up the capstan andso draw along the acres of logs. After we went down to the shore, several of the men came out on the boom nearest to us, and, striking asingle log, pushed it under and outside; then one man with a gallon jugslung to his back, taking a pickpole, pushed himself ashore on the smallsingle log, --a feat that seemed almost miraculous to me. This man's namewas Reuben Murch, and he seemed to be in no fear of getting soused. Thismasterly kind of navigation he calls 'cuffing the rigging'; nobody couldtell me why he gave it that name. Murch went up to the store, had thejug filled with rum (the supply having run out on the headworks), andmade the voyage back the way he came. His comrades received him withcheers, and after sinking the log and drawing it back under the boom, proceeded to try the contents of the jug, seeming to be well satisfiedwith the result of his expedition. It turned out that Murch only rodethe single log ashore to show his adroitness, for the yawl-boat cameround from the headworks, and brought near a dozen men in red shirts towhere we were. I was interested listening to their conversation mixedwith sharp jokes. Nearly every man had a nickname. Murch was called'Captain Snarl'; a tall, fierce-looking man, who just filled my idea ofa Spanish freebooter, was 'Dr. Coddle. ' I think his real name was Wood. The rum seems to make them crazy, for one, who was called 'Rub-a-dub, 'pitched 'Dr. Coddle' head and heels into the water. A gentlemanly mannamed Thompson, who acted as master of ceremonies, or Grand Turk, interfered and put a stop to what was becoming something like a fight. Mr. Thompson said that the wind would go down with the sun, and thatthey must get ready to start. This morning I went down to look for them, and the raft was almost to Frye's Island. 

 * * * * *

"I have read 'Gulliver's Travels, ' but do not agree with Captain Brittonthat it is a witty and uncommonly interesting book; the wit is obscene, and the _lies_ too _false_. "

 * * * * *

The next and last piece of this note-book was printed two years laterthan the preceding items, and after the death of the person whoprofessed to own the manuscript, but still with the same degree ofmystery, except in the matter of date. 

"Day before yesterday Mr. Thomas Little from Windham, Mr. M. P. Sawyerof Portland, Mr. Thomas A. Deblois, a lawyer, Mr. Hanson of Windham, andEnoch White, a boy of about my own age, from White's Bridge, came up tothe Dingley Brook in a sail-boat. They were on the way to Muddy RiverBog, for a day's sport, fishing, and shooting ducks. Enoch proposed thatI should go with them. I needed no urging, but knew how unwillingly mymother would consent. They could wait but a few minutes, and UncleRichard kindly wrote a note, asking her to be willing to gratify me_this_ time. 

"She said, 'Yes, ' but I was almost sorry, knowing that my day's pleasurewould cost _her_ one of anxiety. However, I gathered up hooks andlines, with some white salted pork for bait, and with a fabulous numberof biscuit, split in the middle, the insides well buttered, thenskilfully put together again, and all stowed in sister's large work-bag, and slung over my shoulder. I started, making a wager with Enoch White, as we walked down to the boat, as to which would catch the largestnumber of fish. 

"The air was clear, with just breeze enough to shoot us alongpleasantly, without making rough waves. The wind was not exactly afterus, though we made but two tacks to reach the mouth of Muddy River. Themen praised the grand view, after we got into the Great Bay. We couldsee the White Hills to the northwest, though Mr. Little said they wereeighty miles from us; and grand old Rattlesnake, to the northeast, inits immense jacket of green oak, looked more inviting than I had everseen it; while Frye's Island, with its close growth of great trees, growing to the very edge of the water, looked like a monstrous greenraft, floating to the southeastward. Whichever way the eye turned, something charming appeared. Mr. Little seems to be familiar with everybook that has ever been written, and must have a great memory. Amongother things, he said:--

"'Gentlemen, do you know that this should be called the sea, instead ofthe Great Pond; that ships should be built here and navigate this water?The surface of the Sea of Galilee, of which we hear so much in the NewTestament, was just about equal to the surface of our sea to-day. '

"And then he went on to give a geographical description of the countryabout the Sea of Galilee, and draw parallels between places named in theTestament and points in sight. His talk stole my attention until we werefairly at Muddy River mouth. 

"Muddy River Bog is quite a curiosity. The river empties into the pondbetween two small sandy capes or points, only a short distance apart;but after running up a little between them we found the bog to widen tofifty or sixty rods in some places, and to be between two or three mileslong. People say that it has no bottom, and that the longest poles thatever grew may be run down into the mud and then pushed down with anothera little longer, and this may be repeated until the long poles are allgone. 

"Coarse, tall water-grass grows up from the mud over every part, withthe exception of a place five or six rods wide, running its wholelength, and nearly in the middle, which is called the Channel. One cantell at first sight that it is the place for pickerel and water-snakes. 

"Mr. Deblois stated something that I never heard before as a fact innatural history, that the pickerel wages war upon all fish, except thetrout, who is too active for him; that he is a piscatorial cannibal; butthat under all circumstances and in all places, he lives on good termswith the water-snake. 

"We saw a great many ducks, but they seemed to know that Mr. Sawyer hada gun, and flew on slight notice. At last, as four were flying andseemed to be entirely out of gunshot, he fired, saying he would frightenthem, if no more; when, to our surprise, he brought one down. The gunwas loaded with ball, and Mr. Deblois told him he could not do it againin a million shots. Mr. Sawyer laughed, saying that he had always been avotary of Chance, and that, as a general thing, she had treated himhandsomely. 

"We sailed more than a mile up the bog, fishing and trolling forpickerel; and though we saw a great many, not one offered to be caught, but horned pouts were willing, and we caught them till it was no sport. We found a man there who had taken nearly two bushels of pouts. He wason a raft, and had walked from near the foot of Long Pond, in Otisfield. Mr. Little knew him, and, intending to have some fun, said, 'The nexttime you come to Portland I want half a dozen of your best jewsharps;leave them at my store at Windham Hill. I need them very badly. '

"The man deliberately took from the hook a large pout that he had justpulled up, and, laying his fishing-pole down, began solemnly to explorein his pockets, and brought out six quaint jewsharps carefully tied topieces of corn-cobs; then he tossed them into our boat to Mr. Little, saying, 'There they are, Tom, and they are as good ones as I ever made;I shall charge you fifty cents for them. ' Mr. Little had the worst ofthe joke; but as the other men began to rally him, he took out thesilver and paid the half-dollar; but they laughed at him till he toldthem, if they would say no more about it, he would give them all thebrandy they could drink when they got home. 

"Mr. Deblois said he would not be bribed; that he must tell Peter Whitewhen he got to Windham Hill. 

"Mr. Little said he would not have Peter White know it for a yoke ofsteers. 

"After fishing till all were tired, we landed on a small dry knoll thatmade out into the bog, to take our luncheon. The men had a variety ofeatables, and several bottles that held no eatables. The question wasstarted whether Enoch and I should be invited to drink, and theyconcluded not to urge us, as we were boys, and under their care. So Mr. Deblois said, 'Boys, anything to eat that is in our baskets is as muchyours as ours; help yourselves; but we shall not invite you to drinkspirits. '

"We thanked them, and said that we had plenty of our own to eat, and hadno relish for spirits, but were very thirsty for water. Mr. Little hadbeen there before, and directed us to a spring of the best of water, that boiled up like a pot from the ground, just at the margin of thebog. 

"Before starting to return, the bet between Enoeh and myself had to besettled. By its conditions, the one who caught the largest number offish was to have all the hooks and lines of the other. I counted mystring and found twenty-five. Enoch made twenty-six on his; so I wasabout turning over the spoils, when Mr. Sawyer said that my string wasthe largest, and that there was a mistake. So he counted, and madetwenty-six on mine, and twenty-five on Enoch's. We counted again, andfound it was as he said, and Enoch prepared to pay the bet, when Mr. Sawyer again interfered, saying that Enoch's string was certainly largerthan mine, and proposed to count again. This time I had but twenty-four, and Enoch twenty-seven. All the men counted them several times over, until we could not tell which was which, and they never came out twicealike. 

"At length Mr. Deblois said solemnly, 'Stop this, Sawyer, you haveturned these fish into a pack of cards, and are fooling us all. ' The menlaughed heartily, and so should I if I had known what the point of thejoke was. 

"Mr. Deblois said the decision as to our bet would have to go over tothe next term. After starting for home, while running down the bog, Mr. Sawyer killed three noble black ducks at one shot, but the gun was notloaded this time with ball. Mr. Hanson struck with his fishing-pole, andkilled a monstrous water-snake. Mr. Little measured a stick with hishands, and using it as a rule, declared him to be five feet long. If Ithought any such snakes ever went over to Dingley Bay, I never would gointo the water there again. 

"When we got out of the bog into the open water, we found a livelybreeze from the northwest, and they landed me at the Dingley Brook inless than an hour, and then kept on like a great white bird down towardsthe Cape, and for the outlet. I stood and watched the boat until it wasnearly half-way to Frye's Island, loath to lose sight of what had helpedme to enjoy the day so much. Taking my fish I walked home, and greetedmother just as the sun went out of sight behind the hills in Baldwin. The fish were worthless, but I thought I must have something to show forthe day spent. After exhibiting them to mother and sister, and hearingthe comments as to their ugliness, and much speculation as to what theirhorns were for, I gave them to Mr. Lambard, who said that pouts were thebest of fish after they were skinned. 

"I have made this account of the expedition to please Uncle Richard, whois an invalid and cannot get out to enjoy such sport, and wished me todescribe everything just as it had happened, whether witty or silly, andgive my own impressions. He has read my diary, and says that itinterested him, which is all the reward I desire. And now I add theselines to keep in remembrance the peculiar satisfaction I received inhearing the conversation, especially of Mr. Deblois and Mr. Little. August, 1818, Raymond. "

 * * * * *

These extracts from the Raymond Journal, if they be genuine, as in mostrespects I believe they must be, will furnish a clew, otherwise wanting, to the distinct turn which the boy's mind took toward authorship afterhis return to Salem, and on passing the propylon of classical culture. We can also see in them, I think, the beginning of that painstakingaccumulation of fact, the effort to be first of all accurate, which is acharacteristic of his maturer and authenticated note-books; verysignificant, too, is the dash of the supernatural and his toneconcerning it. A habit of thus preserving impressions, and of communingwith himself through the pen, so constant and assiduous as we know it tohave been in his later years, --even when mind and time werepreoccupied, --must have been formed early, to retain so strong a holdupon him. But there is another reason for supposing that he had begun tocompose with care before coming from Raymond to Salem; and this is foundin the fact that, in 1820, he began issuing (probably to a very smalland intimate circle of subscribers) a neat little weekly paper printedwith the pen on sheets of a much-curtailed note size, and written in anexcellent style. 

The first number, dated Monday, August 21, 1820, opens with the Editor'sAddress:--

"Our feelings upon sending into the world the first number of theSpectator may be compared to those of a fond Parent, when he beholds abeloved child about to embark on the troubled Ocean of public Life. Perhaps the iron hand of Criticism may crush our humble undertaking, ereit is strengthened by time. Or it may pine in obscurity neglected andforgotten by those, with whose assistance it might become the Pride andOrnament of our Country. .. . We beg leave farther to remark that in orderto carry on any enterprise with spirit MONEY is absolutely necessary. Money, although it is the root of all evil, is also the foundation ofeverything great and good, and therefore our Subscribers . .. Will pleasecarefully to remember that the terms are two cents per month. "

A little further on there is this allusion to the Scriptural proverbcited above: "We have been informed that this expression is incorrect, and that it is the love of Money which is the 'Root of all Evil. ' Butmoney is certainly the cause of the love of Money. Therefore, Money isthe deepest 'Root of Evil. '" (Observe, here, the young student's prideof reason, and the consciousness of a gift for casuistry!) Under thehead of "Domestic News" occur some remarks on the sea-serpent, thededuction from various rumors about the monster being that "he seems topossess a strange and we think rather unusual faculty of appearing indifferent shapes to different eyes, so that where one person sees ashark, another beholds a nameless dragon. " (Here, too, is the humorouslyveiled distrust that always lurked beneath his dealings with themarvellous. ) In the next columns there is found an advertisement of thePin Society, which "will commence lending pins to any creditable person, on Wednesday, the 23d instant. No numbers except ten, twenty, and thirtywill be lent"; and the rate of interest is to be one pin on every tenper day. This bold financial scheme is also carried on by the editor inperson, --a combination which in these days would lay him open tosuspicions of unfair dealing. I have seen a little manuscript bookcontaining the remarkable constitution and by-laws of this society, inwhich there were but two members; and it is really a curious study ofwhimsical intricacy, the work of a mind perfectly accustomed to solitudeand fertile in resources for making monotony various and delightful. Itdoes not surprise one to meet with the characteristic announcement fromthis editor that he has "concluded not to insert deaths and marriages(except of very distinguished persons) in the Spectator. We can see butlittle use in thus giving to the world the names of the crowd who aretying the marriage knot, and going down to the silent tomb. " There issome poetry at the end of the paper, excellent for a boy, but withoutthe easy inspiration of the really witty prose. 

It would seem that this weekly once made a beginning, which was also anend, before nourishing up into the series of which I have synopsized thefirst issue; for there is another Number One without date, butapparently earlier. This contains some exemplary sentiments "OnSolitude, " with a touch of what was real profundity in so inexperienceda writer. "Man is naturally a sociable being, " he says; "and apart fromthe world there are no incitements to the pursuit of excellence; thereare no rivals to contend with; and therefore there is no improvement. .. . The heart may be more pure and uncorrupted in solitude than when exposedto the influences of the depravity of the world; but the benefit ofvirtuous examples is equal to the detriment of vicious ones, and bothare equally lost. " The "Domestic Intelligence" of this number is asfollows: "The lady of Dr. Winthrop Brown, a son and Heir. Mrs. Hathorne's cat, Seven Kittens. We hear that both of the above ladies arein a state of convalescence. " Also, "Intentions of Marriage. Thebeautiful and accomplished Miss Keziah Dingley will shortly be united toDominicus Jordan Esq. " (The young author appears to have allowed himselfin this paragraph the stimulus of a little fiction respecting realpersons. Dominicus Jordan is the pedler of the Raymond notes. Who MissKeziah was I do not know, but from the name I guess her to have been arelative, by appellation at least, through Richard Manning's wife. IfHawthorne did not himself call Miss Dingley aunt, he may very likelyhave heard her commonly spoken of by that title. Did the old, boyishassociation perhaps unconsciously supply him with a name for the Indianaunt of "Septimius Felton"?) The next item is "DEATHS. We are sorry tobe under the necessity of informing our readers that no deaths ofimportance have taken place, except that of the publisher of this Paper, who died of Starvation, owing to the slenderness of his patronage. "Notwithstanding this discouraging incident, one of the advertisementsdeclares that "Employment will be given to any number of indigent Poetsand Authors at this office. " But shortly afterward is inserted theannouncement that "Nathaniel Hathorne proposes to publish bysubscription a new edition of the Miseries of Authors, to which will beadded a sequel, containing Facts and Remarks drawn from his ownexperience. "

In Number Two of the new series, the editor speaks of a discourse by Dr. Stoughton, "on Tuesday evening. .. . With the amount of the contributionwhich was taken up . .. We are unacquainted, as, having no money in ourpockets, we departed before it commenced. " This issue takes a despondentview of the difficulties that beset editors. There is a clever paragraphof "Domestic News" again. "As we know of no News, " it says, "we hope ourreaders will excuse us for not inserting any. The law which prohibitspaying debts when a person has no money will apply in this case. " Nextwe have a very arch dissertation "On Industry": "It has somewhere beenremarked that an Author does not write the worse for knowing little ornothing of his subject. We hope the truth of this saying will bemanifest in the present article. With the benefits of Industry we arenot personally acquainted. " The desperate editor winds up his week'sbudget with a warning to all persons who may be displeased byobservations in the Spectator, that he is going to take fencing lessonsand practise shooting at a mark. "We also, " he adds, "think it advisableto procure a stout oaken cudgel to be the constant companion of ourperegrinations. " The assumption of idleness in the essay on Industry, just quoted, breaks down entirely in a later number, when the editor--in apologizing for inaccuracies in the printing of his paper--enumerateshis different occupations: "In the first place we study Latin and Greek. Secondly we write in the employment of William Manning Esq. , [at thattime proprietor of an extensive line of stagecoaches]. Thirdly, we areSecretary, Treasurer, and Manager of the 'Pin Society'; Fourthly, we areeditor of the Spectator; fifthly, sixthly, and lastly, our own Printers, Printing Press and Types. " But the young journalist carried on hislabors unabatedly, for the term of some five weeks, and managed to makehimself very entertaining. I take from an essay "On Benevolence" afragment which has a touch of poetry out of his own life. Benevolence, he says, is "to protect the fatherless, and to make the Widow's heartsing for joy. " One of the most cherishable effusions is that "OnWealth, " in which the venerable writer drops into a charminglyconfidential and reminiscent vein. "All men, " he begins, "from thehighest to the lowest, desire to pursue wealth. .. . In process of time ifwe obtain possession" of a sum at first fixed as the ultimatum, "wegenerally find ourselves as far from being contented as at first. .. . When I was a boy, I one day made an inroad into a closet, to the secretrecesses of which I had often wished to penetrate. I there discovered aquantity of very fine apples. At first I determined to take only one, which I put in my pocket. But those which remained were so very invitingthat it was against my conscience to leave them, and I filled my pocketsand departed, wishing that they would hold more. But alas! an applewhich was unable to find space enough among its companions bounced downupon the floor before all the Family. I was immediately searched, andforced, very unwillingly, to deliver up all my booty. " In the samenumber which contains this composition appears the token of what wasdoubtless Hawthorne's first recognition in literature. It is a"Communication, " of tenor following:--

"Mr. Editor: I have observed in some of your last papers, Essays onVarious subjects, and am very much pleased with them, and wish you tocontinue them. If you will do this, you will oblige

"MARIA LOUISA HATHORNE. "

"We hail the above communication, " writes the editor with exaggeratedgratitude, "as the dawn of a happy day for us. " In his next and finalissue, though (September, 18, 1820), he satirically evinces hisdissatisfaction at the want of a literary fraternity in his native land, through this "Request":--

"As it is part of the plan of the Spectator to criticisehome-manufactured publications, we most earnestly desire some of ourbenevolent Readers to write a book for our special benefit. At presentwe feel as we were wont to do in the days of our Boyhood, when wepossessed a Hatchet, without anything to exercise it upon. We engage toexecute the Printing and Binding, and to procure the Paper for the Work, free of all expense to the Author. If this request should be denied us, we must infallibly turn our arms against our own writings, which, asthey will not stand the test of criticism, we feel very unwilling to do. We do not wish that the proposed work should be too perfect; the Authorwill please to make a few blunders for us to exercise our Talents upon. "

In these quotations one sees very clearly the increased maturity (thoughit be only by a year or two) of the lad, since the engrossing of hisrecords at Raymond. We get in these his entire mood, catch gleams of asteady fire of ambition under the light, self-possessed air of assumedindifference, and see how easily already his humor began to play, withthat clear and sweet ripeness that warms some of his more famous pages, like late sunshine striking through clusters of mellow and translucentgrapes. Yet our grasp of his mental situation at this point would not becomplete, without recognition of the graver emotions that sometimesthrobbed beneath the surface. The doubt, the hesitancy that sometimesmust have weighed upon his lonely, self-reliant spirit with wearymovelessness, and all the pain of awakening ambition and departingboyhood, seem to find a symbol in this stanza from the fourth"Spectator":--

 "Days of my youth, ye fleet away, As fades the bright sun's cheering ray, And scarce my infant hours are gone, Ere manhood's troubled step comes on. My infant hours return no more, And all their happiness is o'er; The stormy sea of life appears, A scene of tumult and of tears. "

Of the vexations of unfledged manhood the boy of sixteen did not speakwithout knowledge. Various sorts of pressure from uncongenial sourceswere now and then brought to bear upon him; there was present always thegalling consciousness of depending on others for support, and of beingless self-sustaining than approaching manhood made him wish to be. Allusion has been made to his doing writing for his uncle William. "Istill continue, " he says in a letter of October, 1820, to his mother atRaymond, "to write for Uncle William, and find my salary quiteconvenient for many purposes. " This, to be sure, was a first approach toself-support, and flattering to his sense of proper dignity. ButHawthorne, in character as in genius, had a passion for maturity. Anoutpouring of his thoughts on this and other matters, directed to hissister, accompanies the letter just cited. Let us read it here as hewrote it more than a half-century ago:--

DEAR SISTER:--I am very angry with you for not sending me some of yourpoetry, which I consider a great piece of ingratitude. You will not seeone line of mine until you return the confidence which I have placed inyou. I have bought the 'Lord of the Isles, ' and intend either to send orto bring it to you. I like it as well as any of Scott's other poems. Ihave read Hogg's "Tales, " "Caleb Williams, " "St. Lean, " and"Mandeville. " I admire Godwin's novels, and intend to read them all. Ishall read the "Abbot, " by the author of "Waverley, " as soon as I canhire it. I have read all Scott's novels except that. I wish I had not, that I might have the pleasure of reading them again. Next to these Ilike "Caleb Williams. " I have almost given up writing poetry. No man canbe a Poet and a book-keeper at the same time. I do find this place most"dismal, " and have taken to chewing tobacco with all my might, which, Ithink, raises my spirits. Say nothing of it in your letters, nor of the"Lord of the Isles. " . .. I do not think I shall ever go to college. Ican scarcely bear the thought of living upon Uncle Robert for four yearslonger. How happy I should be to be able to say, "I am Lord of myself!"You may cut off this part of my letter, and show the other to UncleRichard. Do write me some letters in skimmed milk. [The shy spirit findsit thus hard, even thus early, to be under possible surveillance in hisepistolary musings, and wants to write invisibly. ] I must conclude, as Iam in a "monstrous hurry!"

Your affectionate brother, NATH. HATHORNE. 

P. S. The most beautiful poetry I think I ever saw begins:--

 "She's gone to dwell in Heaven, my lassie, She's gone to dwell in Heaven: Ye're ow're pure quo' a voice aboon For dwalling out of Heaven. "

It is not the words, but the thoughts. I hope you have read it, as Iknow you would admire it. 

As to the allusion to college, it is but a single ray let into theobscurity of a season when the sensitive, sturdy, proud young heart musthave borne many a vigil of vexatious and bitter revery. And this mustnot be left out in reckoning the grains and scruples that werecompounding themselves into his inner consciousness. But at last hestruck a balance, wisely, among his doubts; and in the fall of 1821 hewent to Bowdoin to become one of the famous class with Longfellow andCheever, the memory of which has been enwreathed with the gentle verseof "Morituri Salutamus, "--a fadeless garland. In "Fanshawe, " ananonymous work of his youth, Hawthorne has pictured some aspects of thecollege at Brunswick, under a very slight veil of fiction. 

"From the exterior of the collegians, " he says, "an accurate observermight pretty safely judge how long they had been inmates of thoseclassic walls. The brown cheeks and the rustic dress of some wouldinform him that they had but recently left the plough, to labor in a notless toilsome field. The grave look and the intermingling of garments ofa more classic cut would distinguish those who had begun to acquire thepolish of their new residence; and the air of superiority, the palercheek, the less robust form, the spectacles of green, and the dress ingeneral of threadbare black, would designate the highest class, who wereunderstood to have acquired nearly all the science their Alma Matercould bestow, and to be on the point of assuming their stations in theworld. There were, it is true, exceptions to this general description. Afew young men had found their way hither from the distant seaports; andthese were the models of fashion to their rustic companions, over whomthey asserted a superiority in exterior accomplishments, which thefresh, though unpolished intellect of the sons of the forest denied themin their literary competitions. A third class, differing widely fromboth the former, consisted of a few young descendants of the aborigines, to whom an impracticable philanthropy was endeavoring to impart thebenefits of civilization. 

"If this institution did not offer all the advantages of elder andprouder seminaries, its deficiencies were compensated to its students bythe inculcation of regular habits, and of a deep and awful sense ofreligion, which seldom deserted them in their course through life. Themild and gentle rule . .. Was more destructive to vice than a sternersway; and though youth is never without its follies, they have seldombeen more harmless than they were here. The students, indeed, ignorantof their own bliss, sometimes wished to hasten the time of theirentrance on the business of life; but they found, in after years, thatmany of their happiest remembrances, many of the scenes which they wouldwith least reluctance live over again, referred to the seat of theirearly studies. "

 * * * * *

He here divides the honors pleasantly between the forest-bred andcity-trained youth, having, from his own experience, an interest in eachclass. Yet I think he must have sided, in fact, with the country boys. Horatio Bridge, his classmate, and throughout life a more confidentialfriend than Pierce, was brought up on his father's estate at Bridgton, north of Sebago Lake; and Franklin Pierce, in the class above him, hisonly other frequent companion, was a native of the New Hampshirehill-lands. He himself, in his outward bearing, perhaps gathered to hisperson something the look of both the seaport lads and the sturdymountaineers and woodsmen. He was large and strong (in a letter to hisuncle Robert, just before entering college, he gives the measure of hisfoot, for some new shoes that are to be sent; it is ten inches), but aninterior and ruling grace removed all suspicion of heaviness. Being asea-captain's son, he would naturally make his connections at collegewith men who had the out-of-doors glow about them; the simple and severelife at Raymond, too, had put him in sympathy with the people ratherthan with the patricians (although I see that the reminiscences of someof the old dwellers near Raymond describe the widow and her brotherRichard as being exclusive and what was there thought "aristocratic"). Hawthorne, Pierce, and Bridge came together in the Athenaean Society, the newer club of the two college literary unions, and the moredemocratic; and the trio preserved their cordial relations intact forforty years, sometimes amid confusions and misconstructions, or betweencross-fires of troublous counter-considerations, with a rare fidelity. Hawthorne held eminent scholarship easily within his grasp, but he andhis two cronies seem to have taken their curriculum very easily, thoughthey all came off well in the graduation. Hawthorne was a good Latinist. The venerable Professor Packard has said that his Latin compositions, even in the Freshman year, were remarkable; and Mr. Longfellow tells methat he recalls the graceful and poetic translations which his classmateused to give from the Roman authors. He got no celebrity in Greek, Ibelieve, but he always kept up his liking for the Latin writers. Someyears since a Latin theme of his was found, which had been delivered atan exhibition of the Athenaean Society, in December, 1823. [Footnote:See Appendix II. ] It shows some niceties of selection, and the style isneat; I even fancy something individual in the choice of the words_sanctior nec beatior_, as applied to the republic, and adistinctly Hawthornesque distinction in the _fulgor tantum fuit sinefervore_; though a relic of this kind should not be examined tooclosely, and claims the same exemption that one gives to Shelley'sschool-compelled verses, _In Horologium_. 

His English compositions also excited notice. Professor Newman gave themhigh commendation, and Mr. Bridge speaks of their superiority. But noneof them have survived; whether owing to the author's vigilantsuppression, or to the accidents of time. It was Hawthorne's habit as ayoung man to destroy all of his own letters that he could find, onreturning home after an absence; and few records of his college liferemain. Here is a brief note, however. 

BRUNSWICK, August 12, 1823. 

MY DEAR UNCLE:--I received your letter in due time, and should haveanswered it in due season, if I had not been prevented, as L----conjectures, by laziness. The money was very acceptable to me, and willlast me till the end of the term, which is three weeks from nextWednesday. I shall then have finished one half of my college life. .. . Isuppose your farm prospers, and I hope you will have abundance of fruit, and that I shall come home time enough to eat some of it, which I shouldprefer to all the pleasure of cultivating it. I have heard that there isa steamboat which runs twice a week between Portland and Boston. If thisbe the case I should like to come home that way, if mother has noapprehension of the boiler's bursting. 

I really have had a great deal to do this term, as, in addition to theusual exercises, we have to write a theme or essay of three or fourpages, every fortnight, which employs nearly all my time, so that I hopeyou will not impute my neglect of writing wholly to laziness. .. . 

Your affectionate nephew, NATH. HATHORNE. 

This letter, as well as the others here given, shows how much of boyishsimplicity surrounded and protected the rare and distinct personalityalready unfolded in this youth of eighteen. The mixture makes the charm ofHawthorne's youth, as the union of genius and common-sense kept hismaturity alive with a steady and wholesome light. I fancy that obligatoryculture irked him then, as always, and that he chose his own green lanestoward the advancement of learning. His later writings vouchsafe only twoslight glimpses of the college days. In his Life of Franklin Pierce, herecalls Pierce's chairmanship of the Athenaean Society, on the committeeof which he himself held a place. "I remember, likewise, " he says, "thatthe only military service of my life was as a private soldier in acollege company, of which Pierce was one of the officers. He enteredinto this latter business, or pastime, with an earnestness with which Icould not pretend to compete, and at which, perhaps, he would now beinclined to smile. " But much more intimate and delightful is thereminiscence which, in the dedicatory preface of "The Snow Image, "addressed to his friend Bridge, he thus calls up. "If anybody isresponsible for my being at this day an author, it is yourself. I knownot whence your faith came: but, while we were lads together at acountry college, gathering blueberries in study hours under those tallacademic pines; or watching the great logs as they tumbled along thecurrent of the Androscoggin; or shooting pigeons and gray squirrels inthe woods; or bat-fowling in the summer twilight; or catching treats inthat shadowy little stream, which, I suppose, is still wanderingriverward through the forest, --though you and I will never cast a linein it again, --two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear toacknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the Faculty never heardof, or else it had been the worse for us, --still it was your prognosticof your friend's destiny, that he was to be a writer of fiction. " I haveasked Mr. Bridge what gave him this impression of Hawthorne, and hetells me that it was an indescribable conviction, aroused by the wholedrift of his friend's mind as he saw it. Exquisite indeed must have beenthat first fleeting aroma of genius; and I would that it might have beenthen and there imprisoned and perpetuated for our delight. But we mustbe satisfied with the quick and sympathetic insight with whichHawthorne's friend discovered his true bent. The world owes more, probably, to this early encouragement from a college companion than itcan ever estimate. 

Nothing in human intercourse, I think, has a more peculiar andunchanging value than the mutual impressions of young men at college:they meet at a moment when the full meaning of life just begins tounfold itself to them, and their fresh imaginations build upon two orthree traits the whole character of a comrade, where a maturer manweighs and waits, doubts and trusts, and ends after all with a like ordislike that is only lukewarm. Far on toward the close of life, Hawthorne, in speaking of something told him by an English gentlemanrespecting a former classmate of the latter's, wrote: "It seemed to beone of those early impressions which a collegian gets of hisfellow-students, and which he never gets rid of, whatever the characterof the person may turn out to be in after years. I have judged severalpersons in this way, and still judge them so, though the world has cometo very different opinions. Which is right, --the world, which has theman's whole mature life on its side; or his early companion, who hasnothing for it but some idle passages of his youth?" The world, doubtless, measures more accurately the intrinsic worth of the man'smature actions; but his essential characteristics, creditable orotherwise, are very likely to be better understood by his classmates. Inthis, then, we perceive one of the formative effects on Hawthorne's mindof his stay at Brunswick. Those four years of student life gave him athousand eyes for observing and analyzing character. He learned then, also, to choose men on principles of his own. Always afterward he wassingularly independent in selecting friends; often finding them even inunpopular and out-of-the-way persons. The affinity between himself andBridge was ratified by forty years of close confidence; and Hawthornenever swerved from his early loyalty to Pierce, though his faithfulnessgave him severe trials, both public and private, afterward. I am not ofthose who explain this steadfastness by a theory of early prepossessionon Hawthorne's part, blinding him to Pierce's errors or defects. Thereis ample proof in the correspondence between Bridge and himself, which Ihave seen, that he constantly and closely scanned his distinguishedfriend the President's character with his impartial and searching eyefor human character, whatsoever its relations to himself. I believe ifhe had ever found that the original nucleus of honor and of a certaincandor which had charmed him in Pierce was gone, he would, provided itseemed his duty, have rejected the friendship. As it was, he saw his oldfriend and comrade undergoing changes which he himself thoughthazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one ever escaped theseverest criticism, and beheld him return to private life amidunpopularity, founded, as he thought, upon misinterpretation of what wasperhaps error, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old"Frank, " his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the personof the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood exposedHawthorne, under the circumstances, to cruel and vulgar insinuations, hesaw that duty led him to the side of his friend, not to that of theharsh multitude. 

Perhaps his very earliest contribution to light literature was anapocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteenor nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, giftedwith peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle wasespecially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and sent fromcollege to a Boston paper, a careful description of the new destroyer, his habits, and the proper mode of combating him, all drawn from his ownimagination. It was printed, so the tale runs; and a package of thepapers containing it arrived in Salem just as the author reached therefor a brief vacation. Mr. Manning is said to have accepted in good faiththe knowledge which the article supplied, but Hawthorne's amusement wasnot unmixed with consternation at the success of his first essay. 

In the two or three letters from him at college which still survive, there is no open avowal of the inner life, which was then the supplierof events for his outwardly monotonous days; not a breath of that strainof revery and fancy which impressed Bridge's mind! One allusion showsthat he systematically omitted declamation; and an old term bill of 1824(the last year of his course) charges him with a fine of twenty centsfor neglect of theme! Spur to authorship:--the Faculty surely did itsbest to develop his genius, and cannot be blamed for any shortcomings. [Footnote: The amount of this bill, for the term ending May 21, 1824, isbut $19. 62, of which $2. 36 is made up of fines. The figures give abackward glimpse at the epoch of cheap living, but show that thedisinclination of students to comply with college rules was even thenexpensive. The "average of damages" is only thirty-three cents, fromwhich I infer that the class was not a destructive one. ] Logically, these tendencies away from essay and oratory are alien to minds destinedto produce literature; but empirically, they are otherwise. Meantime, weget a sudden light on some of the solid points of character, apart fromgenius, in this note from the college president, and the student'sparallel epistles. 

May 29, 1822. 

MRS. ELIZABETH C. HATHORNE. 

MADAM:----By note of the Executive Government of this college, it ismade my duty to request your co-operation with us in the attempt toinduce your son faithfully to observe the laws of this institution. Hewas this day fined fifty cents for playing cards for money, last term. He played at different times. Perhaps he might not have gained, were itnot for the influence of a student whom we have dismissed from college. It does not appear that your son has very recently played cards; yetyour advice may be beneficial to him. I am, madam, Very respectfully, Your obedient, humble servant, WILLIAM ALLEN, _President_. 

The next day after this note was written (on May 30, 1822) the subjectof it wrote thus:--

"MY DEAR MOTHER:--I hope you have safely arrived in Salem. I havenothing particular to inform you of, except that all the card-players incollege have been found out, and my unfortunate self among the number. One has been dismissed from college, two suspended, and the rest, withmyself, have been fined fifty cents each. I believe the Presidentintends to write to the friends of all the delinquents. Should that bethe case, you must show the letter to nobody. If I am again detected, Ishall have the honor of being suspended; when the President asked whatwe played for, I thought it proper to inform him it was fifty cents, although it happened to be a quart of wine; but if I had told him ofthat, he would probably have fined me for having a blow. [It appearsthat the mild dissipation of wine-drinking in vogue at Bowdoin at thattime was called having a "blow;" probably an abbreviation for the commonterm "blow-out, " applied to entertainments. ] There was no untruth in thecase, as the wine cost fifty cents. I have not played at all this term. I have not drank any kind of spirits or wine this term, and shall nottill the last week. "

But in a letter to one of his sisters (dated August 5, 1822) a fewmonths afterward, he touches the matter much more vigorously:--

"To quiet your suspicions, I can assure you that I am neither 'dead, absconded, or anything worse. ' [The allusion is to some reproach for along silence on his part. ] I have involved myself in no 'foolishscrape, ' as you say all my friends suppose; but ever since my misfortuneI have been as steady as a sign-post, and as sober as a deacon, havebeen in no 'blows' this term, nor drank any kind of 'wine or strongdrink. ' So that your comparison of me to the 'prodigious son' will holdgood in nothing, except that I shall probably return penniless, for Ihave had no money this six weeks. .. . The President's message is not sosevere as I expected. I perceive that he thinks I have been led away bythe wicked ones, in which, however, he is greatly mistaken. I was fullas willing to play as the person he suspects of having enticed me, andwould have been influenced by no one. I have a great mind to commenceplaying again, merely to show him that I scorn to be seduced by anotherinto anything wrong. "

I cannot but emphasize with my own words the manly, clear-headedattitude of the young student in these remarks. He has evidently made uphis mind to test the value of card-playing for wine, and thinkshimself--as his will be the injury, if any--the best judge of the wisdomof that experiment. A weaker spirit, too, a person who knew himself lessthoroughly, would have taken shelter under the President's charitabletheory with thanksgiving; but Hawthorne's perfectly simple moral senseand ingrained manhood would not let him forget that self-respect livesby truth alone. In this same letter he touches lesser affairs:--

"I have not read the two novels you mention. I began some time ago toread Hume's 'History of England, ' but found it so abominably dull that Ihave given up the undertaking until some future time. I can procurebooks of all sorts from the library of the Athenaean Society, of which Iam a member. The library consists of about eight hundred volumes, amongwhich is Rees's Cyclopaedia [this work was completed in 1819], and manyother valuable works. .. . Our class will be examined on Tuesday foradmittance to our Sophomore year. If any of us are found deficient, weshall be degraded to the Freshman class again; from which misfortune mayHeaven defend me. "

But the young Freshman's trepidation, if he really felt any, was soonsoothed; he passed on successfully through his course. Not only did hegraduate well, but he had also, as we shall see, begun to preparehimself for his career. Here is a letter which gives, in a fragmentaryway, his mood at graduation:--

"BRUNSWICK, July 14, 1825. 

"MY DEAR SISTER:--. .. . I am not very well pleased with Mr. Dike's reportof me. The family had before conceived much too high an opinion of mytalents, and had probably formed expectations which I shall neverrealize. I have thought much upon the subject, and have finally come tothe conclusion that I shall never make a distinguished figure in theworld, and all I hope or wish is to plod along with the multitude. I donot say this for the purpose of drawing any flattery from you, butmerely to set mother and the rest of you right upon a point where yourpartiality has led you astray. I did hope that Uncle Robert's opinion ofme was nearer to the truth, as his deportment toward me never expresseda very high estimation of my abilities. "

Mr. Dike was a relative, who had probably gone back to Salem, afterseeing the young man at Brunswick, with a eulogy on his lips. Hawthorne's modesty held too delicate a poise to bear a hint of praise, before he had yet been put to the test or accomplished anythingdecisive. In some ways this modesty and shyness may have postponed hissuccess as an author; yet it was this same delicate admixture whichprecipitated and made perfect the mysterious solution in which hisgenius lay. The wish "to plod along with the multitude, " seeminglyunambitious, is only a veil. The hearts that burn most undyingly withhope of achievement in art, often throw off this vapor of discontent;they feel a prophetic thrill of that nameless suffering through whichevery seeker of truth must pass, and they long beforehand for rest, forthe sweet obscurity of the ungifted. 

Another part of this letter shows the writer's standing at college:--

"Did the President write to you about my part? He called me to hisstudy, and informed me that, though my rank in the class entitled me toa part, yet it was contrary to the law to give me one, on account of myneglect of declamation. As he inquired mother's name and residence, Isuppose that he intended to write to her on the subject. If so, you willsend me a copy of the letter. I am perfectly satisfied with thisarrangement, as it is a sufficient testimonial to my scholarship, whileit saves me the mortification of making my appearance in public atCommencement. Perhaps the family may not be so much pleased by it. Tellme what are their sentiments on the subject. 

"I shall return home in three weeks from next Wednesday. "

Here the dim record of his collegiate days ceases, leaving him on thethreshold of the world, a fair scholar, a budding genius, strong, young, and true, yet hesitant; halting for years, as if gathering all hisshy-souled courage, before entering that arena that was to echo suchlong applause of him. Yet doubt not that the purpose to do some greatthing was already a part of his life, together with that longing forrecognition which every young poet, in the sweet uncertain certainty ofbeginning, feels that he must some day deserve. Were not these words, which I find in "Fanshawe, " drawn from the author's knowledge of his ownheart?

"He called up the years that, even at his early age, he had spent insolitary study, --in conversation with the dead, --while he had scorned tomingle with the living world, or to be actuated by any of its motives. Fanshawe had hitherto deemed himself unconnected with the world, unconcerned in its feelings, and uninfluenced by it in any of hispursuits. In this respect he probably deceived himself. If his inmostheart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered thatdream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than athousand realities. "

Already, while at Bowdoin, Hawthorne had begun to write verses, andperhaps to print some of them anonymously in the newspapers. From someforgotten poem of his on the sea, a single stanza has drifted down tous, like a bit of beach-wood, the relic of a bark too frail to last. Itis this:--

 "The ocean hath its silent caves, Deep, quiet, and alone; Though there be fury on the waves, Beneath them there is none. "

If one lets the lines ring in his ears a little, the true Hawthornesquemurmur and half-mournful cadence become clear. I am told, by the way, that when the Atlantic cable was to be laid, some one quoted this to anear relative of the writer's, not remembering the name of the author, but thinking it conclusive proof that the ocean depths would receive thecable securely. Another piece is preserved complete, and much morenearly does the writer justice:--

"MOONLIGHT. 

 "We are beneath the dark blue sky, And the moon is shining bright; O, what can lift the soul so high As the glow of a summer night; When all the gay are hushed to sleep And they that mourn forget to weep, Beneath that gentle light!

 "Is there no holier, happier land Among those distant spheres, Where we may meet that shadow band, The dead of other years? Where all the day the moonbeams rest, And where at length the souls are blest Of those who dwell in tears?

 "O, if the happy ever leave The bowers of bliss on high, To cheer the hearts of those that grieve, And wipe the tear-drop dry; It is when moonlight sheds its ray, More pure and beautiful than day, And earth is like the sky. "

At a time when the taste and manner of Pope in poetry still held suchstrong rule over readers as it did in the first quarter of the century, these simple stanzas would not have been unworthy of praise for acertain independence; but there is something besides in the refinedtouch and the plaintive undertone that belong to Hawthorne'sindividuality. This gentle and musical poem, it is curious to remember, was written at the very period when Longfellow was singing his firstfresh carols, full of a vigorous pleasure in the beauty and inspirationof nature, with a rising and a dying fall for April and Autumn, and theWinter Woods. One can easily fancy that in these two lines from "Sunriseon the Hills":--

 "Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke Through thick-leaved branches from the dingle broke, "

it was the fire of Hawthorne's fowling-piece in the woods that attractedthe young poet, from his lookout above. But Longfellow had felt in therhythm of these earliest poems the tide-flow of his future, and Hawthornehad as yet hardly found his appropriate element. 

In 1828, however, three years after graduating, he published ananonymous prose romance called "Fanshawe, " much more nearly approachinga novel than his later books. It was issued at Boston, by Marsh andCapen; but so successful was Hawthorne in his attempt to exterminate theedition, that not half a dozen copies are now known to be extant. Wehave seen that he read and admired Godwin and Scott, as a boy. "Kenilworth, " "The Pirate, " "The Fortunes of Nigel, " "Peveril of thePeak, " "Quentin Durward, " and others of Scott's novel; had appearedwhile Hawthorne was at Bowdoin; and the author of "Waverley" had becomethe autocrat of fiction. In addition to this, there is an inbred analogybetween New England and Scotland. In the history and character of thepeople of each country are seen the influence of Calvin, and of acommon-school system. Popular education was ingrafted upon the policy ofboth states at about the same period, and in both it has had the sameresult, making of the farming-class a body of energetic, thrifty, intelligent, and aspiring people. Scotland and New England alike owesome of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitterclimate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either ispushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not alittle singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand asa butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness all hisown. The Scotch, it is true, are said to be unusually impervious to ajoke, while our Down-Easters are perhaps the most recondite andmany-sided of American humorists. And, though many of the conditions ofthe two regions are alike, the temperaments of the two races are ofcourse largely dissimilar. The most salient distinction, perhaps, isthat of the Scotch being a musical and dancing nation; something fromwhich the New-Englanders are fatally far removed. As if to link him withhis Puritan ancestry and stamp him beyond mistake as a Pilgrim and not aCovenanter, Hawthorne was by nature formed with little ear for music. Itseems strange that a man who could inform the verses on "Moonlight, "just quoted, with so delicate a melody, and never admitted an ill-timedstrain or jarring cadence into his pure, symphonious prose, shouldscarcely be able to distinguish one tune from another. Yet such was thecase. But this was owing merely to the absence of the _musical_instinct. He would listen with rapture to the unaccompanied voice; and Ihave been always much touched by a little incident recorded in the"English Note-Books": "There is a woman who has several times passedthrough this Hanover Street in which we live, stopping occasionally tosing songs under the windows; and last evening . .. She came and sang'Kathleen O'Moore' richly and sweetly. Her voice rose up out of the dim, chill street, and made our hearts throb in unison with it as we sat inour comfortable drawing-room. I never heard a voice that touched me moredeeply. Somebody told her to go away, and she stopped like a nightingalesuddenly shot. " Hawthorne goes on to speak with wonder of the waste ofsuch a voice, "making even an unsusceptible heart vibrate like aharp-string"; and it is pleasant to know that Mrs. Hawthorne had thewoman called within, from the street. So that his soul was open tosound. But the unmusicalness of New England, less marked now thanformerly, is only a symbol, perhaps, --grievous that it should be so!--ofthe superior temperance of our race. For, by one of those strangeoversights that human nature is guilty of, Scotland, in opening the doorfor song and dance and all the merry crew of mirth, seems to admit quitefreely two vagabonds that have no business there, Squalor andDrunkenness. Yet notwithstanding this grave unlikeness between the twopeoples, Hawthorne seems to have found a connecting clew, albeitunwittingly, when he remarked, as he did, on his first visit to Glasgow, that in spite of the poorer classes there excelling even those ofLiverpool in filth and drunkenness, "they are a better looking peoplethan the English (and this is true of all classes), more intelligent ofaspect, with more regular, features. " There is certainly one qualitylinking the two nations together which has not yet been commented on, inrelation to Hawthorne; and this is the natural growth of the weird inthe popular mind, both here and in Scotland. It is not needful to enterinto this at all at length. In the chapter on Salem I have suggestedsome of the immediate factors of the weird element in Hawthorne'sfiction; but it deserves remark that only Scott and Hawthorne, besidesGeorge Sand, among modern novelists, have used the supernatural withreal skill and force; and Hawthorne has certainly infused it into hiswork by a more subtle and sympathetic gift than even the magic-lovingScotch romancer owned. After this digressive prelude, the reader will beready to hear me announce that "Fanshawe" was a faint reflection fromthe young Salem recluse's mind of certain rays thrown across theAtlantic from Abbotsford. But this needs qualification. 

Hawthorne indeed admired Scott, when a youth; and after he had returnedfrom abroad, in 1860, he fulfilled a tender purpose, formed on a visitto Abbotsford, of re-reading all the Waverley novels. Yet he had longbefore arrived at a ripe, unprejudiced judgment concerning him. Theexact impression of his feeling appears in that delightfully humorouswhimsey, "P. 's Correspondence, " which contains the essence of the bestcriticism. [Footnote: See Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II. ] Inallusion to Abbotsford, Scott, he says, "whether in verse, prose, orarchitecture, could achieve but one thing, although that one in infinitevariety. " And he adds: "For my part, I can hardly regret that Sir WalterScott had lost his consciousness of outward things before his works wentout of vogue. It was good that he should forget his fame, rather thanthat fame should first have forgotten him. Were he still a writer, andas brilliant a one as ever, he could no longer maintain anything likethe same position in literature. The world, nowadays, requires a moreearnest purpose, a deeper moral, and a closer and homelier truth than hewas qualified to supply it with. Yet who can be to the presentgeneration even what Scott has been to the past?" Now, in "Fanshawe"there is something that reminds one of Sir Walter; but the veryresemblance makes the essential unlikeness more apparent. 

The scene of the tale is laid at Harley College, "in an ancient, thoughnot very populous settlement in a retired corner of one of the NewEngland States. " This, no doubt, is a reproduction of Bowdoin. Mr. Longfellow tells me that the descriptions of the seminary and of thecountry around it strongly suggest the Brunswick College. The Presidentof Harley is a Dr. Melmoth, an amiable and simple old delver inlearning, in a general way recalling Dominie Sampson, whose vigorousspouse rules him somewhat severely: their little bickerings supply astrain of farce indigenous to Scott's fictions, but quite unlikeanything in Hawthorne's later work. A young lady, named Ellen Langton, daughter of an old friend of Dr. Melmoth's, is sent to Harley, to stayunder his guardianship. Ellen is somewhat vaguely sketched, in the styleof Scott's heroines; but this sentence ends with a trace of the youngwriter's quality: "If pen could give an adequate idea of Ellen Langton'sbeauty, it would achieve what pencil . .. Never could; for though thedark eyes might be painted, the pure and pleasant thoughts that peepedthrough them could only be seen and felt. " This maiden the doctor oncetook into his study, to begin a course of modern languages with her; butshe "having discovered an old romance among his heavy folios, contrivedby the sweet charm of her voice to engage his attention, " and quitebeguiled him from severer studies. Naturally, she inthralls two youngstudents at the college: one of whom is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the seaport towns;and the other, Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books andmeditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intenselymoved by his new passion, perceiving that a union between himself andEllen could not be a happy one, resigns the hope of it from thebeginning. But circumstances bring him into intimate relation with her. The real action of the book, after the preliminaries, takes up only somethree days, and turns upon the attempt of a man named Butler to enticeEllen away under his protection, then marry her, and secure the fortuneto which she is heiress. This scheme is partly frustrated bycircumstances, and Butler's purpose towards Ellen then becomes a muchmore sinister one. From this she is rescued by Fanshawe; and, knowingthat he loves her, but is concealing his passion, she gives him theopportunity and the right to claim her hand. For a moment, the rush ofdesire and hope is so great that he hesitates; then he refuses to takeadvantage of her generosity, and parts with her for the last time. Ellenbecomes engaged to Wolcott, who had won her heart from the first; andFanshawe, sinking into rapid consumption, dies before his classgraduates. It is easy to see how the sources of emotion thus openedattracted Hawthorne. The noble and refined nature of Fanshawe, and themingled craftiness, remorse, and ferocity of Butler, are crudeembodiments of the same characteristics which he afterward treated inmodified forms. They are the two poles, the extremes, --both of themremote and chilly, --of good and evil, from which the writer withdrew, after exploring them, into more temperate regions. The movement of thesepersons is visionary, and their personality faint. But I have marked afew characteristic portions of the book which suggest its tone. 

When the young lady's flight with the stranger actually takes place, young Wolcott and President Melmoth ride together in the pursuit, and atthis point there occurs a dialogue which is certainly as laughable andis better condensed than most similar passages in Scott, whom itstrongly recalls. A hint of Cervantes appears in it, too, which makes itnot out of place to mention that Hawthorne studied "Don Quixote" in theoriginal, soon after leaving college. 

 * * * * *

"'Alas, youth! these are strange times, ' observed the President, 'when adoctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth like a knight-errantand his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome ofthe church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. PrayHeaven, however, there he no encounter in store for us; for I utterlyforgot to provide myself with weapons. '

"'I took some thought for that matter, reverend knight, ' replied Edward, whose imagination was highly tickled by Dr. Melmoth's chivalrouscomparison. 

"'Ay, I see that you have girded on a sword, ' said the divine. 'Butwherewith shall I defend myself?--my hand being empty except of thisgolden-headed staff, the gift of Mr. Langton. '

"'One of those, if you will accept it, ' answered Edward, exhibiting abrace of pistols, 'will serve to begin the conflict, before you join thebattle hand to hand. '

"'Nay, I shall find little safety in meddling with that deadlyinstrument, since I know not accurately from which end proceeds thebullet, ' said Dr. Melmoth. 'But were it not better, seeing we are sowell provided with artillery, to betake ourselves, in the event of anencounter, to some stone-wall or other place of strength?'

"'If I may presume to advise, ' said the squire, 'you, as being mostvaliant and experienced, should ride forward, lance in hand (your longstaff serving for a lance), while I annoy the enemy from afar. '

"'Like Teucer behind the shield of Ajax, ' interrupted Dr. Melmoth, 'orDavid with his stone and sling. No, no, young man; I have leftunfinished in my study a learned treatise, important not only to thepresent age, but to posterity, for whose sakes I must take heed to mysafety. But lo! who rides yonder?'"

 * * * * *

In one place only does the author give full rein to his tragic power;but this is a vigorous burst, and remarkable also for its sure andtrenchant analysis. During his escape with Ellen, Butler is moved tostop at a lonely hut inhabited by his mother, where he finds her dying;and, torn by the sight of her suffering while she raves and yearns forhis presence, he makes himself known to her. 

 * * * * *

"At that unforgotten voice, the darkness burst away at once from hersoul. She arose in bed, her eyes and her whole countenance beaming withjoy, and threw her arms about his neck. A multitude of words seemstruggling for utterance; but they gave place to a low moaning sound, and then to the silence of death. The one moment of happiness, thatrecompensed years of sorrow, had been her last. .. . As he [Butler]looked, the expression of enthusiastic joy that parting life had leftupon the features faded gradually away, and the countenance, though nolonger wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through a long courseof grief and pain. On beholding this natural consequence of death, thethought perhaps occurred to him that her soul, no longer dependent onthe imperfect means of intercourse possessed by mortals, had communedwith his own, and become acquainted with all its guilt and misery. Hestarted from the bedside and covered his face with his hands, as if tohide it from those dead eyes. .. . But his deep repentance for the miseryhe had brought upon his parent did not produce in him a resolution to dowrong no more. The sudden consciousness of accumulated guilt made himdesperate. He felt as if no one had thenceforth a claim to justice orcompassion at his hands, when his neglect and cruelty had poisoned hismother's life, and hastened her death. "

 * * * * *

What separates this story from the rest of Hawthorne's works is anintricate plot, with passages of open humor, and a rather melodramatictone in the conclusion. These are the result in part of the prevalentfashion of romance, and in part of a desire to produce effects not quiteconsonant with his native bent. The choice of the title, "Fanshawe, "too, seems to show a deference to the then prevalent taste for brief andquaint-sounding names; and the motto, "Wilt thou go on with me?" fromSouthey, placed on his title-page, together with quotations at the headsof chapters, belongs to a past fashion. Fanshawe and Butler are powerfulconceptions, but they are so purely embodiments of passion as to assumean air of unreality. Butler is like an evil wraith, and Fanshawe is asevanescent as a sad cloud in the sky, touched with the first pale lightof morning. Fanshawe, with his pure heart and high resolves, representsthat constant aspiration toward lofty moral truth which markedHawthorne's own mind, and Butler is a crude example of the sinful spiritwhich he afterward analyzed under many forms. The verbal style has fewmarks of the maturer mould afterward impressed on it, except that thereis the preference always noticeable in Hawthorne for Latin wording. Twoor three phrases, however, show all the limpidness and ease for which hegained fame subsequently. For instance, when Fanshawe is first surprisedby his love for Ellen, he returns to his room to study: "The books werearound him which had hitherto been to him like those fabled volumes ofmagic, from which the reader could not turn away his eye, till deathwere the consequence of his studies. " This, too, is a pretty descriptionof Ellen: "Terror had at first blanched her as white as a lily. .. . Shamenext bore sway; and her blushing countenance, covered by her slenderwhite fingers, might fantastically be compared to a variegated rose, with its alternate stripes of white and red. " Its restraint is perhapsthe most remarkable trait of the novel; for though this comes oftimidity, it shows that Hawthorne, whether this be to his advantage ornot, was not of the order of young genius which begins with tumid andexcessive exhibition of power. His early acquaintance with books, breeding a respect for literary form, his shy, considerate modes ofdealing with any intellectual problem or question requiring judgment, and the formal taste of the period in letters, probably conspired tothis end. 

IV. 

TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES. 

1828-1838. 

We have now reached the point where the concealed foundations ofHawthorne's life terminate, and the final structure begins to appearabove the surface, like the topmost portion of a coral island slowlyrising from the depths of a solitary ocean. 

When he left college, his friends Cilley and Pierce entered into law, the gateway to politics; Bridge returned to his father's estate atBridgton, to engage later in a large enterprise there; and otherclassmates took up various activities in the midst of other men; but forHawthorne no very clear path presented itself. Literature had not yetattained, in the United States, the rank of a distinct and powerfulprofession. Fifteen years before, Brockden Brown had died prematurelyafter a hapless struggle, worn out with overwork, --the first man who hadundertaken to live by writing in this country since its colonization. "The North American Review, " indeed, in Boston, was laying thecorner-stone of a vigorous periodical literature; and in this year of1825 William Cullen Bryant had gone to New York to edit "The New YorkReview, " after publishing at Cambridge his first volume of poetry, "TheAges. " Irving was an author of recent but established fame, who wasdrawing chiefly from the rich supplies of European manners, legend, andhistory; while Cooper, in his pleasant Pioneer-land beside Otsego Lake, had begun to make clear his claim to a wide domain of native andnational fiction. But to a young man of reserved temper, having few orno friends directly connected with publication, and living in a sombre, old-fashioned town, isolated as all like towns were before the era ofrailroads, the avenue to publicity and a definite literary career wasdark and devious enough. 

I suppose it was after his venture of "Fanshawe, " that he set about thecomposition of some shorter stories which he called "Seven Tales of myNative Land. " [Footnote: The motto prefixed to these was, "We areseven. "] His sister, to whom he read these, has told me that they werevery beautiful, but no definite recollection of them remains to her, except that some of them related to witchcraft, and some to the sea, being stories of pirates and privateers. In one of these latter werecertain verses, beginning, --

 "The pirates of the sea, they were a fearful race. "

Hawthorne has described in "The Devil in Manuscript, " while depicting ayoung author about to destroy his manuscript, his own vexations intrying to find a publisher for these attempts. "They have been offeredto some seventeen booksellers. It would make you stare to read theiranswers. .. . One man publishes nothing but school-books; another has fivenovels already under examination; . .. Another gentleman is just givingup business on purpose, I verily believe, to escape publishing mybook. .. . In short, of all the seventeen booksellers, only one hasvouchsafed even to read my tales; and he--a literary dabbler himself, Ishould judge--has the impertinence to criticise them, proposing what hecalls vast improvements, and concluding . .. That he will not beconcerned on any terms. .. . But there does seem to be one honest manamong these seventeen unrighteous ones; and he tells me fairly that noAmerican publisher will meddle with an American work, seldom if by aknown writer, and never if by a new one, unless at the writer's risk. "He indeed had the most discouraging sort of search for a publisher; butat last a young printer of Salem promised to undertake the work. Hisname was Ferdinand Andrews; and he was at one time half-owner with CalebCushing of an establishment from which they issued "The Salem Gazette, "in 1822, the same journal in which Hawthorne published various papers ata later date, when Mr. Caleb Foote was its editor. Andrews wasambitious, and evidently appreciative of his young townsman's genius;but he delayed issuing the "Seven Tales" so long that the author, exasperated, recalled the manuscript. Andrews, waiting only for betterbusiness prospects, was loath to let them go; but Hawthorne insisted, and at last the publisher sent word, "Mr. Hawthorne's manuscript awaitshis orders. " The writer received it and burned it, to the chagrin ofAndrews, who had hoped to bring out many works by the same hand. 

This, at the time, must have been an incident of incalculable anddepressing importance to Hawthorne, and the intense emotion it causedmay be guessed from the utterances of the young writer in the sketchjust alluded to, though he has there veiled the affair in a light filmof sarcasm. The hero of that scene is called Oberon, one of the feignednames which Hawthorne himself used at times in contributing toperiodicals. "'What is more potent than fire!' said he, in his gloomiesttone. 'Even thought, invisible and incorporeal as it is, cannot escapeit. .. . All that I had accomplished, all that I planned for future years, has perished by one common ruin, and left only this heap of embers! Thedeed has been my fate. And what remains? A weary and aimless life; along repentance of this hour; and at last an obscure grave, where theywill bury and forget me!'" There is also an allusion to the talesfounded on witchcraft: "I could believe, if I chose, " says Oberon, "thatthere is a devil in this pile of blotted papers. You have read them, andknow what I mean, --that conception in which I endeavored to embody thecharacter of a fiend, as represented in our traditions and the writtenrecords of witchcraft. O, I have a horror of what was created in my ownbrain, and shudder at the manuscripts in which I gave that dark idea asort of material existence!' You remember how the hellish thing used tosuck away the happiness of those who . .. Subjected themselves to hispower. " This is curious, as showing the point from which Hawthorne hadresolved to treat the theme. He had instinctively perceived that theonly way to make the witchcraft delusion available in fiction was toaccept the witch as a fact, an actual being, and expend his art upondeveloping the abnormal character; while other writers, who haveattempted to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken thehistorical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect ofthe delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that ofintelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger andtoken of an original imagination. 

After the publication of "Fanshawe" and the destruction of his "SevenTales, " Hawthorne found himself advanced not so much as by a singlefootstep on the road to fame. "Fame!" he exclaims, in meditation; "somevery humble persons in a town may be said to possess it, --as thepenny-post, the town-crier, the constable, --and they are known toeverybody; while many richer, more intellectual, worthier persons areunknown by the majority of their fellow-citizens. " But the fame that hedesired was, I think, only that which is the recognition by the publicthat a man is on the way to truth. An outside acknowledgment of this isinvaluable even to the least vain of authors, because it assures himthat, in following his own inner impulse through every doubt anddiscouragement, he has not been pursuing a chimera, and gives him newheart for the highest enterprises of which he is capable. To attainthis, amid the peculiar surroundings of his life, was difficult enough. At that time, Salem society was more peculiarly constituted than it hasbeen in later years. A strong circle of wealthy families maintainedrigorously the distinctions of class; their entertainments weresplendid, their manners magnificent, and the fame of the beautiful womenborn amongst them has been confirmed by a long succession reaching intothe present day. They prescribed certain fashions, customs, punctilios, to disregard which was social exile for the offending party; and theywere divided even among themselves, I am told, by the most inveteratejealousies. It is said that certain people would almost have endured thethumb-screw rather than meet and speak to others. There seems to be goodauthority for believing that Hawthorne could have entered this circle, had he so chosen. He had relatives who took an active part within it;and it appears that there was a disposition among some of thefashionable coterie to show him particular favor, and that advances weremade by them with the wish to draw him out. But one can conceive that itwould not be acceptable to him to meet them on any but terms of entireequality. The want of ample supplies of money, which was one of theresults of the fallen fortunes of his family, made this impossible;those who held sway were of older date in the place than some of theHawthornes, and, like many another long-established stock, they had aconviction that, whatever their outward circumstances might be, acertain intrinsic superiority remained theirs. They were, like the ladyof Hawthorne blood mentioned in the "American Note-Books, " "proud ofbeing proud. " The Hawthornes, it was said, were as unlike other peopleas the Jews were to Gentiles; and the deep-rooted reserve whichenveloped Hawthorne himself was a distinct family trait. So that, feeling himself to be in an unfair position, he doubtless found in thesefacts enough to cause him acute irritation of that sort which only veryyoung or very proud and shrinking men can know. Besides this, thealtered circumstances of his line, and his years in Maine, had broughthim acquainted with humbler phases of life, and had doubtless developedin him a sympathy with simpler and less lofty people than thesemagnates. His father had been a Democrat, and loyalty to his memory, aswell as the very pride just spoken of, conspired to lead him to thatunpopular side. This set up another barrier between himself and the richand powerful Whigs, for political feeling was almost inconceivably morebitter then than now. Thus there arose within him an unquiet, ill-defined, comfortless antipathy that must have tortured him withwearisome distress; and certainly shut him out from the sympathy andappreciation which, if all the conditions had been different, might havebeen given him by sincere and competent admirers. So little known amonghis own townsfolk, it is not to be wondered at that no encouraginganswer reached him from more distant communities. 

In his own home there was the faith which only love can give, butoutside of it a chill drove his hopes and ardors back upon himself andturned them into despairs. His relatives, having seen him educated bythe aid of his uncle, and now arrived at maturity, expected him to takehis share in practical affairs. But the very means adopted to train himfor a career had settled his choice of one in a direction perhaps notwholly expected; all cares and gains of ordinary traffic seemed sordidand alien to him. Yet a young man just beginning his career, with nosolid proof of his own ability acquired, cannot but be sensitive tocriticism from those who have gained a right to comment by their ownspecial successes. As he watched these slow and dreary years pass by, from his graduation in 1825 to the time when he first came fully beforethe public in 1837, he must often have been dragged down by terriblefears that perhaps the fairest period of life was being wasted, losingforever the chance of fruition. "I sat down by the wayside of life, " hewrote, long after, "like a man under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprangup around me, and the bushes grew to be saplings, and the saplingsbecame trees, until no exit appeared possible, through the entanglingdepths of my obscurity. " Judge in what a silence and solitaryself-communing the time must have passed, to leave a thought like this:"To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the courseof the day, --events of ordinary occurrence; as, the clocks have struck, the dead have been buried. " Or this: "A recluse like myself, or aprisoner, to measure time by the progress of sunshine through hischamber. " His Note-Books show how the sense of unreality vexed andpursued him; and how the sadness and solemnity of life returned upon himagain and again; and how he clothed these dark visitants of his brainwith the colors of imagination, and turned them away from him in theguise of miraculous fantasies. He talks with himself of writing "thejournal of a human heart for a single day, in ordinary circumstances. The lights and shadows that flit across it, its internal vicissitudes. "But this is almost precisely what his printed Note-Books have revealedto us. Only now and then do we get precisely the thought that is passingthrough his mind at the moment; it more often throws upon the page areflected image, --some strange and subtle hint for a story, the germs ofdelicate fabrics long afterward matured, some merry or sad conceit, sometender yet piercing inference, --like the shadows of clouds passingquickly across a clear sky, and casting momentary glooms, and glances oflight, on the ground below. These journals do not begin until a dateseven years after "Fanshawe" was published; but it is safe to assumethat they mirror pretty closely the general complexion of theintervening years. 

His mode of life during this period was fitted to nurture hisimagination, but must have put the endurance of his nerves to theseverest test. The statement that for several years "he never saw thesun, " is entirely an error; but it is true that he seldom chose to walkin the town except at night, and it is said that he was extremely fondof going to fires if they occurred after dark. In summer he was upshortly after sunrise, and would go down to bathe in the sea. Themorning was chiefly given to study, the afternoon to writing, and in theevening he would take long walks, exploring the coast from Gloucester toMarblehead and Lynn, --a range of many miles. Or perhaps he would pacethe streets of the town, unseen but observing, gathering material forsomething in the vein of his delicious "Night Sketches. " "After a time, "he writes, "the visions vanish, and will not appear again at my bidding. Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality depresses myspirits, and impels me to venture out before the clock shall strikebedtime, to satisfy myself that the world is not made of such shadowymaterials as have busied me throughout the day. A dreamer may dwell solong among fantasies, that the things without him will seem as unreal asthose within. " Or, if he chose a later hour, he might go abroad topeople the deserted thoroughfares with wilder phantoms. Sometimes hetook the day for his rambles, wandering perhaps over Endicott's ancientOrchard Farm and among the antique houses and grassy cellars of oldSalem village, the witchcraft ground; or losing himself among the pinesof Montserrat and in the silence of the Great Pastures, or strollingalong the beaches to talk with old sailors and fishermen. His trampsalong the Manchester and Beverly shores or from Marblehead to Nahantwere productive of such delicate tracings as "Footprints by theSea-shore, " or the dream-autobiography of "The Village Uncle. " "Grudgeme not the day, " he says, in the former sketch, "that has been spent inseclusion, which yet was not solitude, since the great sea has been mycompanion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and the wind has told mehis secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around my hermitage. Suchcompanionship works an effect upon a man's character, as if he had beenadmitted to the society of creatures that are not mortal. " This touchesthe inmost secret of those lonely, youthful years, which moulded thepure-hearted muser with ethereal, unsuspected fingers. Elsewhere, Hawthorne has given another glimpse into his interior life at this time:"This scene came into my fancy as I walked along a hilly road, on astarlight October evening; in the pure and bracing air I became allsoul, and felt as if I could climb the sky, and run a race along theMilky Way. Here is another tale in which I wrapped myself during a darkand dreary night-ride in the month of March, till the rattling of thewheels and the voices of my companions seemed like faint sounds of adream, and my visions a bright reality. That scribbled page describesshadows which I summoned to my bedside at midnight; they would notdepart when I bade them; the gray dawn came, and found me wide awake andfeverish, the victim of my own enchantments!" Susan, the imaginary wifein "The Village Uncle, " is said to have had a prototype in the daughterof a Salem fisherman, whose wit and charm gave Hawthorne frequentamusement; and I suppose that not seldom he reaped delightfulsuggestions from his meetings with frank, unconscious, and individualpeople of tastes and life unlike his own. I have heard it told with apolite, self-satisfied scorn, that he was in the habit of visiting nowand then a tavern patronized by 'longshore-men and nautical veterans, tolisten to their talk. I can well believe it, for it is this sort ofintercourse that a person of manly genius, with a republicanfellow-feeling for the unrenowned, most covets. How well he gives thetone of these old sea-dogs, when he writes: "The blast will put in itsword among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them!" Itwas this constant searching among the common types of men, and his readysympathy with them, refined as it was hearty, that stored his mind witha variety of accurate impressions which afterward surprised observers, in a man of habits so retired. 

His uncles, the Mannings, were connected with extensive stage-coachlines at this time, and Hawthorne seems to have used these as antennaeto bring himself in contact with new and nutritive regions and people. Aletter, probably written in 1830, which I do not feel at liberty toquote entire, tells something of a trip that he took with Samuel Manningthrough a part of Connecticut and the Connecticut valley. The extractsthat follow give a glimpse of the fresh and alert interest he felt abouteverything; and I regard them as very important in showing the obverseof that impression of unhealthy solitude which has been so generallyreceived from accounts of Hawthorne hitherto published. 

"We did not leave New Haven till last Saturday . .. And we were forced tohalt for the night at Cheshire, a village about fifteen miles from NewHaven. The next day being Sunday, we made a Sabbath day's journey ofseventeen miles, and put up at Farmington. As we were wearied with rapidtravelling, we found it impossible to attend divine service, which was(of course) very grievous to us both. In the evening, however, I went toa Bible class with a very polite and agreeable gentleman, whom Iafterward discovered to be a strolling tailor of very questionablehabits. .. . We are now at Deerfield (though I believe my letter is datedGreenfield) . .. With our faces northward; nor shall I marvel much ifyour Uncle Sam pushes on to Canada, unless we should meet with two orthree bad taverns in succession. .. . 

"I meet with many marvellous adventures. At New Haven I observed agentleman staring at me with great earnestness, after which he went intothe bar-room, I suppose to inquire who I might be. Finally, he came upto me and said that as I bore a striking resemblance to a family ofStanburys, he was induced to inquire if I was connected with them. I wassorry to be obliged to answer in the negative. At another place theytook me for a lawyer in search of a place to settle, and stronglyrecommended their own village. Moreover, I heard some of the students atYale College conjecturing that I was an Englishman, and to-day, as I wasstanding without my coat at the door of a tavern, a man came up to me, and asked me for some oats for his horse. "

It was during this trip, I have small doubt, that he found the scenery, and perhaps the persons, for that pretty interlude, "The SevenVagabonds. " The story is placed not far from Stamford, and the conjurerin it says, "I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather, across theConnecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and may be into Canadabefore the fall. " The narrator himself queries by what right he cameamong these wanderers, and furnishes himself an answer which suggeststhat side of his nature most apt to appear in these journeys: "The freemind that preferred its own folly to another's wisdom; the open spiritthat found companions everywhere; above all, the restless impulse thathad so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments: these were myclaims to be of their society. " "If there be a faculty, " he also writes, "which I possess more perfectly than most men, it is that of throwingmyself mentally into situations foreign to my own, and detecting with acheerful eye the desirableness of each. " There is also one letter of1831, sent back during an expedition in New Hampshire, which suppliesthe genesis of another Twice-Told Tale, "The Canterbury Pilgrims. "

"I walked to the Shaker village yesterday [he says], and was shown overthe establishment, and dined there with a squire and a doctor, also ofthe world's people. On my arrival, the first thing I saw was a jolly oldShaker carrying an immense decanter of their superb cider; and as soonas I told him my business, he turned out a tumblerful and gave me. Itwas as much as a common head could clearly carry. Our dining-room waswell furnished, the dinner excellent, and the table attended by amiddle-aged Shaker lady, good looking and cheerful. .. . Thisestablishment is immensely rich. Their land extends two or three milesalong the road, and there are streets of great houses painted yellow andtipt with red. .. . On the whole, they lead a good and comfortable life, and, if it were not for their ridiculous ceremonies, a man could not doa wiser thing than to join them. Those whom I conversed with wereintelligent, and appeared happy. I spoke to them about becoming a memberof their society, but have come to no decision on that point. 

"We have had a pleasant journey enough. .. . I make innumerableacquaintances, and sit down on the doorsteps with judges, generals, andall the potentates of the land, discoursing about the Salem murder [thatof Mr. White], the cow-skinning of Isaac Hill, the price of hay, and thevalue of horse-flesh. The country is very uneven, and your Uncle Samgroans bitterly whenever we come to the foot of a low hill; though thisought to make me groan rather than him, as I have to get out and trudgeevery one of them. "

The "Clippings with a Chisel" point to some further wanderings, toMartha's Vineyard; and an uncollected sketch reveals the fact that hehad been to Niagara. It was probably then that he visited Ticonderoga;[Footnote: A brief sketch of the fortress is included in The Snow Imagevolume of the Works. ] but not till some years later that he saw NewYork. With these exceptions, and a trip to Washington before going toLiverpool in 1853, every day of his life up to that date was passedwithin New England. In "The Toll-Gatherer's Day" one sees the youngobserver at work upon the details of an ordinary scene near home. The"small square edifice which stands between shore and shore in the midstof a long bridge, " spanning an arm of the sea, refers undoubtedly to thebridge from Salem to Beverly. But how lightly his spirit hovers over thestream of actual life, scarcely touching it before springing up again, like a sea-bird on the crest of a wave! Nothing could be more accurateand polished than his descriptions and his presentation of the actualfacts; but his fancy rises resilient from these to some dreamy, far-seeing perception or gentle moral inference. The visible humanpageant is only of value to him as it suggests the viewless host ofheavenly shapes that hang above it like an idealizing mirage. Hisattitude at this time recalls a suggestion of his own in "Sights from aSteeple": "The most desirable mode of existence might be that of aspiritualized Paul Pry, hovering invisible round man and woman, witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowingbrightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, andretaining no emotion peculiar to himself. " He had the longing whichevery creative mind must feel, to mix with other beings and share to theutmost the possibilities of human weal or woe, suppressing his ownexperience so far as to make himself a transparent medium for theemotions of mankind; but he still lacked a definite connection with themultifarious drama of human fellowship; he could not catch his cue andplay his answering part, and therefore gave voice to a constantlymurmurous, moralizing "aside. " He delights to let the current of actionflow around him and beside him; he warms his heart in it; but when heagain withdraws by himself, it is with him as with the old toll-gathererat close of day, "mingling reveries of Heaven with remembrances ofearth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dustypilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show ofphantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon. "

"What would a man do, " he asks himself, in his journal, "if he werecompelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could neverbathe himself in cool solitude?" As yet, this bracing influence ofquietude, so essential to his well-being, fascinates him, and he cannotshake off its influence so far as to enter actively and for personalinterests into any of the common pursuits even of the man who makes abusiness of literature. Yet nothing impresses him more than the factthat every one carries a solitude with him, wherever he goes, like ashadow. Twice, with an interval of three years between, this idea recursin the form of a hint for romance. "Two lovers or other persons, on themost private business, to appoint a meeting in what they supposed to bea place of the utmost solitude, and to find it thronged with people. "The idea implied is, that this would in fact be the completest privacythey could have wished. "The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, yet as completely in the power of another, life and all, as if they twowere in the deepest solitude. " This contradiction between the_apparent_ openness that must rule one's conduct among men, and thereal secrecy that may coexist with it, even when one is most exposed tothe gaze of others, excites in his mind a whole train of thought basedon the falsity of appearances. If a man can be outwardly open andinwardly reserved in a good sense, he can be so in a bad sense; so, too, he may have the external air of great excellence and purity, whileinternally he is foul and unfaithful. This discovery strikes ourperfectly sincere and true-hearted recluse with intense and endlesshorror. He tests it, by turning it innumerable ways, and imagining allsorts of situations in which such contradictions of appearance andreality might be illustrated. At one time, he conceives of a friend whoshould be true by day, and false at night. At another he suggests: "Ourbody to be possessed by two different spirits, so that half the visageshall express one mood, and the other half another. " "A man living awicked life in one place and simultaneously a virtuous and religious onein another. " Then he perceives that this same uncertainty andcontradiction affects the lightest and seemingly most harmless things inthe world. "The world is so sad and solemn, " he muses, "that thingsmeant in jest are liable, by an overpowering influence, to becomedreadful earnest. " And then he applies this, as in the following: "Avirtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a trick on a man. He seeswhat she is about, and contrives matters so that she throws herselfcompletely into his power, and is ruined, --all in jest. " Likewise, themost desirable things, by this same law of contradiction, often provethe least satisfactory. Thus: "A person or family long desires someparticular good. At last it comes in such profusion as to be the greatpest of their lives. " And this is equally true, he finds, whether thedesired thing be sought in order to gratify a pure instinct or a wrongand revengeful one. "As an instance, merely, suppose a woman sues herlover for breach of promise, and gets the money by instalments, througha long series of years. At last, when the miserable victim were utterlytrodden down, the triumpher would have become a very devil of evilpassions, --they having overgrown his whole nature; so that a far greaterevil would have come upon himself than on his victim. " This theme ofself-punished revenge, as we know, was afterward thoroughly wrought outin "The Scarlet Letter. " Another form in which the thought of thispervading falsehood in earthly affairs comes to him is the frightfulfancy of people being poisoned by communion-wine. Thus does theinsincerity and corruption of man, the lie that is hidden in nearlyevery life and almost every act, rise and thrust itself before him, whichever way he turns, like a serpent in his path. He is in theposition of the father confessor of whom he at one time thinks, and of"his reflections on character, and the contrast of the inward man withthe outward, as he looks around his congregation, all whose secret sinsare known to him. " But Hawthorne does not let this hissing serpenteither rout him or poison him. He is determined to visit the ways oflife, to find the exit of the maze, and so tries every opening, unalarmed. The serpent is in all: it proves to be a deathless, large-coiled hydra, encircling the young explorer's virgin soul, as itdoes that of every pure aspirer, and trying to drive him back onhimself, with a sting in his heart that shall curse him with a life-longvenom. It does, indeed, force him to recoil, but not with any mortalwound. He retires in profound sorrow, acknowledging that earth holdsnothing perfect, that his dream of ideal beings leading an ideal life, which, in spite of the knowledge of evil, he has been cherishing for somany years, is a dream to be fulfilled in the hereafter alone. Heconfesses to himself that "there is evil in every human heart, which mayremain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances mayrouse it to activity. " It is not a new discovery; but from the forcewith which it strikes him, we may guess the strength of his aspiration, the fine temper of his faith in the good and the beautiful. To be drivento this dismal conclusion is for him a source of inexpressible dismay, because he had trusted so deeply in the possibility of reaching somebrighter truth. No; not a new discovery;--but one who approaches it withso much sensibility _feels_ it to be new, with all the fervor whichthe most absolute novelty could rouse. This is the deepest and the trueoriginality, to possess such intensity of feeling that the oldest truth, when approached by our own methods, shall be full of a primitiveimpressiveness. 

But, in the midst of the depression born of his immense sorrow over sin, Hawthorne found compensations. First, in the query which he puts sobriefly: "The good deeds in an evil life, --the generous, noble, andexcellent actions done by people habitually wicked, --to ask what is tobecome of them. " This is the motive which has furnished novelists forthe last half-century with their most stirring and pathetic effects. Itis a sort of escape, a safety-valve for the hot fire of controversy onthe soul's fate, and offers in its pertinent indefiniteness a vastsolace to those who are trying to balance the bewildering account ofvirtue with sin. Hawthorne found that here was a partial solution of theproblem, and he enlarged upon it, toward the end of his life, in "TheMarble Faun. " But it was a second and deeper thought that furnished himthe chief compensation. In one of the "Twice-Told Tales, " "Fancy'sShow-Box, " he deals with the question, how far the mere thought of sin, the incipient desire to commit it, may injure the soul. After firststrongly picturing the reality of certain sinful impulses in a man'smind, which had never been carried out, --"A scheme of guilt, " he argues, taking up the other side, "till it be put in execution, greatlyresembles a train of incidents in a projected tale. .. . Thus anovel-writer, or a dramatist, in creating the villain of romance, andfitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life inprojecting crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each otherhalf-way between reality and fancy. It is not until the crime isaccomplished that guilt clinches its gripe upon the heart, and claims itfor its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt andacknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-foldmore virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, thatmen often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while itsattendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, its results aredimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it. .. . In truth, there is nosuch thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either forgood or evil, except at the very moment of execution. Let us hope, therefore, that all the dreadful consequences of sin will not beincurred, unless the act have set its seal upon the thought. Yet . .. _man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even with the guiltiest_, since, though his hand be clean, his heart has surely been polluted bythe flitting phantoms of iniquity. " That is, purity is too spotless athing to exist in absolute perfection in a human being, who must oftenfeel at least the dark flush of passionate thoughts falling upon him, however blameless of life he may be. From this lofty conception ofpurity comes that equally noble humility of always feeling "hisbrotherhood, even with the guiltiest. " What more logical issue from theChristian idea, what more exquisitely tender rendering of it than this?"Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or woman of us can beclean!" was his exclamation, many years later, in that English workhousewhich he describes in a heart-rending chapter of "Our Old Home" called"Outside Glimpses of English Poverty. " And it was then that he revealedthe vast depth and the reality of his human sympathy toward the wretchedand loathsome little foundling child that silently sued to him forkindness, till he took it up and caressed it as tenderly as if he hadbeen its father. 

Armed with these two perceptions, of the good that still persists inevil persons, and the deep charity which every one must feel towardseven the most abject fellow-being, Hawthorne moves forth again to tracethe maze; and lo, the serpent drops down, cowering. He has found a charmthat robs sin and crime of their deadly hurt, and can handle themwithout danger. It is said by some that Hawthorne treats wrong andcorruption too shrinkingly, and his mood of never-lessened and acutesensibility touching them is contrasted with that of "virile" writerslike Balzac and George Sand. But these incline to make a menagerie oflife, thrusting their heads into the very lion's mouth, or boldlyembracing the snake of sin. They are indeed superior in strong dramaticand realistic effects; but, unvicious as may be their aim, they are notfilled with a robust morality: they deliberately choose unclean elementsto heighten the interest, --albeit using such elements with magnificentstrength and skill. Let us be grateful that Hawthorne does not so covetthe applause of the clever club-man or of the unconscious vulgarian, asto junket about in caravan, carrying the passions with him in gaudycages, and feeding them with raw flesh; grateful that he never loses thearchangelic light of pure, divine, dispassionate wrath, in piercing thedragon!

We see now how, in this early term of probation, he was finding aphilosophy and an unsectarian religiousness, which ever stirred belowthe clear surface of his language like the bubbling spring at bottom ofa forest pool. It has been thought that Hawthorne developed late. Butthe most striking thing about the "Twice-Told Tales" and the firstentries in the "American Note-Books" is their evidence of a calm andmellow maturity. These stories are like the simple but well-devisedtheme which a musician prepares as the basis of a whole composition:they show the several tendencies which underlie all the subsequentworks. First, there are the scenes from New England history, --"Endicottand the Red Cross, " "The Maypole of Merry Mount, " "The Gray Champion, "the "Tales of the Province House. "

Then we have the psychological vein, in "The Prophetic Pictures, " "TheMinister's Black Veil, " "Dr. Heidegger, " "Fancy's Show-Box"; and alongwith this the current of delicate essay-writing, as in "The HauntedMind, " and "Sunday at Home. " "Little Annie's Ramble, " again, foreshadowshis charming children's tales. It is rather remarkable that he shouldthus have sounded, though faintly, the whole diapason in his firstworks. Moreover, he had already at this time attained a style at onceflowing and large in its outline, and masterly in its minuteness. 

But this maturity was not won without deep suffering and long-deferredhope. 

If actual contact with men resulted in such grave and sorrowfulreflection as we have traced, how drearily trying must have been theclimaxes of solitary thought after a long session of seclusion! And muchthe larger portion of his time was consumed amid an absolute silence, aprivacy unbroken by intimate confidences and rife with exhausting anddepressing reactions from intense imagination and other severeintellectual exercise. Not only must the repression of this period haveamounted at times to positive anguish, but there was also the perplexingperception that his life's fairest possibilities were still barren. "Every individual has a place in the world, and is important to it insome respects, whether he chooses to be so or not. " So runs one of theextracts from the "American Note-Books"; and now and then we get fromthe same source a glimpse of the haunting sense that he is missing hisfit relation to the rest of the race, the question whether his pursuitwas not in some way futile like all the human pursuits he hadnoticed, --whether it was not to be nipped by the same perversity andcontradiction that seemed to affect all things mundane. Here is one ofhis proposed plots, which turns an inner light upon his own frame ofmind: "Various good and desirable things to be presented to a young man, and offered to his acceptance, --as a friend, a wife, a fortune; but heto refuse them all, suspecting that it is merely a delusion. Yet all tobe real, and he to be told so when too late. " Is this not, in brief, what he conceives may yet be the story of his own career? Anotheroccurs, in the same relation: "A man tries to be happy in love; hecannot sincerely give his heart, and the affair seems all a dream. Indomestic life the same; in politics, a seeming patriot: but still he issincere, and all seems like a theatre. " These items are the merestindicia of a whole history of complex emotions, which made this epochone of continuous though silent and unseen struggle. In a Prefaceprefixed to the tales, in 1851, the author wrote: "They are thememorials of very tranquil and not unhappy years. " Tranquil they ofcourse were; and to the happy and successful man of forty-seven, thevexing moods and dragging loneliness of that earlier period would seem"not unhappy, " because he could then see all the good it had contained. I cannot agree with Edwin Whipple, who says of them, "There was audibleto the delicate ear a faint and muffled growl of personal discontent, which showed they were not mere exercises of penetrating imaginativeanalysis, but had in them the morbid vitality of a despondent mood. " Forthis applies to only one of the number, "The Ambitious Guest. " Nor do Ifind in them the "misanthropy" which he defines at some length. On thecontrary, they are, as the author says, "his attempts to open anintercourse with the world, " incited by an eager sympathy, but alsorestrained by a stern perception of right and wrong. 

Yet I am inclined to adhere to the grave view of his inner life justsketched. When his friend Miss Peabody first penetrated his retirement, his pent-up sympathies flowed forth in a way that showed how they hadlonged for relief. He returned constantly to the discussion of hispeculiar mode of living, as if there could be no understanding betweenhimself and another, until this had been cleared up and set aside. Amongother things, he spoke of a dream by which he was beset, that he waswalking abroad, and that all the houses were mirrors which reflected hima thousand times and overwhelmed him with mortification. This gives apeculiar insight into his sensitive condition. 

The noiseless, uneventful weeks slipped by, each day disguising itselfin exact semblance of its fellow, like a file of mischievous maskers. Hawthorne sat in his little room under the eaves reading, studying, voicelessly communing with himself through his own journal, or--mastered by some wild suggestion or mysterious speculation--feeling hisway through the twilight of dreams, into the dusky chambers of thathouse of thought whose haunted interior none but himself ever visited. He had little communication with even the members of his family. Frequently his meals were brought and left at his locked door, and itwas not often that the four inmates of the old Herbert Street mansionmet in family circle. He never read his stories aloud to his mother andsisters, as might be imagined from the picture which Mr. Fields draws ofthe young author reciting his new productions to his listening family;though, when they met, he sometimes read older literature to them. Itwas the custom in this household for the several members to remain verymuch by themselves; the three ladies were perhaps nearly as rigorousrecluses as himself; and, speaking of the isolation which reigned amongthem, Hawthorne once said, "We do not even _live_ at our house!"But still the presence of this near and gentle feminine element is notto be underrated as forming a very great compensation in the cold anddifficult morning of Hawthorne's life. 

If the week-day could not lure him from his sad retreat, neither couldthe Sunday. He had the right to a pew in the First Church, which hisfamily had held since 1640, but he seldom went to service there aftercoming from college. His religion was supplied from sources not alwaysopened to the common scrutiny, and it never chanced that he found itessential to join any church. 

The chief resource against disappointment, the offset to the pain of somuch lonely living and dark-veined meditation was, of course, thewriting of tales. Never was a man's mind more truly a kingdom to him. This was the fascination that carried him through the wearywaiting-time. Yet even that pleasure had a reverse side, to which thefictitious Oberon has no doubt given voice in these words: "You cannotconceive what an effect the composition of these tales has had upon me. I have become ambitious of a bubble, and careless of solid reputation. Iam surrounding myself with shadows, which bewilder me by aping therealities of life. They have drawn me aside from the beaten path of theworld, and led me into a strange sort of solitude . .. Where nobodywished for what I do, nor thinks or feels as I do. " Alluding to thisseason of early obscurity to a friend who had done much to break it up, he once said, "I was like a person talking to himself in a dark room. "To make his own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story was one ofhis projects then formed, which he carried out in the "Mosses. " Withthat image of the dark room, and this suggested reflection in themirror, we can rehabilitate the scene of which the broken lights andtrembling shadows are strewn through the "Twice-Told Tales. " Sober andweighty the penumbrous atmosphere in which the young creator sits; buthow calm, thoughtful, and beautiful the dim vision of his face, lit bythe sheltered radiance of ethereal fancies! Behind his own form we catchthe movement of mysterious shapes, --men and women wearing aspects of joyor anger, calm or passionate, gentle and pitiable, or stern, splendid, and forbidding. It is not quite a natural twilight in which we beholdthese things; rather the awesome shadowiness of a partial eclipse; butgleams of the healthiest sunshine withal mingle in the prevailing tint, bringing reassurance, and receiving again a rarer value from thecontrast. There are but few among the stories of this series afterwardbrought together by the author which are open to the charge ofmorbidness. In "The White Old Maid" an indefinable horror, giving thetale a certain shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightnesswhich in most cases is not wanting; perhaps, too, "The Ambitious Guest"leaves one with too hopeless a downfall at the end; and "The WeddingKnell" cannot escape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But theseextremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Hawthorne's mind could sooften and so airily soar above the shadows that at this time hung abouthim; that he should nearly always suggest a philosophy so complete, sogently wholesome, and so penetrating as that which he mixes with eventhe bitterest distillations of his dreams. Nor is the sadness of histone disordered or destructive, more than it is selfish; he does notinculcate despair, nor protest against life and fate, nor indulge ingloomy or weak self-pity. The only direct exposition of his own case iscontained in a sketch, "The Journal of a Solitary Man, " not reprintedduring his life. One extract from this I will make, because it sums up, though more plaintively than was his wont, Hawthorne's view of his ownlife at this epoch:--

"It is hard to die without one's happiness; to none more so than myself, whose early resolution it had been to partake largely of the joys oflife, but never to be burdened with its cares. Vain philosophy! The veryhardships of the poorest laborer, whose whole existence seems one longtoil, has something preferable to my best pleasures. Merely skimming thesurface of life, I know nothing by my own experience of its deep andwarm realities, . .. So that few mortals, even the humblest and weakest, have been such ineffectual shadows in the world, or die so utterly as Imust. Even a young man's bliss has not been mine. With a thousandvagrant fantasies, I have never truly loved, and perhaps shall be doomedto loneliness throughout the eternal future, because, here on earth, mysoul has never married itself to the soul of woman. "

The touch about avoiding the cares of life is no doubt merelymetaphorical; but the self-imposed doom of eternal loneliness revealsthe excess of sombreness in which he clothed his condition to his ownperception. One may say that the adverse factors in his problem at thistime were purely imaginary; that a little resolution and determinedactivity would have shaken off the incubus: but this is to lose sight ofthe gist of the matter. The situation in itself, --the indeterminatenessand repression of it, and the denial of any satisfaction to his warm andvarious sympathies, and his capacity for affection and responsibility, --must be allowed to have been intensely wearing. Hawthorne believedhimself to possess a strongly social nature, which was cramped, chilled, and to some extent permanently restrained by this long seclusion at thebeginning of his career. This alone might furnish just cause forbitterness against the fate that chained him. It was not a matter ofoption; for he knew that his battle must be fought through as he hadbegun it, and until 1836 no slightest loophole of escape into actionpresented itself. It lay before him to act out the tragedy of isolationwhich is the lot of every artist in America still, though greatlymitigated by the devotion of our first generation of national writers. If he had quitted his post sooner, and had tried by force to mould hisgenius according to theory, he might have utterly distorted or stuntedits growth. All that he could as yet do for himself was to preserve acertain repose and harmony in the midst of uncertainty and delay; andfor this he formed four wise precepts: "To break off customs; to shakeoff spirits ill disposed; to meditate on youth; to do nothing againstone's genius. " [Footnote: American Note-Books, Vol. I. ] Thus he kepthimself fresh and flexible, hopeful, ready for emergency. But thatI have not exaggerated the severity and import of his long vigil, letthis revery of his show, written at Liverpool, in 1855: "I think I havebeen happier this Christmas than ever before, --by my own fireside, andwith my wife and children about me; more content to enjoy what I have, less anxious for anything beyond it in this life. My early life wasperhaps a good preparation for the declining half of life; it havingbeen such a blank that any thereafter would compare favorably with it. For a long, long while I have been occasionally visited with a singulardream; and I have an impression that I have dreamed it ever since I havebeen in England. It is, that I am still at college, --or, sometimes, evenat school, --and there is a sense that I have been there unconscionablylong, and have quite failed to make such progress as my contemporarieshave done; and I seem to meet some of them with a feeling of shame anddepression that broods over me as I think of it, even when awake. Thisdream, recurring all through these twenty or thirty years, must be oneof the effects of that heavy seclusion in which I shut myself up fortwelve years after leaving college, when everybody moved onward, andleft me behind. " Experiences which leave effects like this must bitetheir way into the heart and soul with a fearful energy! This precursivesolitude had tinged his very life-blood, and woven itself into thesecret tissues of his brain. Yet, patiently absorbing it, he wrote latein life to a friend: "I am disposed to thank God for the gloom and chillof my early life, in the hope that my share of adversity came then, whenI bore it alone. " It was under such a guise that the test of his geniusand character came to him. Every great mind meets once in life with ahuge opposition that must somehow be made to succumb, before its ownenergies can know their full strength, gain a settled footing, and makea roadway to move forward upon. Often these obstacles are viewless toothers, and the combat is unsuspected; the site of many a Penuel remainsuntraced; but none the less these are the pivots on which entirepersonal histories turn. Hawthorne's comparatively passive endurance wasof infinitely greater worth than any active irruption into the outerworld would have been. It is obvious that we owe to the innumerabledevious wanderings and obscure sufferings of his mind, under theinfluences just reviewed, something of his sure and subtle touch infeeling out the details of morbid moods; for though his mind remainedperfectly healthy, it had acquired acute sympathy with all hiddentragedies of heart and brain. 

But another and larger purpose was not less well served by thisprobation. The ability of American life to produce a genius in somesense exactly responding to its most distinctive qualities had yet to bedemonstrated; and this could only be done by some one who would stakelife and success on the issue, for it needed that a soul and brain ofthe highest endowment should be set apart solely for the experiment, even to the ruin of it if required, before the truth could beascertained. Hawthorne, the slowly produced and complex result of a lineof New-Englanders who carried American history in their very limbs, seemed providentially offered for the trial. It was well thattemperament and circumstance drew him into a charmed circle of reservefrom the first; well, also, that he was further matured at a simple andrural college pervaded by a homely American tone; still more fortunatewas it that nothing called him away to connect him with Europeanculture, on graduating. To interpret this was the honorable office ofhis classmate Longfellow, who, with as much ease as dignity and charm, has filled the gap between the two half-worlds. The experiment to betried was, simply, whether with books and men at his command, andisolated from the immediate influence of Europe, this American couldevolve any new quality for the enrichment of literature. The conditionswere strictly carried out; even after he began to come in contact withmen, in the intervals of his retirement, he saw only pure Americantypes. A foreigner must have been a rare bird in Salem, in those days;for the maritime element which might have brought him was stillAmerican. Hawthorne, as we have seen, and as his Note-Books show, pushedthrough the farming regions and made acquaintance with the men of thesoil; and probably the first alien of whom he got at all a close viewwas the Monsieur S---- whom he found at Bridge's, on his visit to thelatter, in 1837, described at length in the Note-Books. So much didHawthorne study from these types, and so closely, that he might, had hisgenius directed, have written the most homely and realistic novels ofNew England life from the material which he picked up quite by the way. But though he did not translate his observations thus, the originalitywhich he was continuously ripening amid such influences was radicallyaffected by them. They established a broad, irrepressible republicansentiment in his mind; they assisted his natural, manly independence andsimplicity to assert themselves unaffectedly in letters; and they hadnot a little to do, I suspect, with fostering his strong turn forexamining with perfect freedom and a certain refined shrewdness intoeverything that came before him, without accepting prescribed opinions. The most characteristic way, perhaps, in which this American nurtureacted was by contrast; for the universal matter-of-fact tone which hefound among his fellow-citizens was an incessant spur to him to maintaina counteracting idealism. Thus, singularly enough, the most salientfeature of the new American product was its apparent denial of thenational trait of practical sagacity. It is not to be supposed thatHawthorne adhered consciously to the aim of asserting the Americannature in fiction. These things can be done only half consciously, atthe most. Perhaps it is well that the mind on which so much dependsshould not be burdened with all the added anxiety of knowing how much isexpected from it by the ages. Therefore, we owe the triumphant assertionof the American quality in this novel genius to Hawthorne's quiet, unfaltering, brave endurance of the weight that was laid upon him, unassisted by the certainty with which we now perceive that a great endwas being served by it. But, although unaware of this end at the time, he afterward saw some of the significance of his youth. Writing in 1840, he speaks thus of his old room in Union Street:--

"This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands uponthousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of themhave become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, heought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because somuch of my lonely youth was wasted here, and _here my mind andcharacter were formed_; and here I have been glad and hopeful, andhere I have been despondent. .. . And now I begin to understand why I wasimprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could neverbreak through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made myescape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and my heartmight have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude. .. . Butliving in solitude till the fulness of time, I still kept the dew of myyouth and the freshness of my heart. "

Yes, and more than this, Hawthorne! It was a young nation's faith in itsfuture which--unsuspected by any then, but always to be rememberedhenceforth--had found a worthy answer and after-type in this faithfuland hopeful heart of yours! Thus was it that the young poet who, in thesense we have observed, stood for old New England, absorbed into himselfalso the atmosphere of the United States. The plant that rooted in thepast had put forth a flower which drew color and perfume from to-day. Insuch wise did Hawthorne prove to be the unique American in fiction. 

I have examined the librarian's books at the Salem Athenaeum, whichindicate a part of the reading that the writer of the "Twice-Told Tales"went through. The lists from the beginning of 1830 to 1838 includenearly four hundred volumes taken out by him, besides a quantity ofbound magazines. This gives no account of his dealings with books in theprevious five years, when he was not a shareholder in the Athenaeum, nordoes it, of course, let us know anything of what he obtained from othersources. When Miss E. P. Peabody made his acquaintance, in 1836-37, hehad, for example, read all of Balzac that had then appeared; and thereis no record of this in the library lists. These lists alone, then, giving four hundred volumes in seven years, supply him with one volume aweek, --not, on the whole, a meagre rate, when we consider the volumes ofmagazines, the possible sources outside of the library, and thenumberless hours required for literary experiment. I do not fancy thathe plodded through books; but rather that he read with the easy energyof a vigorous, original mind, though he also knew the taste of severestudy. "Bees, " he observes in one place, "are sometimes drowned (orsuffocated) in the honey which they collect. So some writers are lost intheir collected learning. " He did not find it necessary to mount upon apyramid of all learning previous to his epoch, in order to get thehighest standpoint for his own survey of mankind. Neither was he "a manof parts, " precisely; being in himself a distinct whole. His choice ofreading was ruled by a fastidious need. He was fond of travels for arainy day, and knew Mandeville; but at other times he took up bookswhich seem to lie quite aside from his known purposes. [Footnote: SeeAppendix III. ] Voltaire appears to have attracted him constantly; heread him in the original, together with Rousseau. At one time heexamined Pascal, at another he read something of Corneille and a part ofRacine. Of the English dramatists, he seems at this time to have triedonly Massinger; "Inchbald's Theatre" also occurs. The local Americanhistories took his attention pretty often, and he perused a variety ofbiography, --"Lives of the Philosophers, " "Plutarch's Lives, " biographiesof Mohammed, Pitt, Jefferson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, Baxter, Heber, Sir William Temple, and others. Brewster's "NaturalMagic" and Sir Walter Scott's essay on "Demonology and Witchcraft" arebooks that one would naturally expect him to read; and he had alreadybegun to make acquaintance with the English State Trials, for which healways had a great liking. "Colquhoun on the Police" would seem notentirely foreign to one who mentally pursued so many malefactors; but itis a little surprising that he should have found himself interested in"Babbage on the Economy of Machinery. " He dipped, also, into botany andzoölogy; turned over several volumes of Bayle's "Critical Dictionary, "read Mrs. Jameson, and the "London Encyclopaedia of Architecture"; andwas entertained by Dunlap's "History of the Arts of Design in America. "It was from this last that he drew the plot of "The Prophetic Pictures, "in the "Twice-Told Tales. " Some Boston newspapers of the years 1739 to1783 evidently furnished the material for an article called "Old News, "reprinted in "The Snow Image. " Hawthorne seems never to have talked muchabout reading: 'tis imaginable that he was as shy in his choice of booksand his discussion of them, as in his intercourse with men; and there isno more ground for believing that he did not like books, than that hecared nothing for men and women. Life is made up, for such a mind, ofmen, women, and books; Hawthorne accepted all three estates. 

Gradually, from the midst of the young author's obscurity, there issuedan attraction which made the world wish to know more of him. One by one, the quiet essays and mournful-seeming stories came forth, like dropsfrom a slow-distilling spring. The public knew nothing of the internalmovement which had opened this slight fountain, nor suspected the darkconcamerations through which the current made its way to the surface. The smallest mountain rill often has a thunder-storm at its back; butthe average reader of that day thought he had done quite enough, when heguessed that the new writer was a timid young man fabling under afeigned name, excellent in his limited way, who would be a great dealbetter if he could come out of seclusion and make himself more likeother people. 

The first contributions were made to the "Salem Gazette" and the "NewEngland Magazine"; then his attempts extended to the "Boston Token andAtlantic Souvenir, " edited by S. G. Goodrich; and later, to otherperiodicals. Mr. Goodrich wrote to his young contributor (October, 1831): "I am gratified to find that all whose opinion I have heard agreewith me as to the merit of the various pieces from your pen. " But fornone of these early performances did Hawthorne receive any considerablesum of money. And though his writings began at once to attract anaudience, he had slight knowledge of it. Three young ladies--of whom hisfuture sister-in-law, Miss Peabody, was one--were among the firstadmirers; and though Hawthorne baffled his readers and perhaps retardedhis own notoriety by assuming different names in print, [Footnote: Amongthese were "Oberon" and "Ashley Allen Royce, " or "The Rev. A. A. Royce. "The latter was used by him in the Democratic Review, so late as March, 1840. ] they traced his contributions assiduously, cut them out ofmagazines, and preserved them. But they could not discover his personalidentity. One of them who lived in Salem used constantly to wonder, indriving about town, whether the author of her favorite tales could beliving in this or in that house; for it was known that he was a Salemresident. Miss Peabody, who had in girlhood known something of theHathorne family (the name was still written either way, I am told), wasmisled by the new spelling, and by the prevalent idea that NathanielHawthorne was an assumed name. This trio were especially moved by "TheGentle Boy" when it appeared, and Miss Peabody was on the point ofaddressing "The Author of 'The Gentle Boy, '" at Salem, to tell him ofthe pleasure he had given. When afterward told of this, Hawthorne said, "I wish you had! It would have been an era in my life. " Soon after, thePeabodys returned to Salem, and she learned from some one that the newromancer was the son of the Widow Hathorne. Now it so chanced that herfamily had long ago occupied a house on Union Street, looking off intothe garden of the old Manning family mansion; and she remembered no son, though a vague image came back to her of a strong and graceful boy'sform dancing across the garden, at play, years before. Her mindtherefore fastened upon one of the sisters, who, she knew, had showngreat facility in writing: indeed, Hawthorne used at one time to saythat it was she who should have been the follower of literature. Full ofthis conception, she went to carry her burden of gratitude to theauthor, and after delays and difficulties, made her way into the retiredand little-visited mansion. It was the other sister into whose presenceshe came, and to her she began pouring out the reason of her intrusion, delivering at once her praises of the elder Miss Hathorne's fictions. 

"My brother's, you mean, " was the response. 

"It _is_ your brother, then. " And Miss Peabody added: "If yourbrother can write like that, he has no right to be idle. "

"My brother never is idle, " answered Miss Louisa, quietly. 

Thus began an acquaintance which helped to free Hawthorne from the spellof solitude, and led directly to the richest experiences of his life. Old habits, however, were not immediately to be broken, and monthspassed without any response being made to the first call. Then at lastcame a copy of the "Twice-Told Tales, " fresh from the press. But it wasnot until the establishment of the "Democratic Review, " a year or twolater, that occasion offered for a renewal of relations. Hawthorne wastoo shy to act upon the first invitation. Miss Peabody, finally, addressing him by letter, to inquire concerning the new periodical, forwhich he had been engaged as a contributor, asked him to come with bothhis sisters on the evening of the same day. Entirely to her surprise, they came. She herself opened the door, and there before her, betweenhis sisters, stood a splendidly handsome youth, tall and strong, with noappearance whatever of timidity, but, instead, an almost fiercedetermination making his face stern. This was his resource for carryingoff the extreme inward tremor which he really felt. His hostess broughtout Plaxmau's designs for Dante, just received from Professor Felton ofHarvard, [Footnote: The book may have been Felton's Homer with Flaxman'sdrawings, issued in 1833. ] and the party made an evening's entertainmentout of them. 

The news of this triumph, imparted to a friend of Miss Peabody's, led toan immediate invitation of Hawthorne to dinner at another house, for thenext day. He accepted this, also, and on returning homeward, stopped atthe "Salem Gazette" office, full of the excitement of his newexperiences, announcing to Mr. Foote, the editor, that he was gettingdissipated. He told of the evening with Miss Peabody, where he said hehad had a delightful time, and of the dinner just achieved. "And I'vehad a delightful time there, too!" he added. Mr. Foote, perceiving anemergency, at once asked the young writer to come to his own house foran evening. Hawthorne, thoroughly aroused, consented. When the eveningcame, several ladies who had been invited assembled before the authorarrived; and among them Miss Peabody. When he reached the place hestopped short at the drawing-room threshold, startled by the presence ofstrangers, and stood perfectly motionless, but with the look of a sylvancreature on the point of fleeing away. His assumed brusquerie no longeravailed him; he was stricken with dismay; his face lost color, and tookon a warm paleness. All this was in a moment; but the daughter of thehouse moved forward, and he was drawn within. Even then, though heassumed a calm demeanor, his agitation was very great: he stood by atable, and, taking up some small object that lay upon it, he found hishand trembling so that he was forced to put it down again. 

While friends were slowly penetrating his reserve in this way, he wasapproached in another by Mr. Goodrich, who induced him to go to Boston, there to edit the "American Magazine of Useful and EntertainingKnowledge. " This work, which only continued from 1834 to September, 1837, was managed by several gentlemen under the name of the BewickCompany. One of these was Bowen, of Charlestown, an engraver; anotherwas Goodrich, who also, I think, had some connection with the AmericanStationers' Company. The Bewick Company took its name from ThomasBewick, the English restorer of the art of wood-engraving, and themagazine was to do his memory honor by its admirable illustrations. But, in fact, it never did any one honor, nor brought any one profit. It wasa penny popular affair, containing condensed information aboutinnumerable subjects, no fiction, and little poetry. The woodcuts wereof the crudest and most frightful sort. It passed through the hands ofseveral editors and several publishers. Hawthorne was engaged at asalary of five hundred dollars a year; but it appears that he got nextto nothing, and that he did not stay in the position long. There islittle in its pages to recall the identity of the editor; but in oneplace he quotes as follows from Lord Bacon: "The ointment which witchesuse is made of the fat of children digged from their graves, and of thejuices of smallage, cinquefoil, and wolf's-bane, mingled with the mealof fine wheat, " and hopes that none of his readers will try to compoundit. In the tale of "Young Goodman Brown, " when Goody Cloyse says, "I wasall anointed with the juice of small-age and cinquefoil andwolf's-bane, " and the Devil continues, "'Mingled with fine wheat and thefat of a new-born babe, '--'Ah, your worship knows the recipe, ' cried theold lady, cackling aloud. " A few scraps of correspondence, mostlyundated, which I have looked over, give one a new view of him in thebustle and vexation of this brief editorial experience. He sends offfrequent and hurried missives to one of his sisters, who did some of thecondensing and compiling which was a part of the business. "I makenothing, " he says, in one, "of writing a history or biography beforedinner. " At another time, he is in haste for a Life of Jefferson, butwarns his correspondent to "see that it contains nothing heterodox. " Atthe end of one of the briefest messages, he finds time to speak of thecat at home. Perhaps with a memory of the days when he builtbook-houses, he had taken two names of the deepest dye from Milton andBunyan for two of his favorite cats, whom he called Beelzebub andApollyon. "Pull Beelzebub's tail for me, " he writes. But the followingfrom Boston, February 15, 1836, gives the more serious side of thesituation:--

"I came here trusting to Goodrich's positive promise to pay meforty-five dollars as soon as I arrived; and he has kept promising fromone day to another, till I do not see that he means to pay at all. Ihave now broke off all intercourse with him, and never think of goingnear him . .. I don't feel at all obliged to him about the editorship, for he is a stockholder and director in the Bewick Company; . .. And Idefy them to get another to do for a thousand dollars what I do for fivehundred. "

Goodrich afterward sent his editor a small sum; and the relationsbetween them were resumed. . A letter of May 5, in the same year, contains these allusions:--

"I saw Mr. Goodrich yesterday. .. . He wants me to undertake a UniversalHistory, to contain about as much as fifty or sixty pages of themagazine. [These were large pages. ] If you are willing to write any partof it, . .. I shall agree to do it. If necessary I will come home by andby, and concoct the plan of it with you. It need not be superior inprofundity and polish to the middling magazine articles. .. . I shall havenearly a dozen articles in The Token, --mostly quite short. "

The historical project is, of course, that which resulted in the famous"Peter Parley" work. "Our pay as historians of the universe, " says aletter written six days later, "will be about one hundred dollars, thewhole of which you may have. It is a poor compensation, but better thanthe Token; because the writing is so much less difficult. " He afterwardcarried out the design, or a large part of it, and the book has sincesold by millions, for the benefit of others. There are various littleparticulars in this ingenious abridgment which recall Hawthorne, especially if one is familiar with his "Grandfather's Chair" and "TrueStories" for children; though the book has probably undergone somechanges in successive editions. This passage about George IV. Is, however, remembered as being his: "Even when he was quite an old man, this king cared as much about dress as any young coxcomb. He had a greatdeal of taste in such matters, and it is a pity that he was a king, forhe might otherwise have been an excellent tailor. "

Up to this time (May 12) he had received only twenty dollars for fourmonths' editorial labor. "And, as you may well suppose, " he says, "Ihave undergone very grievous vexations. Unless they pay me the wholeamount shortly, I shall return to Salem, and stay there till they do. "It seems a currish fate that puts such men into the grasp of paltry andsordid cares like these! But there is something deeper to be felt thandissatisfaction at the author-publisher's feeble though annoying schemeof harnessing in this rare poet to be his unpaid yet paying hack. Thisdeeper something is the pathos of such possibilities, and the spectacleof so renowned and strong-winged a genius consenting thus to take hisshare of worldly struggle; perfectly conscious that it is wholly beneathhis plane, but accepting it as a proper part of the mortal lot;scornful, but industrious and enduring. You who have conceived ofHawthorne as a soft-marrowed dweller in the dusk, fostering his ownshyness and fearing to take the rubs of common men, pray look well atall this. And you, also, who discourse about the conditions essential tothe development of genius, about the _milieu_ and the_moment_, and try to prove America a vacuum which the Muse abhors, will do well to consider the phenomenon. "It is a poor compensation, yetbetter than the Token"; so he wrote, knowing that his unmatched taleswere being coined for even a less reward than mere daily bread. He tookthe conditions that were about him, and gave them a dignity by his ownfine perseverance. It is this inspired industry, this calm facing of theworst and making it the best, which has formed the history of all art. You talk of the ages, and choose this or that era as the only fit one. You long for a cosey niche in the past; but genius crowds time andeternity into the present, and says to you, "Make your own century!"

Meanwhile, if he received no solid gain from his exertions, Hawthornewas winning a reputation. In January he had written home: "My worshipfulself is a very famous man in London, the 'Athenaeum' having noticed allmy articles in the last Token, with long extracts. " This refers to the'Athenaeum' for November 7, 1835, which mentioned "The Wedding Knell"and "The Minister's Black Veil" as being stories "each of which hassingularity enough to recommend it to the reader, " and gave threecolumns to a long extract from "The Maypole of Merry Mount"; the noticebeing no doubt the work of the critic Chorley, who afterward metHawthorne in England. Thus encouraged, he thought of collecting histales and publishing them in volume form, connected by the conception ofa travelling story-teller, whose shiftings of fortune were to form theinterludes and links between the separate stories. A portion of this, prefatory to "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, " has been published in the"Mosses, " with the heading of "Passages from a Relinquished Work. "Goodrich was not disposed to lavish upon his young beneficiary theexpense of bringing out a book for him, and the plan of reprinting thetales with this framework around them was given up. The next year Bridgecame to Goodrich and insisted on having a simple collection issued, himself taking the pecuniary risk. In this way the "Twice-Told Tales"were first brought collectively before the world; and for the secondtime this faithful comrade of Hawthorne laid posterity under obligationto himself. It was not till long afterward, however, that Hawthorne knewof his friend's interposition in the affair. 

Mr. Bridge had not then entered the navy, and was engaged in a greatenterprise on the Androscoggin; nothing less than an attempt to dam upthat river and apply the water-power to some mills. In July of 1837, Hawthorne went to visit him at Bridgton, and has described hisimpressions fully in the Note-Books. It was probably his longest absencefrom Salem since graduating at Bowdoin. "My circumstances cannot longcontinue as they are, " he writes; "and Bridge, too, stands between highprosperity and utter ruin. "

The change in his own circumstances which Hawthorne looked for did notcome through his book. It sold some six or seven hundred copies in ashort time, but was received quietly, [Footnote: Some of the sketcheswere reprinted in England; and "A Rill from the Town Pump" wascirculated in pamphlet form by a London bookseller, without the author'sname, as a temperance tract. ] though Longfellow, then lately establishedin his Harvard professorship, and known as the author of "Outre-Mer, "greeted it with enthusiasm in the "North American Review, " which wieldeda great influence in literary affairs. 

On March 7, 1837, Hawthorne sent this note to his former classmate, toannounce the new volume. 

"The agent of the American Stationer's Company will send you a copy of abook entitled 'Twice-Told Tales, '--of which, as a classmate, I ventureto request your acceptance. We were not, it is true, so well acquaintedat college, that I can plead an absolute right to inflict my'twice-told' tediousness upon you; but I have often regretted that wewere not better known to each other, and have been glad of your successin literature and in more important matters. " Returning to the tales, headds: "I should like to flatter myself that they would repay you somepart of the pleasure which I have derived from your own 'Outre-Mer. '

"Your obedient servant, "NATH. HAWTHORNE. "

Longfellow replied warmly, and in June Hawthorne wrote again, a longletter picturing his mood with a fulness that shows how keenly he hadfelt the honest sympathy of the poet. 

"Not to burden you with my correspondence, " he said, "I have delayed arejoinder to your very kind and cordial letter, until now. It gratifiesme that you have occasionally felt an interest in my situation; but yourquotation from Jean Paul about the 'lark's nest' makes me smile. Youwould have been much nearer the truth if you had pictured me as dwellingin an owl's nest; for mine is about as dismal, and like the owl I seldomventure abroad till after dusk. By some witchcraft or other--for Ireally cannot assign any reasonable why and wherefore--I have beencarried apart from the main current of life, and find it impossible toget back again. Since we last met, which you remember was in Sawtell'sroom, where you read a farewell poem to the relics of the class, --eversince that time I have secluded myself from society; and yet I nevermeant any such thing, nor dreamed what sort of life I was going to lead. I have made a captive of myself, and put me into a dungeon, and now Icannot find the key to let myself out, --and if the door were open, Ishould be almost afraid to come out. You tell me that you have met withtroubles and changes. I know not what these may have been, but I canassure you that trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment, and thatthere is no fate in this world so horrible as to have no share in eitherits joys or sorrows. For the last ten years, I have not lived, but onlydreamed of living. It may be true that there have been someunsubstantial pleasures here in the shade, which I might have missed inthe sunshine, but you cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfactionall my retrospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasantremembrances against old age; but there is some comfort in thinking thatfuture years can hardly fail to be more varied and therefore moretolerable than the past. 

"You give me more credit than I deserve, in supposing that I have led astudious life. I have indeed turned over a good many books, but in sodesultory a way that it cannot be called study, nor has it left me thefruits of study. As to my literary efforts, I do not think much of them, neither is it worth while to be ashamed of them. They would have beenbetter, I trust, if written under more favorable circumstances. I havehad no external excitement, --no consciousness that the public would likewhat I wrote, nor much hope nor a passionate desire that they should doso. Nevertheless, having nothing else to be ambitious of, I have beenconsiderably interested in literature; and if my writings had made anydecided impression, I should have been stimulated to greater exertions;but there has been no warmth of approbation, so that I have alwayswritten with benumbed fingers. I have another great difficulty in thelack of materials; for I have seen so little of the world that I havenothing but thin air to concoct my stories of, and it is not easy togive a lifelike semblance to such shadowy stuff. Sometimes through apeep-hole I have caught a glimpse of the real world, and the two orthree articles in which I have portrayed these glimpses please me betterthan the others. 

"I have now, or shall soon have, a sharper spur to exertion, which Ilacked at an earlier period; for I see little prospect but that I shallhave to scribble for a living. But this troubles me much less than youwould suppose. I can turn my pen to all sorts of drudgery, such aschildren's books, etc. , and by and by I shall get some editorship thatwill answer my purpose. Frank Pierce, who was with us at college, offered me his influence to obtain an office in the Exploring Expedition[Commodore Wilkes's]; but I believe that he was mistaken in supposingthat a vacancy existed. If such a post were attainable, I shouldcertainly accept it; for, though fixed so long to one spot, I havealways had a desire to run round the world. .. . I intend in a week ortwo to come out of my owl's nest, and not return till late in thesummer, --employing the interval in making a tour somewhere in NewEngland. You who have the dust of distant countries on your'sandal-shoon' cannot imagine how much enjoyment I shall have in thislittle excursion. .. . 

"Yours sincerely, "NATH. HAWTHORNE. "

A few days later the quarterly, containing Longfellow's review of thebook, appeared; and the note of thanks which Hawthorne sent is full ofan exultation strongly in contrast with the pensive tone of the letterjust given. 

SALEM, June 19th, 1837. 

DEAR LONGFELLOW:--I have to-day received, and read with huge delight, your review of 'Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales. ' I frankly own that I wasnot without hopes that you would do this kind office for the book;though I could not have anticipated how very kindly it would be done. Whether or no the public will agree to the praise which you bestow onme, there are at least five persons who think you the most sagaciouscritic on earth, viz. , my mother and two sisters, my old maiden aunt, and finally the strongest believer of the whole five, my own self. If Idoubt the sincerity and correctness of any of my critics, it shall be ofthose who censure me. Hard would be the lot of a poor scribbler, if hemay not have this privilege. .. . 

Very sincerely yours, NATH. HAWTHORNE. 

That "Evangeline" was written upon a theme suggested to Hawthorne (by afriend who had heard it from a French Canadian [Footnote: See AmericanNote-Books, October 24, 1839]) and by him made over to the poet, hasalready been made public. Hawthorne wrote, on its appearance:----

"I have read 'Evangeline' with more pleasure than it would be decorousto express. It cannot fail, I think, to prove the most triumphant of allyour successes. "

Nevertheless, he gave vent to some of his admiration in a notice of thework which he wrote for "The Salem Advertiser, " a Democratic paper. 

"The story of Evangeline and her lover, " he there says, "is as poeticalas the fable of the Odyssey, besides that it comes to the heart as afact that has actually taken place in human life. " He speaks of "itspathos all illuminated with beauty, ----so that the impression of thepoem is nowhere dismal nor despondent, and glows with the purestsunshine where we might the least expect it, on the pauper'sdeath-bed. .. . The story is told with the simplicity of high andexquisite art, which causes it to flow onward as naturally as thecurrent of a stream. Evangeline's wanderings give occasion to manypictures both of northern and southern scenery and life: but these donot appear as if brought in designedly, to adorn the tale; they seem tothrow their beauty inevitably into the calm mirror of its bosom as itflows past them. .. . By this work of his maturity he has placed himselfon a higher eminence than he had yet attained, and beyond the reach ofenvy. Let him stand, then, at the head of our list of native poets, until some one else shall break up the rude soil of our American life, as he has done, and produce from it a lovelier and nobler flower thanthis poem of Evangeline!"

Longfellow's characteristic kindly reply was as follows:----

"MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:----I have been waiting and waiting in the hope ofseeing you in Cambridge. .. . I have been meditating upon your letter, andpondering with friendly admiration your review of 'Evangeline, ' inconnection with the subject of which, that is to say, the Acadians, aliterary project arises in my mind for you to execute. Perhaps I can payyou back in part your own generous gift, by giving you a theme forstory, in return for a theme for song. It is neither more nor less thanthe history of the Acadians, _after_ their expulsion as well asbefore. Felton has been making some researches in the State archives, and offers to resign the documents into your hands. 

"Pray come and see me about it without delay. Come so as to pass a nightwith us, if possible, this week; if not a day and night. 

"Ever sincerely yours, "HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. " There is nothing in our literary annals moreunique and delightful than this history of Longfellow's warm recognitionof his old classmate, and the mutual courtesies to which it led. One isreminded by it of the William Tell episode between Goethe and Schiller, though it was in this case only the theme and nothing of material thatwas transferred. 

An author now almost forgotten, Charles Fenno Hoffman, also published in"The American Monthly Magazine, " [Footnote: For March, 1838. ] which hewas editing, a kindly review, which, however, underestimated thestrength of the new genius, as it was at first the general habit to do. "Minds like Hawthorne's, " he said, "seem to be the only ones suited toan American climate. .. . Never can a nation be impregnated with theliterary spirit by minor authors alone. .. . Yet men like Hawthorne arenot without their use. ". .. . In this same number of the magazine, by theway, was printed Hawthorne's "Threefold Destiny, " under the pseudonymeof Ashley Allen Royce; and the song of Faith Egerton, afterward omitted, is thus given:----

 "O, man can seek the downward glance, And each kind word, ----affection's spell, ---- Eye, voice, its value can enhance; For eye may speak, and tongue can tell. 

 "But woman's love, it waits the while To echo to another's tone; To linger on another's smile, Ere dare to answer with its own. "

These versicles, though they might easily be passed over as commonplace, hold a peculiar inner radiance that perhaps issued from the dawn of alifelong happiness for Hawthorne at this period. 

V. 

AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM. 

1838-1842. 

Hawthorne's mood at this time was one of profound dissatisfaction at hiselimination from the active life of the world. "I am tired of being anornament, " he said, with great emphasis, to a friend. "I want a littlepiece of land that I can call my own, big enough to stand upon, bigenough to be buried in. I want to have something to do with thismaterial world. " And, striking his hand vigorously on a table that stoodby: "If I could only make tables, " he declared, "I should feel myselfmore of a man. " He was now thirty-four, and the long restraint andaloofness of the last thirteen years, with the gathering consciousnessthat he labored under unjust reproach of inaction, and the sense of lossin being denied his share in affairs, had become intolerable. It wasnow, also, that a new phase of being was opened to him. He had becomeengaged to Miss Sophia Peabody, a sister of his friend. 

President Van Buren had been two years in office, and Mr. Bancroft, thehistorian, was Collector of the port of Boston. One evening the latterwas speaking, in a circle of Whig friends, of the splendid things whichthe Democratic administration was doing for literary men. "But there'sHawthorne, " suggested a lady who was present. 

"You've done nothing for him. " "He won't take anything, " was the answer:"he has been offered places. " In fact, Hawthorne's friends in politicallife had urged him to enter politics, and he had at one time beentendered a post of some sort in the West Indies, but refused it becausehe would not live in a slaveholding community. "I happen to know, " saidthe lady, "that he would be very glad of employment. " The result wasthat a commission for a small post in the Boston Custom House came, soonafter, to the young author. On going down from Salem to inquire furtherabout it, he received another and a better appointment as weigher andgauger, with a salary, I think, of twelve hundred a year. Just beforeentering the Collector's office, he noticed a man leaving it who wore avery dejected air; and, connecting this with the change in his ownappointment, he imagined this person to be the just-ejected weigher. Speaking of this afterward, he said: "I don't believe in rotation inoffice. It is not good for the human being. " But he took his place, writing to Longfellow (January 12, 1839):

"I have no reason to doubt my capacity to fulfil the duties; for I don'tknow what they are. They tell me that a considerable portion of my timewill be unoccupied, the which I mean to employ in sketches of my newexperience, under some such titles as follows: 'Scenes in Dock, ''Voyages at Anchor, ' 'Nibblings of a Wharf Rat, ' 'Trials of aTide-Waiter, ' 'Romance of the Revenue Service, ' together with an ethicalwork in two volumes, on the subject of Duties, the first volume to treatof moral and religious duties, and the second of duties imposed by theRevenue Laws, which I begin to consider the most important class. "

Two years later, when Harrison and Tyler carried the election for theWhigs, he suffered the fate of his predecessor. And here I may offer anopinion as to Hawthorne's connection with the Democratic party. Whenasked why he belonged to it, he answered that he lived in a democraticcountry. "But we are all republicans alike, " was the objection to hisdefence. "Well, " he said, "I don't understand history till it's ahundred years old, and meantime it's safe to belong to the Democraticparty. " Still, Hawthorne was, so far as it comported with his lesstransient aims, a careful observer of public affairs; and mere badinage, like that just quoted, must not be taken as really covering the groundof his choice in politics. A man of such deep insight, accustomed tobring it to bear upon everything impartially, was not to be influencedby any blind and accidental preference in these questions; albeit hisactual performance of political duties was slight. I think he recognizedthe human strength of the Democratic, as opposed to the theorizing andintellectual force of the Republican party. It is a curious fact, thatwith us the party of culture should be the radical party, upholdingideas even at the expense of personal liberty; and the party ofignorance that of order, the conservating force, careful of personalliberty even to a fault! Hawthorne, feeling perhaps that ideas work toorapidly here, ranged himself on the side that offered the greaterresistance to them. 

This term of service in Boston was of course irksome to Hawthorne, andentirely suspended literary endeavors for the time. Yet "my life only isa burden, " he writes, "in the same way that it is to every toilsomeman. .. . But from henceforth forever I shall be entitled to call the sonsof toil my brethren, and shall know how to sympathize with them, seeingthat I likewise have risen at the dawn, and borne the fervor of themidday sun, nor turned my heavy footsteps homeward till eventide. " Heneed not always have made the employment so severe, but the wages of thewharf laborers depended on the number of hours they worked in a day, andHawthorne used to make it a point in all weathers, to get to the wharfat the earliest possible hour, solely for their benefit. For the rest, he felt a vast benefit from his new intercourse with men; there couldnot have been a better maturing agency for him at this time; and theinterval served as an apt introduction to the Brook Farm episode. 

That this least gregarious of men should have been drawn into asocialistic community, seems at first inexplicable enough; but inreality it was the most logical step he could have taken. He hadthoroughly tried seclusion, and had met and conquered by himself thefirst realization of what the world actually is. Next, he entered intothe performance of definite duties and the receipt of gain, and watchedthe operation of these two conditions on himself and those about him; anexperiment that taught him the evils of the system, and the necessity ofburying his better energies so long as he took part in affairs. Thisraised doubts, of course, as to how he was to fit himself into the frameof things; and while he mused upon some more generous arrangement ofsociety, and its conflicting interests, a scheme was started whichplainly proposed to settle the problem. Fourier had only just passedaway; the spread of his ideas was in its highest momentum. On the otherhand, the study of German philosophy, and the new dissent of Emerson, had carried men's thoughts to the very central springs of intellectuallaw, while in Boston the writing and preaching of Channing roused apractical radicalism, and called for a better application ofChristianity to affairs. The era of the Transcendentalists had come. TheChardon Street meetings--assemblages of ardent theorists and"come-outers" of every type, who, while their sessions lasted, heldsociety in their hands and moulded it like clay--were a rudemanifestation of the same deep current. In the midst of theseinfluences, Mr. Ripley, an enthusiastic student of philosophy, receivedan inspiration to establish a modified socialistic community on our ownsoil. The Industrial Association which he proposed at West Roxbury waswisely planned with direct reference to the emergencies of Americanlife; it had no affinity with the erratic views of Enfantin and theSaint Simonists, nor did it in the least tend toward the mistakes ofRobert Owen regarding the relation of the sexes; though it agreed withFourier and Owen both, as I understand, in respect of labor. In a betterand freer sense than has usually been the case with such attempts, thedesign sprang out of one man's mind and fell properly under his control. His simple object was to distribute labor in such a way as to give allmen time for culture, and to free their minds from the debasinginfluence of a merely selfish competition. It was a practical, orderly, noble effort to apply Christianity directly to human customs andinstitutions. "A few men and women of like views and feelings, " one ofhis sympathizers has said, "grouped themselves around him, not as theirmaster, but as their friend and brother, and the community at Brook Farmwas instituted. " At various times Charles Dana, Pratt, the youngBrownson, Horace Sumner (a younger brother of Charles), George WilliamCurtis, and his brother Burrill Curtis were there. The place was a kindof granary of true grit. People who found their own honesty too heavy aburden to carry successfully through the rough jostlings of society, flocked thither. "They were mostly individuals" says Hawthorne, "who hadgone through such an experience as to disgust them with ordinarypursuits, but who were not yet so old, nor had suffered so deeply, as tolose their faith in the better time to come. "

To men like Hawthorne, however little they may noise the fact abroad, the rotten but tenacious timbers of the social order shake beneath thelightest tread. But he knew that the only wise method is to beginrepairing within the edifice, keeping the old associations, and losingnothing of value while gaining everything new that is desirable. BecauseBrook Farm seemed to adopt this principle, he went there. Some of themeetings of the associators were held at Miss E. P. Peabody's, inBoston, and the proceedings were related to him. Mr. Ripley did not atfirst know who was the "distinguished literary gentleman" announced aswilling to join the company; and when told that it was Hawthorne, hefelt as if a miracle had befallen, or "as if, " he tells me, "the heavenswould presently be filled with angels, and we should see Jacob's ladderbefore us. But we never came any nearer to having _that_, than ourold ladder in the barn, from floor to hayloft. " For his personalbenefit, Hawthorne had two ends in view, connected with Brook Farm: one, to find a suitable and economical home after marriage; the other, tosecure a mode of life thoroughly balanced and healthy, which shouldsuccessfully distribute the sum of his life's labor between body andbrain. He hoped to secure leisure for writing by perhaps six hours ofdaily service; but he found nearly sixteen needful. "He worked like adragon, " says Mr. Ripley. 

The productive industry of the association was agriculture; the leadingaim, teaching; and in some cases there were classes made up of men, women, children, whom ignorance put on the same plane. Several buildingsaccommodated the members: the largest, in which the public table wasspread and the cooking done, being called The Hive; another, The PilgrimHouse; a smaller one, The Nest; and still another was known as TheCottage. In The Eyrie, Mr. And Mrs. Ripley lived, and here a great partof the associators would gather in the evenings. Of a summer night, whenthe moon was full, they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light andshadow, while sundry of the younger men sang old ballads, or joined TomMoore's songs to operatic airs. On other nights, there would be anoriginal essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakespere, withthe parts distributed to different members; and, these amusementsfailing, some interesting discussion was likely to take their place. Occasionally, in the dramatic season, large delegations from the farmwould drive into Boston in carriages and wagons to the opera or theplay. Sometimes, too, the young women sang as they washed the dishes, inThe Hive; and the youthful yeomen of the society came in and helped themwith their work. The men wore blouses of a checked or plaided stuff, belted at the waist, with a broad collar folding down about the throat, and rough straw hats; the women, usually, simple calico gowns, andhats, --which were then an innovation in feminine attire. In the seasonof wood-wanderings, they would trim their hats with wreaths of barberryor hop-vine, ground-pine, or whatever offered, --a suggestion of thefuture Priscilla of "Blithedale. " Some families and students came to thefarm as boarders, paying for their provision in household or fieldlabor, or by teaching; a method which added nothing to the funds of theestablishment, and in this way rather embarrassed it. A great deal ofindividual liberty was allowed. People could eat in private or public;and it has been said by those who were there that the unconventionallife permitted absolute privacy at any time. Every one was quiteunfettered, too, in the sphere of religious worship. When a memberwished to be absent, another would generally contrive to take his workfor the interval; and a general good-will seems to have prevailed. Still, I imagine there must have been a temporary and uncertain airabout the enterprise, much of the time; and the more intimate unions ofsome among the members who were congenial, gave rise to intermittentjealousies in those who found no special circle. "In this way it wasvery much like any small town of the same number of inhabitants, " saysone of my informants. Indeed, though every one who shared in the BrookFarm attempt seems grateful for what it taught of the dignity and thereal fellowship of labor, I find a general belief in such persons thatit could not long have continued at its best. The system of compensatingall kinds of service, skilled or otherwise, according to the time used, excited--as some have thought--much dissatisfaction even among thegenerous and enlightened people who made up the society. "I thought Icould see some incipient difficulties working in the system, " writes alady who was there in 1841. "Questions already arose as to how muchindividual freedom could be allowed, if it conflicted with the bestinterests of the whole. Those who came there were the results of anothersystem of things which still gave a salutary cheek to the more radicaltendencies; but the second generation there could hardly have shownequal, certainly not the same, character. " A confirmation of this auguryis the fact that the cast of the community became decidedly moreFourieristic before it disbanded; and it is not impossible that anothergeneration might have decolorized and seriously deformed human existenceamong them. Theories and opinions were very openly talked over, andpractical details as well; and though this must have had its charm, yetit would also touch uncomfortably on a given temperament, or jar upon apeculiar mood. In such enterprises there must always he a slightinclination to establish a conformity to certain freedoms which reallybecome oppressions. Shyness was not held essential to a regeneratedstate of things, and was perhaps too much disregarded; as also wasillness, an emergency not clearly provided for, which had to be met byindividual effort and self-sacrifice, after the selfish andold-established fashion of the world. How this atmosphere affectedHawthorne he has hinted in his romance founded on some aspects ofcommunity life: "Though fond of society, I was so constituted as to needthese occasional retirements, even in a life like that of Blithedale, which was itself characterized by a remoteness from the world. Unlessrenewed by a yet further withdrawal towards the inner circle ofself-communion, I lost the better part of my individuality. My thoughtsbecame of little worth, and my sensibilities grew as arid as a tuft ofmoss . .. Crumbling in the sunshine, after long expectance of a shower. "A fellow-toiler came upon him suddenly, one day, lying in a green hollowsome distance from the farm, with his hands under his head and his faceshaded by his hat. "How came you out here?" asked his friend. "Too muchof a party up there, " was his answer, as he pointed toward the communitybuildings. It has also been told that at leisure times he would sitsilently, hour after hour, in the broad old-fashioned hall of The Hive, where he "could listen almost unseen to the chat and merriment of theyoung people, " himself almost always holding a book before him, butseldom turning the leaves. 

One sees in his letters of this time [Footnote: American Note-Books, Vol. I. ] how the life wore upon him; and his journal apparently ceasedduring the whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins todisport itself again with fancies, the moment he leaves the association, even temporarily! And in 1842, as soon as he is fairly quit of it, theold darkling or waywardly gleaming stream of thought and imaginationflows freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with the Brook Farmcommunity nearly a twelvemonth, a small part of which time was spent inBoston. Some of the letters which his sisters wrote him show adelightful solicitude reigning at home, during the period of hisexperiment. 

"What is the use, " says one, "of burning your brains out in the sun, ifyou can do anything better with them?. .. I am bent upon coming to seeyou, this summer. Do not you remember how we used to go a-fishingtogether in Raymond? Your mention of wild flowers and pickerel has givenme a longing for the woods and waters again. "

Then, in August, "C---- A----, " writes his sister Louisa, "told me the other day that heheard you were to do the travelling in Europe for the community. "

This design, if it existed, might well have found a place in theDialogues of the Unborn which Hawthorne once meant to write; for thiswas his only summer at Brook Farm. "A summer of toil, of interest, ofsomething that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, andthere became a rich experience, " he writes, in "Blithedale. " "I foundmyself looking forward to years, if not to a lifetime, to be spent onthe same system. " This was, in fact, his attitude; for, after passingthe winter at the farm as a boarder, and then absenting himself a littlewhile, he returned in the spring to look over the ground and perhapsselect a house-site, just before his marriage, but came to an adversedecision. This no doubt accorded with perceptions which he was notcalled upon to make public; but because he was a writer of fiction thereseems to have arisen a tacit agreement, in some quarters, to call himinsincere in his connection with this socialistic enterprise. He had notmuch to gain by leaving the community; for he had put into its treasurya thousand dollars, about the whole of his savings from the custom-housestipend, and had next to nothing to establish a home with elsewhere, while a niche in the temple of the reformers would have cost him nothingbut labor. The length of his stay was by no means uncommonly short, forthere was always a transient contingent at Brook Farm, many of whomremained but a few weeks. A devoted but not a wealthy disciple, who hadgiven six thousand dollars for the building of the Pilgrim House, andhoped to end his days within it, retired forever after a very shortsojourn, not dissuaded from the theory, but convinced that the practicalapplication was foredoomed to disaster. And, in truth, though a manfuleffort was made, with good pecuniary success for a time, ten yearsbrought the final hour of failure to this millennial plan. 

Very few people who were at Brook Farm seem to have known or even tohave seen Hawthorne there, though he was elected chairman of the FinanceCommittee just before leaving, and I am told that his handsome presence, his quiet sympathy, his literary reputation, and his heartyparticipation in labor commanded a kind of reverence from some of themembers. Next to his friend George P. Bradford, one of the workers andteachers in the community, his most frequent associates were a certainRev. Warren Burton, author of a curious little book called"Scenery-Shower, " designed to develop a proper taste for landscape; andone Frank Farley, who had been a pioneer in the West, a man of singularexperiences and of an original turn, who was subject to mentalderangement at times. The latter visited him at the Old Manse, afterward, when Hawthorne was alone there, and entered actively into hismakeshift housekeeping. 

President Pierce, on one occasion, speaking to an acquaintance aboutHawthorne, said: "He is enthusiastic when he speaks of the aims andself-sacrifice of some of the Brook Farm people; but when I questionedhim whether he would like to live and die in a community like that, heconfessed he was not suited to it, but said he had learned a great dealfrom it. 'What, for instance?' 'Why, marketing, for one thing. I didn'tknow anything about it practically, and I rode into Boston once or twicewith the men who took in things to sell, and saw how it was done. '" Thethings of deepest moment which he learned were not to be stated fully inconversation; but I suppose readers would draw the same inference fromthis whimsical climax of Hawthorne's as that which has been found in"The Blithedale Romance"; namely, that he looked on his socialistic lifeas the merest jesting matter. Such, I think, is the general opinion; anda socialistic writer, Mr. Noyes, of the Oneida Community, hasindignantly cried out against the book, as a "poetico-sneering romance. "This study of human character, which would keep its value in any stateof society that preserved its reflective faculty intact and sane, to bebelittled to the record of a brief experiment! Hawthorne indeed, speaking in the prefatory third person of his own aim, says: "His wholetreatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main purpose ofthe romance; nor does he put forward the slightest pretensions toillustrate a theory, or elicit a conclusion, favorable or otherwise, inrespect to socialism. " And though he has told the storyautobiographically, it is through a character whom we ought by no meansto identify with Hawthorne in his whole mood. I have taken the libertyof applying to Hawthorne's own experience two passages from Coverdale'saccount, because they picture something known to be the case; and acareful sympathy will find no difficulty in distinguishing how much isreal and how much assumed. Coverdale, being merely the medium forimpressions of the other characters, is necessarily light anddiaphanous, and Hawthorne, finding it more convenient, and an advantageto the lifelikeness of the story, does not attempt to hold him up in theair all the time, but lets him down now and then, and assumes the parthimself. The allusions to the community scheme are few, and most of themare in the deepest way sympathetic. Precisely because the hopes of thesocialists were so unduly high, he values them and still is glad ofthem, though they have fallen to ruin. "In my own behalf, I rejoice thatI could once think better of the world than it deserved. It is a mistakeinto which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer andhigher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error. "Where is the sneer concealed in this serious and comprehensiveutterance? There is a class of two-pronged minds, which seize a pair offacts eagerly, and let the truth drop out of sight between them. Forthese it is enough that Hawthorne made some use of his Brook Farmmemories in a romance, and then wrote that romance in the first person, with a few dashes of humor. 

Another critic, acting on a conventional idea as to Hawthorne's "cold, self-removed observation, " quotes to his disadvantage this paragraph ina letter from Brook Farm: "Nothing here is settled. .. . My mind will notbe abstracted. I must observe and think and feel, and content myselfwith catching glimpses of things which may be wrought out hereafter. Perhaps it will be quite as well that I find myself unable to setseriously about literary occupation for the present. " This is offered asshowing that Hawthorne went to the community--unconsciously, admits ourcritic, but still in obedience to some curious, chilly "dictate of hisnature"--for the simple purpose of getting fresh impressions, to work upinto fiction. But no one joined the society expecting to give up hisentire individuality, and it was a special part of the design that eachshould take such share of the labor as was for his own and the generalgood, and follow his own tastes entirely as to ideal pursuits. Asingular prerogative this, which every one who writes about Hawthornelays claim to, that he may be construed as a man who, at bottom, had noother motive in life than to make himself uneasy by withdrawing fromhearty communion with people, in order to pry upon them intellectually!He speaks of "that quality of the intellect and the heart which impelledme (often against my own will, and to the detriment of my own comfort)to live in other lives, and to endeavor--_by generous sympathies, bydelicate intuitions_, by taking note of things too slight for record, and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accordance with thecompanions God had assigned me--to learn the secret which was hiddeneven from themselves"; and this is cited as evidence of "his coldinquisitiveness, his incredulity, his determination to worm out theinmost secrets of all associated with him. " Such distortion is amazing. The few poets who search constantly for truth are certainly impelled toget at the inmost of everything. But what, in Heaven's name, is themotive? Does any one seriously suppose it to be for the amusement ofmaking stories out of it? The holding up to one's self the stern andsecret realities of life is no such pleasing pursuit. These men aredriven to it by the divine impulse which has made them seers andrecorders. 

As for Hawthorne, he hoped and loved and planned with the same richhuman faith that fills the heart of every manly genius; and ifdiscouraging truth made him suffer, it was all the more because hisideals--and at first his trust in their realization--were so generousand so high. Two of his observations as to Brook Farm, transferred tothe "The Blithedale Romance, " show the wisdom on which his withdrawalwas based. The first relates to himself: "No sagacious man will longretain his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers andprogressive people, without periodically returning to the settled systemof things, to correct himself by a new observation from that oldstandpoint. " He had too much imagination to feel safe in giving freerein to it, in a special direction of theoretic conduct; he alsoremembered that, as the old system of things was full of error, it waspossible that a new one might become so in new ways, unless watched. Thesecond observation touches the real weakness of the Brook Farminstitution: "It struck me as rather odd, that one of the firstquestions raised, after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world, should relate to the possibility of getting theadvantage over the outside barbarians in their own field of labor. Butto own the truth, I very soon became sensible that, _as regardedsociety at large, we stood in a position of new hostility rather thannew brotherhood. _" And, in fact, the real good which Mr. Ripley'sattempt did, was to implant the co-operative idea in the minds of menwho have gone out into the world to effect its gradual application on agrander scale. It is by introducing it into one branch of social energyafter another that the regenerative agency of to-day can alone be madeeffectual. The leaders of that community have been broad-minded, andrecognize this truth. None of them, however, have ever taken the troubleto formulate it as Hawthorne did, on perceiving it some years inadvance. 

The jocose tone, it maybe added, seems to have been a characteristicpart of the Brook Farm experiment, despite the sober earnest and raptenthusiasm that accompanied it. The members had their laughingallusions, and talked--in a strain of self-ridicule precisely similarto Coverdale's--of having bands of music to play for thefield-laborers, who should plough in tune. This merely proves that theywere people who kept their wits whole, and had the humor that comes withrefinement; while it illustrates by the way the naturalness of the toneHawthorne has given to Coverdale. 

The Priscilla of Blithedale was evidently founded upon the littleseamstress whom he describes in the Note-Books as coming out to thefarm, and Old Moodie's spectre can be discerned in a brief memorandum ofa man seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850. It has beenthought that Zenobia was drawn from Margaret Fuller, or from a lady atBrook Farm, or perhaps from both: a gentleman who was there says that hetraces in her a partial likeness to several women. It is as well toremember that Hawthorne distinctly negatived the idea that he wrote withany one that he knew before his mind; and he illustrated it, to one ofhis most intimate friends, by saying that sometimes in the course ofcomposition it would suddenly occur to him, that the character he wasdescribing resembled in some point one or more persons of hisacquaintance. Thus, I suppose that when the character of Priscilla haddeveloped itself in his imagination, he found he could give her agreater reality by associating her with the seamstress alluded to; andthat the plaintive old man at Parker's offered himself as a good figureto prop up the web-work of pure invention which was the history ofZenobia's and Priscilla's father. There is a conviction in the minds ofall readers, dearer to them than truth, that novelists simply sit downand describe their own acquaintances, using a few clumsy disguises tomake the thing tolerable. When they do take a hint from real persons thecharacter becomes quite a different thing to them from the actualprototype. It was not even so definite as this with Hawthorne. Yet nodoubt, his own atmosphere being peculiar, the contrast between that andthe atmosphere of those he met stimulated his imagination; so that, without his actually seeing a given trait in another person, the meetingmight have the effect of _suggesting_ it. Then he would brood overthis suggestion till it became a reality, a person, to his mind; andthus his characters were conceived independently in a region somewherebetween himself and the people who had awakened speculation in his mind. 

He had a very sure instinct as to when a piece of reality might betransferred to his fiction with advantage. Mr. Curtis has told the storyof a young woman of Concord, a farmer's daughter, who had had heraspirations roused by education until the conflict between these and thehard and barren life she was born to, made her thoroughly miserable andmorbid; and one summer's evening she sought relief in the quiet, homelystream that flowed by the Old Manse, and found the end of earthlytroubles in its oozy depths. Hawthorne was roused by Curtis himselfcoming beneath his window (precisely as Coverdale comes to summonHollingsworth), and with one other they went out on the river, to findthe poor girl's body. "The man, " writes his friend, "whom the villagershad only seen at morning as a musing spectre in the garden, now appearedamong them at night to devote his strong arm and steady heart to theirservice. "

By this dark memory is the powerful climax of "The Blithedale Romance"bound to the sphere of a reality as dread. 

VI. 

THE OLD MANSE. 

1842-1846. 

There is a Providence in the lives of men who act sincerely, which makeseach step lead, with the best result, to the next phase of theircareers. By his participation in the excellent endeavor at Brook Farm, Hawthorne had prepared himself to enjoy to the full his idyllicretirement at the Old Manse, in Concord. "For now, being happy, " hesays, "I felt as if there were no question to be put. "

Hawthorne was married in July, 1842, and went at once to this his firsthome. Just before going to Brook Farm he had written "Grandfather'sChair, " the first part of a series of sketches of New England historyfor children, which was published by Miss Peabody in Boston, and Wileyand Putnam in New York; but the continuation was interrupted by his stayat the farm. In 1842 he wrote a second portion, and also somebiographical stories, all of which gained an immediate success. He alsoresumed his contributions to the "Democratic Review, " the most brilliantperiodical of the time, in which Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Poe, andother noted authors made their appearance. It was published atWashington, and afterward at New York, and made considerable pretensionsto a national character. Hawthorne had been engaged as a contributor, ata fair rate, in 1838, and his articles had his name appended (not alwaysHie practice at that time) in a way that shows the high estimation intowhich he had already grown. "John Inglefield's Thanksgiving, " "TheCelestial Railroad, " "The Procession of Life, " "Fire Worship, " "Buds andBird Voices, " and "Roger Malvin's Burial, " all appeared in the"Democratic" in 1843. "Rappaccini's Daughter" and other tales followedin the next year; and in 1845 the second volume of "Twice-Told Tales"was brought out at Boston. During the same year Hawthorne edited the"African Journals" of his friend Bridge, then an officer in the navy, who had just completed a cruise. The editor's name evidently carriedgreat weight, even then. "The mere announcement, 'edited by NathanielHawthorne, '" said one of the critics, "is enough to entitle this book toa place among the American classics. " I dwell upon this, because anattempt has been made to spread the idea that Hawthorne up to the timeof writing "The Scarlet Letter" was still obscure and discouraged, andthat only then, by a timely burst of appreciation in certain quarters, was he rescued from oblivion. The truth is, that he had won himself anexcellent position, was popular, and was himself aware by this time ofthe honor in which he was held. Even when he found that the smallprofits of literature were forcing him into office again, he wrote toBridge: "It is rather singular that I should need an office: fornobody's scribblings seem to be more acceptable than mine. " Theexplanation of this lies in the wretchedly dependent state of nativeauthorship at that time. The law of copyright had not then attained toeven the refined injustice which it has now reached. "I continue, " hewrote, in 1844, "to scribble tales with good success so far as regardsempty praise, some notes of which, pleasant enough to my ears, have comefrom across the Atlantic. But the pamphlet and piratical system has sobroken up all regular literature, that I am forced to work hard forsmall gains. "

Besides the labors already enumerated, he edited for the "Democratic"some "Papers of an old Dartmoor Prisoner" (probably some one of his"sea-dog" acquaintance in Salem). He was in demand among the publishers. A letter from Evert Duyckinck (New York, October 2, 1845), who was thenin the employ of Wiley and Putnam, publishers of the "African Cruiser, "says of that book: "The English notices are bounteous in praise. NoAmerican book in a long time has been so well noticed. " The same firmwere now eager to bring out his recent tales, and were also, as appearsin the following from Duyckinck, urging the prosecution of anotherscheme: "I hope you will not think me a troublesome fellow, " he writes, "if I drop you another line with the vociferous cry, MSS. ! MSS. ! Mr. Wiley's American series is athirst for the volumes of tales; and howstands the prospect for the History of Witchcraft, I whilom spoke of?"The History Hawthorne wisely eschewed; but early in 1846 the "Mossesfrom an Old Manse" was issued at New York, in two volumes. Thisattracted at once a great deal of praise, and it certainly shows awider range and fuller maturity than the first book of "Twice-ToldTales"; yet I doubt whether the stories of this group have taken suchintimate hold of any body of readers as those, although recommendingthemselves to a larger audience. Hawthorne's life at the Old Manse wasassuredly one of the brightest epochs of his career: an unalloyedhappiness had come to him, he was full of the delight of firstpossession in his home, a new and ample companionship was his, and thequiet course of the days, with their openings into healthful outdoorexercise, made a perfect balance between creation and recreation. Thehouse in which he dwelt was itself a little island of the past, standingintact above the flood of events; all around was a mild, cultivatedcountry, broken into gentle variety of "hills to live with, " and touchedwith just enough wildness to keep him from tiring of it: the stream thatflowed by his orchard was for him an enchanted river. He renewed thepleasant sports of boyhood with it, fishing and boating in summer, andin winter whistling over its clear, black ice, on rapid skates. In themore genial months, the garden gave him pleasant employment; and in hisjournal-musings, the thought gratifies him that he has come into aprimitive relation with nature, and that the two occupants of the Manseare in good faith a new Adam and Eve, so far as the happiness of thatimmemorial pair remained unbroken. The charm of these experiences hasall been distilled into the descriptive chapter which prefaces the"Mosses"; and such more personal aspects of it as could not be mixed inthat vintage have been gathered, like forgotten clusters of the harvest, into the Note-Books. It remains to comment, here, on the contrastbetween the peaceful character of these first years at Concord and theincreased sombreness of some of the visions there recorded. 

The reason of this is, that Hawthorne's genius had now waxed to astature which made its emanations less immediately dependent on hisactual mood. I am far from assuming an exact autobiographical value forthe "Twice-Told Tales"; a theory which the writer himself condemned. Butthey, as he has also said, require "to be read in the clear browntwilight atmosphere in which they were written"; while the "Mosses" arethe work of a man who has learned to know the world, and the atmospherein which they were composed seems almost dissonant with the tone of someof them. "The Birthmark, " "The Bosom Serpent, " "Rappaccini's Daughter, "and that terrible and lurid parable of "Young Goodman Brown, " are madeup of such horror as Hawthorne has seldom expressed elsewhere. "TheProcession of Life" is a fainter vibration of the same chord ofawfulness. Such concentration of frightful truth do these most gracefuland exquisitely wrought creations contain, that the intensity becomesalmost poisonous. What is the meaning of this added revelation of evil?The genius of Hawthorne was one which used without stint that costliestof all elements in production, --time; the brooding propensity wasindispensable to him; and, accordingly, as some of these conceptions hadoccurred to him a good while before the carrying out, they receivedgreat and almost excessive elaboration. The reality of sin, thepervasiveness of evil, had been but slightly insisted upon in theearlier tales: in this series, the idea bursts up like a long-buriedfire, with earth-shaking strength, and the pits of Hell seem yawningbeneath us. Dismal, too, is the story of "Roger Malvin's Burial, " anddreary "The Christmas Banquet, " with its assembly of the supremelywretched. In "Earth's Holocaust" we get the first result of Hawthorne'sinsight into the demonianism of reformatory schemers who forget that thecentre of every true reform is the heart. And, incidentally, this marksout the way to "The Scarlet Letter" on the one hand, and "The BlithedaleRomance" on the other, in which the same theme assumes two widelydifferent phases. Thus we find the poet seeking more and more certainlythe central fountain of moral suggestion from which he drew his bestinspirations. The least pleasing quality of the work is, I think, itsovercharged allegorical burden. Some of the most perfect of all histales are here, but their very perfection makes one recoil the more atthe supremacy of their purely intellectual interest. One feels a certainchagrin, too, on finishing them, as if the completeness of embodimenthad given the central idea a shade of too great obviousness. Hawthorneis most enjoyable and most true to himself when he offers us the chaliceof poetry filled to the very brim with the clear liquid of moral truth. But, at first, there seems to have been a conflict between his aestheticand his ethical impulse. Coleridge distinguishes the symbolical from theallegorical, by calling it a part of some whole which it represents. "Allegory cannot be other than spoken consciously; whereas in the symbolit is very possible that the general truth represented may be workingunconsciously in the writer's mind. .. . The advantage of symbolicalwriting over allegory is that it presumes no disjunction of faculties, but simple predominance. " Now in the "Allegories of the Heart, "collected in the "Mosses, " there is sometimes an extreme consciousnessof the idea to be illustrated; and though the ideas are in a measuresymbolical, yet they are on the whole too disintegrating in their effectto leave the artistic result quite generous and satisfying. Allegoryitself, as an echo of one's thought, is often agreeable, and pleasesthrough surprise; yet it is apt to be confusing, and smothers the poeticharmony. In his romances, Hawthorne escapes into a hugely significant, symbolic sphere which relieves the reader of this partial vexation. "TheCelestial Railroad, " of course, must be excepted from censure, being thesober parody of a famous work, and in itself a masterly satiricalallegory. And in two cases, "Drowne's Wooden Image, " and "The Artist ofthe Beautiful, " we find the most perfect imaginable symbolism. In one, the story of Pygmalion compressed and Yankeefied, yet renderedadditionally lovely by its homeliness; and the essence of all artisticlife, in the other, presented in a form that cannot be surpassed. "Mrs. Bullfrog" is a sketch which is ludicrously puzzling, until one recallsHawthorne's explanation: "The story was written as a mere experiment inthat style; it did not come from any depth within me, --neither my heartnor mind had anything to do with it. " [Footnote: American Note-Books, Vol. II. ] It is valuable, in this light, as a distinct boundary-mark inone direction. But the essay vein which had produced some of theclearest watered gems in the "Twice-Told Tales, " begins in the "Mosses"to yield increase of brilliance and beauty; and we here find, with thegathering strength of imagination, --the enlarged power for bringing themost unreal things quite into the circle of realities, --a compensatingrichness in describing the simply natural, as in "Buds and Bird Voices, ""Fire Worship, " "The Old Apple-Dealer. "

Everything in these two volumes illustrates forcibly the brevity, theabsolutely right proportion of language to idea, which from the firsthad marked Hawthorne with one trait, at least, quite unlike anydisplayed by the writers with whom he was compared, and entirely foreignto the mood of the present century. This _sense of form_, thehighest and last attribute of a creative writer, provided it comes asthe result of a deep necessity of his genius, and not as a mereacquirement of art, is a quality that has not been enough noticed inhim; doubtless because it is not enough looked for anywhere by themajority of critics and readers, in these days of adulteration and ofrapid manufacture out of shoddy and short-fibred stuffs. We demand agiven measure of reading, good or bad, and producers of it are in greatpart paid for length: so that with much using of thin and shapelessliterature, we have forgotten how good is that which is solid and hasform. But, having attained this perfection in the short story, Hawthornethereafter abandoned it for a larger mould. 

The "Mosses, " as I have said, gained him many admirers. In them he forthe first time touched somewhat upon the tendencies of the currentepoch, and took an entirely independent stand among the philosophers ofNew England. Yet, for a while, there was the oddest misconception of hisattitude by those at a distance. A Whig magazine, pleased by his manlyand open conservatism, felt convinced that he must be a Whig, though hewas, at the moment of the announcement, taking office under a DemocraticPresident. On the other hand, a writer in "The Church Review" of NewHaven, whom we shall presently see more of, was incited to a tiltagainst him as a rabid New England theorist, the outcome, ofphalansteries, a subverter of marriage and of all other holy things. Inlike manner, while Hawthorne was casting now and then a keen dart at theTranscendentalists, and falling asleep over "The Dial" (as his journalsbetray), Edgar Poe, a literary _Erinaceus_, wellnigh exhausted hissupply of quills upon the author, as belonging to a school toward whichhe felt peculiar acerbity. "Let him mend his pen, " cried Poe, in hismost high-pitched strain of personal abuse, "get a bottle of visibleink, hang (if possible) the editor of 'The Dial, ' cut Mr. Alcott, andthrow out of the window to the pigs all his odd numbers of the 'NorthAmerican Review. '" This paper of Poe's is a laughable and pathetic caseof his professedly punctilious analysis covering the most bitterattacks, with traces of what looks like envy, and others of a resistlessimpulse to sympathize with a literary brother as against the averagemind. He begins with a discussion of originality and peculiarity: "Inone sense, to be peculiar is to be original, " he says, but the trueoriginality is "not the uniform but the continuous peculiarity, . .. Giving its own hue to everything it touches, " and touching everything. From this flimsy and very uncertain principle, which seems to make twodifferent things out of the same thing, he goes on to conclude that, "the fact is, if Mr. Hawthorne were really original, he could not failof making himself felt by the public. But the fact is, he is _not_original in any sense. " He then attempts to show that Hawthorne'speculiarity is derivative, and selects Tieck as the source of thisidiosyncrasy. Perhaps his insinuation may be the origin of Hawthorne'seffort to read some of the German author, while at the Old Manse, --anattempt given up in great fatigue. Presently, the unhappy critic bringsup his favorite charge of plagiarism; and it happens, as usual, that thewriter borrowed from is Poe himself! The similarity which he discoversis between "Howe's Masquerade" and "William Wilson, " and is based uponfancied resemblances of situation, which have not the least foundationin the facts, and upon the occurrence in both stories of the phrase, "Villain, unmuffle yourself!" In the latter half of his review, writtena little later, Mr. Poe takes quite another tack:--

"Of Mr. Hawthorne's tales we would say emphatically that they belong tothe highest region of art, --an art subservient to genius of a very loftyorder. We had supposed, with good reason for so supposing, that he hadbeen thrust into his present position by one of the impudent_cliques_ who beset our literature; . .. But we have been mostagreeably mistaken. .. . Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination, originality, --a trait which, in the literature offiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of theoriginality . .. Is but imperfectly understood. .. . The inventive ororiginal mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of _tone_ asin novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original in _all_ points. "

This, certainly, is making generous amends; but before he leaves thesubject, the assertion is repeated, that "he is peculiar, and _not_original. "

Though an extravagant instance, this tourney of Poe's represents prettywell the want of understanding with which Hawthorne was still receivedby many readers. His point of view once seized upon, nothing could bemore clear and simple than his own exposition of refined and evasivetruths; but the keen edge of his perception remained quite invisible tosome. Of the "Twice-Told Tales" Hawthorne himself wrote:--

"The sketches are not, it is hardly necessary to say, profound; but itis rather more remarkable that they so seldom, if ever, show any designon the writer's part to make them so. .. . Every sentence, so far as itembodies thought or sensibility, may be understood and felt by anybodywho will give himself the trouble to read it, and will take up the bookin a proper mood. "

But it was hard for people to find that mood, because in fact the Tales_were_ profound. Their language was clear as crystal; but all themore dazzlingly shone through the crystal that new light of Hawthorne'sgaze. 

After nearly four years, Hawthorne's tenancy of the Manse came to anend, and he returned to Salem, with some prospect of an office therefrom the new Democratic government of Polk. It is said that PresidentTyler had at one time actually appointed him to the Salem post-office, but was induced to withdraw his name. There were local factions thatkept the matter in abeyance. The choice, in any case, lay between theNaval Office and the surveyorship, and Bridge urged Hawthorne'sappointment to the latter. "Whichever it be, " wrote Hawthorne, "it is toyou that I shall owe it, among so many other solid kindnesses. I have astrue friends as any man has, but you have been the friend in need andthe friend indeed. " At this time he was seriously in want of someprofitable employment, for he had received almost nothing from themagazine. It was the period of credit, and debts were hard to collect. His journal at the Old Manse refers to the same trouble. I have beentold that, besides losing the value of many of his contributions to the"Democratic, " through the failure of the magazine, he had advanced moneyto the publishers, which was never repaid; but this has not beencorroborated, and as he had lost nearly everything at Brook Farm, it isa little doubtful. At length, he was installed as surveyor in the SalemCustom-House, where he hoped soon to begin writing at ease. 

VII. 

THE SCARLET LETTER. 

1846-1850. 

The literary result of the four years which Hawthorne now, after longabsence, spent in his native town, was the first romance which gave himworld-wide fame. But the intention of beginning to write soon was noteasy of fulfilment in the new surroundings. 

"Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in myregard, " he says, in "The Custom-House. " "I cared not at this period forbooks; they were apart from me. .. . A gift, a faculty, if it had notdeparted, was suspended and inanimate within me. "

Readers of that charming sketch will remember the account of theauthor's finding a veritable Puritan scarlet letter in an unfinishedupper room of the public building in which he labored at this time, andhow he was urged by the ghost of a former surveyor, who had written anaccount of the badge and its wearer, to make the matter public. Thediscovery of these materials is narrated with such reassuring accuracy, that probably a large number of people still suppose this to have beenthe origin of "The Scarlet Letter. " But there is no knowledge amongthose immediately connected with Hawthorne of any actual relic havingbeen found; nor, of course, is it likely that anything besides themanuscript memorandum should have been preserved. But I do not know thathe saw even this. The papers of Mr. Poe were probably a pure inventionof the author's. 

A strange coincidence came to light the year after the publication ofthe romance. A letter from Leutze, the painter, was printed in the ArtUnion Bulletin, running thus:--

"I was struck, when some years ago in the Schwarzwald (in an oldcastle), with one picture in the portrait-gallery; it has haunted meever since. It was not the beauty or finish that charmed me; it wassomething strange in the figures, the immense contrast between the childand what was supposed to be her gouvernante in the garb of some severeorder; the child, a girl, was said to be the ancestress of the family, aprincess of some foreign land. No sooner had I read 'The Scarlet Letter'than it burst clearly upon me that the picture could represent no oneelse than Hester Prynne and little Pearl. I hurried to see it again, andfound my suppositions corroborated, for the formerly inexplicableembroidery on the breast of the woman, which I supposed was the token ofher order, assumed the form of the letter; and though partially hiddenby the locks of the girl and the flowers in her hair, I set to work uponit at once, and made as close a copy of it, with all its quaintness, aswas possible to me, which I shall send you soon. How Hester Prynne evercame to be painted, I can't imagine; it must certainly have been a freakof little Pearl. Strange enough, the castle is named Perlenburg, theCastle of Pearls, or Pearl Castle, as you please. "

A more extraordinary incident in its way than this discovery, if it betrustworthy, could hardly be conceived; but I am not aware that it hasbeen verified. 

The germ of the story in Hawthorne's mind is given below. The namePearl, it will be remembered, occurs in the Note-Books, as an originaland isolated suggestion "for a girl, in a story. "

In "Endicott and the Red Cross, " one of the twice-told series printedmany years before, there is a description of "a young woman, with nomean share of beauty, whose doom it was to wear the letter A on thebreast of her gown, in the eyes of all the world and her own children. Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature hadembroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread and thenicest art of needlework. " A friend asked Hawthorne if he haddocumentary evidence for this particular punishment, and he replied thathe had actually seen it mentioned in the town records of Boston, thoughwith no attendant details. [Footnote: I may here transcribe, as a furtherauthority, which Hawthorne may or may not have seen, one of the laws ofPlymouth Colony, enacted in 1658, about the period in which the eventsof "The Scarlet Letter" are placed. "It is enacted by the Court and theAuthoritie thereof that whosoeuer shall committ Adultery shal beeseuerly Punished by whipping two seueral times viz: once whiles theCourt is in being att which they are convicted of the fact, and thesecond time as the Court shall order, and likewise to were two Capitallletters viz: A D cut cut in Cloth and sewed on their vpermost garmentson their arme or backe; and if at any time they shal bee taken withoutsaid letters, whiles they are in the Gou'ment soe worne, to be forthwithTaken and publicly whipt. "] This friend said to another at the time: "Weshall hear of that letter again, for it evidently has made a profoundimpression on Hawthorne's mind. " Returning to Salem, where hishistorical stories and sketches had mainly been written, he revertednaturally to the old themes; and this one doubtless took possession ofhim soon after his entrance on his customs duties. But these disabledhim from following it out at once. When the indefatigable Whigs got holdof the government again, Hawthorne's literary faculty came into poweralso, for he was turned out of office. In the winter of 1849, therefore, he got to work on his first regular romance. In his Preface to the"Mosses" he had formally renounced the short story; but "The ScarletLetter" proved so highly wrought a tragedy that he had fears of itseffect upon the public, if presented alone. 

"In the present case I have some doubts about the expediency, [he wroteto Mr. Fields, the junior partner of his new publisher, Ticknor, ]because, if the book is made up entirely of 'The Scarlet Letter, ' itwill be too sombre. I found it impossible to relieve the shadows of thestory with so much light as I would gladly have thrown in. Keeping soclose to its point as the tale does, and diversified no otherwise thanby turning different sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, itwill weary very many people, and disgust some. Is it safe, then, tostake the book entirely on this one chance?"

His plan was to add some of the pieces afterward printed with the "TheSnow Image, " and entitle the whole "Old Time Legends, together withSketches Experimental and Ideal. " But this was abandoned. On the 4th ofFebruary, 1850, he writes to Bridge:--

"I finished my book only yesterday: one end being in the press atBoston, while the other was in my head here at Salem; so that, as yousee, the story is at least fourteen miles long. .. . 

"My book, the publisher tells me, will not be out before April. Hespeaks of it in tremendous terms of approbation; so does Mrs. Hawthorne, to whom I read the conclusion last night. [Footnote: This recalls anallusion in the English Note-Books (September 14, 1855): "Speaking ofThackeray, I cannot but wonder at his coolness in respect to his ownpathos, and compare it with my emotions when I read the last scene ofThe Scarlet Letter to my wife just after writing it, --tried to read it, rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and downon an ocean as it subsides after a storm. But I was in a very nervousstate, then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion whilewriting it, for many months. "] It broke her heart, and sent her to bedwith a grievous headache, --which I look upon as a triumphant success. Judging from its effect on her and the publisher, I may calculate onwhat bowlers calls a 'ten-strike. ' But I do not make any suchcalculation. "

Now that the author had strongly taken hold of one of the most tangibleand terrible of subjects, the public no longer held back. "The ScarletLetter" met with instant acceptance, and the first edition of fivethousand copies was exhausted in ten days. On the old ground of Salemand in the region of New England history where he had won his firsttriumphs, Hawthorne, no longer the centre of a small public, receivedthe applause of a widespread audience throughout this country, andspeedily in Europe too. His old friend, "The London Athenaeum, " received"The Scarlet Letter" with very high, though careful praise. But at thesame time with this new and wide recognition, an assault was made on theauthor which it is quite worth while to record here. This was an articlein "The Church Review" (an Episcopal quarterly published at New Haven), [Footnote: In the number for January, 1851. ] written, I am told, by athen young man who has since reached a high place in the ecclesiasticalbody to which he belongs. The reviewer, in this case, had in a previousarticle discussed the question of literary schools in America. Speakingof the origin of the term "Lake School, " he pronounced the epithet_Lakers_ "the mere blunder of superficial wit and raillery. " Butthat did not prevent him from creating the absurd title of "Baywriters, " which he applied to all the writers about Boston, baptizingthem in the profane waters of Massachusetts Bay. "The Church Review" wasin the habit of devoting a good deal of its attention to criticism ofthe Puritan movement which founded New England. Accordingly, "It istime, " announced this logician, in opening his batteries on Hawthorne, "that the literary world should learn that Churchmen are, in a verylarge proportion, their readers and book-buyers, and that the tastes andprinciples of Churchmen have as good a right to be respected as those ofPuritans and Socialists. " Yet, inconsistently enough, he declared thatBay writers could not have grown to the stature of authors at all, unless they had first shaken off the Puritan religion, and adopted "areligion of indifference and unbelief. " Thus, though attacking them asPuritans and Socialists (this phrase was aimed at Brook Farm), he deniedthat they were Puritans at all. Clear understanding of anything from awriter with so much of the boomerang in his mind was not to be expected. But neither would one easily guess the revolting vulgarity with which hewas about to view "The Scarlet Letter. " He could discover in it nothingbut a deliberate attempt to attract readers by pandering to the basesttaste. He imagines that Hawthorne "selects the intrigue of an adulterousminister, as the groundwork of his ideal" of Puritan times, and asks, "Is the French era actually begun in our literature?" Yet, being in somepoints, or professing to be, an admirer of the author, "We are glad, " hesays, "that 'The Scarlet Letter' is, after all, little more than anexperiment, and need not be regarded as a step necessarily fatal. " Andin order to save Mr. Hawthorne, and stem the tide of corruption, he iswilling to point out his error. Nevertheless, he is somewhat at a lossto know where to puncture the heart of the offence, for "there is aprovoking concealment of the author's motive, " he confesses, "from thebeginning to the end of the story. We wonder what he would be at:whether he is making fun of all religion, or only giving a fair hint ofthe essential sensualism of enthusiasm. But, in short, we are astonishedat the kind of incident he has selected for romance. " The phraseology, he finds, is not offensive: but this is eminently diabolical, for "theromance never hints the shocking words that belong to its things, but, like Mephistopheles, hints that the arch-fiend himself is a verytolerable sort of person, if nobody would call him Mr. Devil. " Where, within the covers of the book, could the deluded man have found thisdoctrine urged? Only once, faintly, and then in the words of one of thechief sinners. 

"Shelley himself, " says the austere critic, airing his literature, "never imagined a more dissolute conversation than that in which thepolluted minister comforts himself with the thought, that the revenge ofthe injured husband is worse than his own sin in instigating it. 'Thouand I never did so, Hester, ' he suggests; and she responds, 'Never, never! What we did had a consecration of its own. '"

And these wretched and distorted consolations of two erring andcondemned souls, the righteous Churchman, with not very commendabletaste, seizes upon as the moral of the book, leaving aside the terribleretribution which overtakes and blasts them so soon after their vainplan of flight and happiness. Not for a moment does Hawthorne defendtheir excuses for themselves. Of Hester:--

"Shame, Despair, Solitude! These [he says] had been her teachers, --sternand wild ones, --and they had made her strong, but taught her muchamiss. "

And what she urges on behalf of herself and Dimmesdale must, of course, by any pure-minded reader, be included among the errors thus taken intoher mind. 

"The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experiencecalculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws;although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one ofthe most sacred of them. .. . Were such a man once more to fall, what pleacould be urged in extenuation of his crime? _None_; unless it availhim somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering;that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse whichharrowed it. "

But that these partial excuses are futile, the writer goes on to show, in this solemn declaration:--

"And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt hasonce made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded. .. . But there is still the ruined wall, and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again hisunforgotten triumph. "

How Mr. Dimmesdale yielded to this stealthy foe is then described; butit is also shown how Roger Chillingworth, the personified retribution ofthe two sinners, fastens himself to them in all their movements, andwill be with them in any flight, however distant. 

"'Hadst thou sought the whole earth over, ' said he, looking darkly atthe clergyman, 'there was no one place so secret, no high place norlowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me. '"

And it was precisely because Hawthorne would leave no specious turn ofthe hypocrisy of sin unrevealed, that he carried us through thisdelusive mutual consolation of the guilty pair, and showed us theirempty hope, founded on wrong-doing, powdered to dust at the moment offulfilment. 

But the reverend critic, by some dark and prurient affinity of hisimagination, saw nothing of the awful truths so clearly though brieflyexpressed, and finally came to the conclusion that the moral of thewhole fiction was "that the Gospel has not set the relations of man andwoman where they should be, and that a new gospel is needed to supersedethe Seventh Commandment, and the bond of matrimony. "

"The lady's frailty, [writes the reviewer, ] is philosophized into anatural and necessary result of the Scriptural law of marriage, which byholding her irrevocably to her vows, as plighted to a dried-up oldbook-worm, . .. Is viewed as making her heart an easy victim. .. . The sinof her seducer, too, seems to be considered as lying, not so much in thedeed itself, as in his long concealment of it; and in fact the wholemoral of the tale is given in the words, 'Be true, he true!' as ifsincerity in sin were a virtue, and as if 'Be clean, he clean!' were notthe more fitting conclusion. "

But this moral of cleanliness was one so obvious that Hawthorne probablynever dreamed of any one's requiring it to be emphasized. In fact, it isthe starting-point, the very foundation, of the tragedy. The tale is amassive argument for repentance, which is the flinging aside ofconcealment, and the open and truthful acknowledgment of sin. In thePuritan mode of dealing with sin, Hawthorne found the whole problem ofrepentance and confession presented in the most drastic, concentrated, and startling form; for the Puritans carried out in the severest style apractical illustration of the consequences of moral offence. Since menand women would not voluntarily continue in active remorse and publicadmission of wrong-doing, these governors and priests determined to trythe effect of visible symbols in keeping the conscience alive. Peoplewere set before the public gaze, in the stocks, whipped in public at thewhipping-post, and imprisoned in the pillory. Malefactors had their earscropped; scolding women had to wear a forked twig on the tongue; othercriminals to carry a halter constantly around the neck. But that thiswas only a hellish device, after all; that the inflictors of suchpunishment were arrogating too much to themselves, and shared the officeof the fiend; that, moreover, this compulsion of a dumb outwardtruthfulness would never build up the real inner truth of the soul;--allthis Hawthorne perceived and endeavored to portray in a form whichshould be as a parable, applying its morality to the men and women ofto-day, all the more persuasively because of its indirectness. As astudy of a system of social discipline never before so expounded, itclaimed the deepest attention. And never was the capacity of sinning menand women for self-delusion more wonderfully illustrated than in thisromance. The only avenue of escape from such delusion was shown to beself-analysis; that is, the conscientious view of one's self which keepsthe right or wrong of one's conduct always clearly visible. Hester wason the whole the truest of the three persons in the drama, and theadvantages of this comparative trueness are constantly made manifest. She in a measure conquers evil and partly atones for her wrong, by thegood which she is able to do among her fellow-beings, --as muchcompensation as can rightfully be hoped for a woman who has once been soessentially corrupted as she. Dimmesdale, too, retains so much of nativetruth that he never allows his conscience to slumber for a moment, andplies the scourge of remorse upon himself continually. To this extent heis better than Chillingworth, who, in order to take into his own handsthe retribution that belongs to Heaven, deliberately adopts falsity forhis guide, and becomes a monster of deceit, taking a wicked joy in thatwhich ought to have awakened an endless, piteous horror in him instead, and have led to new contemplation and study of virtue. But Dimmesdale, though not coolly and maliciously false, stops short of open confession, and in this submits himself to the most occult and corrosive influenceof his own sin. For him, the single righteousness possible consisted inabject acknowledgment. Once announcing that he had fallen, and wasunworthy, he might have taken his place on the lower moral plane; and, equally resigning the hope of public honor and of happiness with Hester, he could have lent his crippled energies to the doing of some limitedgood. The shock to the general belief in probity would have been great;but the discovery that the worst had been made known, that the ministerwas strong enough to condemn himself, and descend from the place he nolonger was fit for, would have restored the public mind again, byshowing it that a deeper probity possible than that which it wanted tosee sustained. This is the lesson of the tragedy, that nothing is sodestructive as the morality of mere appearances. Not that sincerity insin is a virtue, but that it is better than sin and falsehood combined. And if anything were wanting, at first, to make this clear, therecertainly is not a particle of obscurity left by the glare of thecatastrophe, when the clergyman rejects Hester's hope that he and shemay meet after death, and spend their immortal life together, and saysthat God has proved his mercy most of all by the afflictions he has laidupon him. 

As to the new truth which Hester hoped would be revealed, it could havebeen no other than that ultimate lifting up of the race into a plane ofthe utmost human truthfulness, which every one who believes in theworking of all things for good, looks forward to with vague longing, butwith most certain faith. How far the Puritan organization was from thisstate of applied truth, the romance shows. Nearly every note in therange of Puritan sympathies is touched by the poet, as he goes on. Thestill unspoiled tenderness of the young matron who cannot but feelsomething of mercifulness toward Hester is overruled by the harshexultation of other women in her open shame. We have the noble andspotless character of Winthrop dimly suggested by the mention of hisdeath on the night of Dimmesdale's vigil at the pillory; but much moredistinct appears the mild and saintly Wilson, who, nevertheless, isutterly incompetent to deal with the problem of a woman's lost morality. Governor Bellingham is the stern, unflinching, manly upholder of thestate and its ferocious sanctions; yet in the very house with him dwellsMistress Hibbins, the witch-lady, revelling in the secret knowledge ofwidespread sin. Thus we are led to a fuller comprehension ofChillingworth's attitude as an exponent of the whole Puritan idea ofspiritual government; and in his diabolical absorption and gloatinginterest in sin, we behold an exaggerated--but logicallyexaggerated--spectre of the Puritan attempt to precipitate andpersonally supervise the punishments of eternity on this side of death. 

Dr. George B. Loring, of Salem, wrote at the time an excellent reply tothis article in "The Church Review, " though he recognized, as allreaders of general intelligence must, that the author of it did not byany means represent the real enlightenment of the clergy and laity forwhom he undertook to be a mouthpiece. 

Considered as a work of art, "The Scarlet Letter" is perhaps not soexcellent as the author's subsequent books. It may not unjustlybe called a novel without a plot, so far as this touches theadroit succession of incidents and the interdependence of parts, whichwe call "plot. " Passion and motive and character, having been broughttogether in given relations, begin to work toward a logical issue; butthe individual chapters stand before us rather as isolated pictures, with intervals between, than as the closely conjoined links of a dramagathering momentum as it grows. There is succession and acceleration, indeed, in the movement of the story, but this is not quite so evidentas is the hand which checks each portion and holds it perfectly still, long enough to describe it completely. The author does not, like aplaywright, reflect the action swiftly while it passes, but ratherarrests it and studies it, then lets it go by. It may be that this issimply the distinction between the dramatist's and the novelist'smethod; but probably we must allow it to be something more than that, and must attribute it to the peculiar leisure which qualifies allHawthorne's fictions, at times enhancing their effect, but alsoprotracting the impression a little too much, at times. Yet the generalconception, and the mode of drawing out the story and of illustratingthe characters, is dramatic in a high degree. The author's exegesis ofthe moods of his persons is brief, suggestive, restrained; and, notwithstanding the weight of moral meaning which the whole workcarries, it is impossible to determine how much the movement of eventsis affected by his own will, or by that imperious perception of thenecessary outcome of certain passions and temperaments, which influencesnovelists of the higher order. 

As a demonstration of power, it seems to me that this first extendedromance was not outdone by its successors; yet there is a harshness inits tone, a want of mitigation, which causes it to strike crudely on theaesthetic sense by comparison with those mellower productions. This wasno doubt fortunate for its immediate success. Hawthorne's faith in purebeauty was so absolute as to erect at first a barrier between himselfand the less devout reading public. If in his earlier tales he had notso transfused tragedy with the suave repleteness of his sense of beauty, he might have snatched a speedier popular recognition. It is curious tospeculate what might have been the result, had he written "The House ofthe Seven Gables" before "The Scarlet Letter. " Deep as is the tragicelement in the former, it seems quite likely that its greater gentlenessof incident and happier tone would have kept the world from discoveringthe writer's real measure, for a while longer. But "The Scarlet Letter"burst with such force close to its ears, that the indolent public awokein good earnest, and never forgot, though it speedily forgave the shock. 

There was another smaller but attendant explosion. Hawthorne's prefatorychapter on the Custom-House incensed some of his fellow-citizens ofSalem, terribly. There seems to have been a general civic clamor againsthim, on account of it, though it would be hard to find any rationaljustification therefor. In reference to the affair, Hawthorne wrote atthe time:--

"As to the Salem people, I really thought I had been exceedinglygood-natured in my treatment of them. They certainly do not deserve goodusage at my hands, after permitting me . .. To be deliberately lied down, not merely once, but at two separate attacks, and on two falseindictments, without hardly a voice being raised on my behalf. "

This refers to political machinations of the party opposed to Hawthorneas an official: they had pledged themselves, it was understood, not toask for his ejection, and afterward set to work to oust him withoutcause. There is reason to believe that Hawthorne felt acute exasperationat these unpleasant episodes for a time. But the annoyance came upon himwhen he was worn out with the excitement of composing "The ScarletLetter"; and this ebullition of local hostility must moreover have beenespecially offensive at a moment when the public everywhere else wasreceiving him with acclaim as a person whose genius entitled him toenthusiastic recognition. Hawthorne had generous admirers and sincerefriends in Salem, and his feeling was, I suppose, in great measure theculmination of that smouldering disagreement which had harassed him inearlier years, and had lurked in his heart in spite of the constant mildaffection which he maintained toward the town. 

But the connection between Hawthorne and Salem was now to be finallybroken off. He longed for change, for the country, and for therecreation that the Old Manse garden had given him. "I should not longstand such a life of bodily inactivity and mental exertion as I have ledfor the last few months, " he wrote to Bridge. "Here I hardly go out oncea week. " On this account, and because of his difficulty in writing whilein office, he did not so much regret losing his place. One of the plansproposed at this time was that he should rent or buy the Sparhawk house, a famous old colonial mansion on Goose Creek, at Kittery, in Maine, which was then to be disposed of in some way. Hawthorne, I think, wouldhave found much that was suggestive and agreeable in the neighborhood. After his return from abroad, he made a visit to the quaint and statelylittle city of Portsmouth, and dined at one of the most beautiful oldhouses in New England, the ancient residence of Governor Langdon, thenoccupied by the Rev. Dr. Burroughs. A memorial of that visit remains, inthis bright note from his host:--

PORTSMOUTH, September, 1860. 

MR. HAWTHORNE. 

MY DEAR SIR:--There are no Mosses on our "Old Manse, " there is noRomance at our Blithedale; and this is no "Scarlet Letter. " But you cangive us a "Twice-Told Tale, " if you will for the second time be ourguest to-morrow at dinner, at half past two o'clock. 

Very truly yours, CHARLES BURROUGHS. 

But, at present, Hawthorne's decision led him to Berkshire. 

VIII. 

LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD. 

1850-1853. 

In the early summer, after the publication of "The Scarlet Letter, "Hawthorne removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire, where himself andhis family were ensconced in a small red house near the StockbridgeBowl. It was far from a comfortable residence; but he had no means ofobtaining a better one. Meantime, he could do what he was sent into theworld to do, so long as he had the mere wherewithal to live. 

He was much interested in Herman Melville, at this time living inPittsfield. There was even talk of their writing something together, asI judge from some correspondence; though this was abandoned. 

Between this summer of 1850 and June, 1853, Hawthorne wrote "The Houseof the Seven Gables, " "The Blithedale Romance, " "The Wonder-Book forBoys and Girls, " and "Tanglewood Tales, " besides the story of "The SnowImage" in the volume to which this supplies the title; and his short"Life of Franklin Pierce. " The previous paucity of encouragements toliterature, and the deterring effect of official duties and of the BrookFarm attempt, were now removed, and his pen showed that it could pour afull current if only left free to do so. 

The industry and energy of this period are the more remarkable becausehe could seldom accomplish anything in the way of composition during thewarm months. "The House of the Seven Gables" was under way by September, 1850. 

"I shan't have the new story ready, " he writes to his publisher on the1st of October, "by November, for I am never good for anything in theliterary way till after the first autumnal frost, which has somewhatsuch an effect on my imagination that it does on the foliage here aboutme, --multiplying and brightening its hues; though they are likely to besober and shabby enough after all. "

The strain of reflection upon the work in hand which he indulged onemonth later is so important as to merit dwelling upon. 

"I write diligently, but not so rapidly as I had hoped. I find the bookrequires more care and thought than 'The Scarlet Letter'; also I have towait oftener for a mood. 'The Scarlet Letter' being all in one tone, Ihad only to get my pitch, and could then go on interminably. Manypassages of this book ought to be finished with the minuteness of aDutch picture, in order to give them their proper effect. Sometimes, when tired of it, it strikes me that the whole is an absurdity, frombeginning to end; but the fact is, in writing a romance, a man isalways, or always ought to be, careering on, the utmost verge of aprecipitous absurdity, and the skill lies in coming as close aspossible, without actually tumbling over. My prevailing idea is, thatthe book ought to succeed better than 'The Scarlet Letter, ' though Ihave no idea that it will. "

By the 12th of January, 1851, he was able to write: "My 'House of theSeven Gables' is, so to speak, finished; only I am hammering away alittle at the roof, and doing up a few odd jobs that were leftincomplete"; and at the end of that month, he despatched the manuscriptto Boston, still retaining his preference for it over the preceding work. 

"It has met with extraordinary success from that portion of the publicto whose judgment it has been submitted, viz. From my wife. I likewiseprefer it to 'The Scarlet Letter'; but an author's opinion of his bookjust after completing it is worth little or nothing, he being then inthe hot or cold fit of a fever, and certain to rate it too high or toolow. 

"It has undoubtedly one disadvantage, in being brought so close to thepresent time; whereby its romantic improbabilities become more glaring. "

He also wrote to Bridge, in July, after listening to the critics, andgiving his own opinion time to mature:--

"I think it a work more characteristic of my mind, and more proper andnatural for me to write, than 'The Scarlet Letter, '--but, for that veryreason, less likely to interest the public. Nevertheless, it appears tohave sold better than the former, and I think is move sure of retainingthe ground that it acquires. Mrs. Kemble writes that both works arepopular in England, and advises me to take out my copyright there. "

His opinion of the superiority of the fresh production to his firstgreat romance is no doubt one that critics will coincide with as regardsartistic completeness; though his fear that it would not succeed so wellwas not confirmed, because, as I have suggested, he had begun to acquirethat momentum of public favor which sets in after its first immenseinertia has once been overcome. Acting on the reports from England, hemade a suggestion to his publisher; and though this at first met withdiscouragement, ten months later £200 were received from a London housefor "The Blithedale Romance. " English editions of his works had alreadybecome numerous. But Hawthorne began now to receive a more ethereal andnot less welcome kind of tribute from abroad, that of praise from themakers and markers of literature. The critics welcomed him to a highplace; authors wrote to him, urging him to cross the sea; and MissMitford--of whom he said, "Her sketches, long ago as I read them, are assweet in my memory as the scent of new hay"--sent special messagesexpressive of her pleasure. 

When the "Blithedale Romance" had come out, Mr. Hawthorne sent MissMitford a copy, and she wrote in reply this cordial and delightfulnote:--

SWALLOWFIELD, August 6, 1852. 

At the risk of troubling you, dear Mr. Hawthorne, I write again to tellyou how much I thank you for the precious volume enriched by yourhandwriting, which, for its own sake and for yours, I shall treasurecarefully so long as I live. The story has your mark upon it, --the finetragic construction unmatched amongst living authors, the passion of theconcluding scenes, the subtle analysis of jealousy, the exquisite finishof style. I must tell you what one of the cleverest men whom I have everknown, an Irish barrister, the juvenile correspondent of Miss Edgeworth, says of your style: "His English is the richest and most intense essenceof the language I know of; his words conveying not only a meaning, butmore than they appear to mean. They point onward or upward or downward, as the case may be, and we cannot help following them with the eyes ofimagination, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping, sometimes shuddering, as if we were victims of the mesmeric influence he is so fond ofbringing to bear upon his characters. Three of the most perfectEnglishmen of our day are Americans, --Irving, Prescott, and this greatnew writer, Mr. Hawthorne. " So far my friend Mr. Hockey. I forget, dearMr. Hawthorne, whether I told you that the writer of whose works youremind me, not by imitation, but by resemblance, is the great Frenchnovelist, Balzac. Do you know his books? He is untranslated anduntranslatable, and it requires the greatest familiarity with Frenchliterature to relish him thoroughly. .. . I doubt if he be much knownamongst you; at least I have never seen him alluded to in Americanliterature. He has, of course, the low morality of a Frenchman, but, being what he is, Mrs. Browning and I used to discuss his personageslike living people, and regarded his death as a great personal calamityto both. 

I am expecting Mrs. Browning here in a few days, not being well enoughto meet her in London. .. . How I wish, dear Mr. Hawthorne, that you werehere to meet them! The day will come, I hope. It would be good for yourbooks to look at Europe, and all of Europe that knows our tongue wouldrejoice to look at you. 

Ever your obliged and affectionate friend, M. R. MITFORD. 

I must transcribe here, too, part of a letter from Herman Melville, who, in the midst of his epistle, suddenly assumes the tone of a reviewer, and discourses as follows, under the heading, "_The House of the SevenGables: A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne_. 16_mo. Pp. _ 344. "

"The contents of this book do not belie its clustering romantic title. With great enjoyment we spent almost an hour in each separate gable. This book is like a fine old chamber, abundantly but still judiciouslyfurnished with precisely that sort of furniture best fitted to furnishit. There are rich hangings, whereon are braided scenes from tragedies. There is old china with rare devices, set about on the carved beaufet;there are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; there is anadmirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands; there is asmell of old wine in the pantry; and finally, in one corner, there is adark little black-letter volume in golden clasps, entitled _Hawthorne:A Problem_. .. . 

"We think the book for pleasantness of running interest surpasses theother work of the author. The curtains are now drawn; the sun comes inmore; genialities peep out more. Were we to particularize what has moststruck us in the deeper passages, we should point out the scene whereClifford, for a minute, would fain throw himself from the window, tojoin the procession; or the scene where the Judge is left seated in hisancestral chair. 

"Clifford is full of an awful truth throughout. He is conceived in thefinest, truest spirit. He is no caricature. He is Clifford. And here wewould say, that did the circumstances permit, we should like nothingbetter than to devote an elaborate and careful paper to the fullconsideration and analysis of the purpose and significance of what sostrongly characterizes all of this author's writing. There is a certaintragic phase of humanity, which, in our opinion, was never morepowerfully embodied than by Hawthorne: we mean the tragicalness of humanthought in its own unbiased, native, and profound workings. We thinkthat into no recorded mind has the intense feeling of the whole truthever entered more deeply than into this man's. By whole truth, we meanthe apprehension of the absolute condition of present things as theystrike the eye of the man who fears them not, though they do their worstto him. "

This really profound analysis, Mr. Mellville professes to extract fromthe "Pittsfield Secret Review, " of which I wish further numbers could befound. 

But chief among the prizes of this season were letters from his friendsLowell and Holmes. The latter's I insert, because it admirablyillustrates the cordial relation which has always distinguished thefamous writers of New England, --no pleasant illusion of distance, but anotable and praiseworthy reality. 

BOSTON, April 9, 1851. 

MY DEAR SIR:--I have been confined to my chamber and almost to my bed, for some days since I received your note; and in the mean time I havereceived what was even more welcome, the new Romance "from the Author. "While I was too ill to read, my wife read it to me, so that you havebeen playing physician to my heartaches and headaches at once, with themagnetism of your imagination. 

I think we have no romancer but yourself, nor have had any for this longtime. I had become so set in this feeling, that but for your last twostories I should have given up hoping, and believed that all we were tolook for in the way of spontaneous growth were such languid, lifeless, sexless creations as in the view of certain people constitute the chieftriumphs of a sister art as manifested among us. 

But there is rich red blood in Hester, and the flavor of the sweet-fernand the bayberry are not truer to the soil than the native sweetness ofour little Phoebe! The Yankee mind has for the most part budded andflowered in pots of English earth, but you have fairly raised yours as aseedling in the natural soil. My criticism has to stop here; the momenta fresh mind takes in the elements of the common life about us andtransfigures them, I am contented to enjoy and admire, and let othersanalyze. Otherwise I should be tempted to display my appreciatingsagacity in pointing out a hundred touches, transcriptions of nature, ofcharacter, of sentiment, true as the daguerreotype, free as crayonsketching, which arrested me even in the midst of the palpitating story. Only one word, then, this: that the solid reality and homelytruthfulness of the actual and present part of the story are blendedwith its weird and ghostly shadows with consummate skill and effect;this was perhaps the special difficulty of the story. 

I don't want to refuse anything you ask me to do. I shall come up, Itrust, about the 1st of June. I would look over the MS. In question, asa duty, with as much pleasure as many other duties afford. To say thetruth, I have as great a dread of the _Homo Caudatus_ Linn. , Anglicé, the Being with a Tale, male or female, as any can have. 

 "If foes they write, if friends they read me dead, "

said poor Hepzibah's old exploded poet. Still, if it must be, I willstipulate to read a quantity not exceeding fifty-six pounds avoirdupoisby weight or eighteen reams by measure or "tale, "--provided there is nolocomotion in the case. The idea of visiting Albany does not enter intomy intentions. I do not know who would serve as a third or a secondmember of the committee; Miss Sedgwick, if the Salic law does notprevail in Berkshire, is the most natural person to do it. But the realtruth is, the little Albaneses want to see the author of "The ScarletLetter, " and don't care a sixpence who else is on the committee. That iswhat they are up to. So if you want two dummies, on the classicalcondition _not to leave the country except in case of invasion_, absentees, voters by proxy, potential but not personally presentbottle-holders, I will add my name to those of Latimer, Ridley, and Co. As a Martyr in the cause of Human Progress. 

Believe me, my dear sir, Yours very sincerely, O. W. Holmes. 

Hawthorne's interest in Dr. Holmes's works was also very great, and oneof the last books which he read at all was "Elsie Venner, " which he hadtaken up for a second time shortly before his death. 

Amid all the variety of thoughtful and thoughtless praise, or of othercomment on the new romance, he began to feel that necessity forabstracting his attention entirely from what was said of his work incurrent publications, which forces itself upon every creative mindattempting to secure some centre of repose in a chattering and unprivateage like the present. This feeling he imparted to Bridge, and it alsoappears in one or two published letters. At the same time, it must beremembered how careful a consideration he gave to criticism; and hewrote of Edwin Whipple's reviewing of the "Seven Gables":--

"Whipple's notices have done more than pleased me, for they have helpedme to see my book. Much of the censure I recognize as just; I wish Icould feel the praise to be so fully deserved. Being better (which Iinsist it is) than 'The Scarlet Letter, ' I have never expected it to beso popular. "

In this same letter occurs the following:--

"---- ----, Esq. , of Boston, has written to me, complaining that I havemade his grandfather infamous! It seems there was actually a Pyncheon(or Pynchon, as he spells it) family resident in Salem, and that theirrepresentative, at the period of the Revolution, was a certain JudgePynchon, a Tory and a refugee. This was Mr. ----'s grandfather, and (atleast, so he dutifully describes him) the most exemplary old gentlemanin the world. There are several touches in my account of the Pyncheonswhich, he says, make it probable that I had this actual family in myeye, and he considers himself infinitely wronged and aggrieved, andthinks it monstrous that the 'virtuous dead' cannot be suffered to restquietly in their graves. "

The matter here alluded to threatened to give Hawthorne almost as muchinconvenience as the tribulation which followed the appearance of "TheCustom-House. " One of the complainants in this case, though objecting tothe use of the name Pyncheon, "respectfully suggests, " with an ill-timedpassion for accuracy, that it should in future editions be printed withthe _e_ left out, because this was the proper mode in use by thefamily. 

There has been some slight controversy as to the original of thevisionary mansion described in this romance. Mr. Hawthorne himself saiddistinctly that he had no particular house in mind, and it is also afact that none is recalled which fulfils all the conditions of that ofthe "Seven Gables. " Nevertheless, one party has maintained that the oldPhilip English house, pulled down many years since, was the veritablemodel; and others support the Ingersoll house, which still stands. TheCurwin, called the "Witch House, " appears, by an antique painting fromwhich photographs have been made, to have had the requisite number ofpeaks at a remote date; but one side of the structure being perforceleft out of the picture, there is room for a doubt. [Footnote: It isfrom one of these photographs that the cut in the new edition ofHawthorne's Works has been developed. ]

In "The House of the Seven Gables" Hawthorne attained a connection ofparts and a masterly gradation of tones which did not belong, in thesame fulness, to "The Scarlet Letter. " There is, besides, a larger rangeof character, in this second work, and a much more nicely detailed andreticulated portrayal of the individuals. Hepzibah is a painting onivory, yet with all the warmth of a real being. Very noticeable is thedelicate veneration and tenderness for her with which the author seemsto inspire us, notwithstanding the fact that he has almost nothingdefinite to say of her except what tends to throw a light ridicule. Sheis continually contrasted with the exquisite freshness, ready grace, andbeauty of Phoebe, and subjected to unfavorable comparisons in the mindof Clifford, whose half-obliterated but still exact aesthetic perceptioncasts silent reproach upon her. Yet, in spite of this, she becomes in ameasure endeared to us. In the grace, and agreeableness too, with whichHawthorne manages to surround this ungifted spinster, we find a unit ofmeasure for the beauty with which he has invested the more frightful andtragic elements of the story. It is this triumph of beauty withoutdestroying the unbeautiful, that gives the romance its peculiar artisticvirtue. Judge Pyncheon is an almost unqualified discomfort to thereader, yet he is entirely held within bounds by the prevailing charm ofthe author's style, and by the ingenious manner in which the pleasanterelements of the other characters are applied. At times the strongemphasis given to his evil nature makes one suspect that the villain istoo deeply dyed; but the question of equity here involved is one of themost intricate with which novelists have to deal at all. Thewell-defined opposition between good and bad forces has always been anecessity to man, in myths, religions, and drama. Heal life furnishesthe most absolute extremes of possession by the angel or the fiend; andShakespere has not scrupled to use one of these ultimate possibilitiesin the person of Iago. Yet Hawthorne was too acutely conscious of thedownward bent in every heart, to let the Judge's pronounced iniquitystand without giving a glimpse of incipient evil in another quarter. This occurs in the temptation which besets Holgrave, when he finds thathe possesses the same mesmeric sway over Phoebe, the latest Pyncheonoffshoot, as that which his ancestor Matthew Maule exercised over AlicePyncheon. The momentary mood which brings before him the absolute powerwhich might be his over this fair girl, opens a whole new vista ofwrong, in which the retribution would have been transferred from theshoulders of the Pyncheons to those of the Maules. Had Holgrave yieldedthen, he might have damned his own posterity, as Colonel Pyncheon had_his_. Thus, even in the hero of the piece, we are made aware ofpossibilities as malicious and destructive as those hereditary faultsgrown to such rank maturity in the Judge; and this may be said to offera middle ground between the side of justice and attractiveness, and theside of injustice and repulsiveness, on which the personages arerespectively ranged. 

The conception of a misdeed operating through several generations, andrighted at last solely by the over-toppling of unrestrained malevolenceon the one hand, and on the other by the force of upright character inthe wronged family, was a novel one at the time; this graphic depictureof the past at work upon the present has anticipated a great deal of thehistory and criticism of the following twenty-five years, in its closeconjunction of antecedent influences and cumulative effects. 

As a discovery of native sources of picturesque fiction, this secondromance was not less remarkable than the one which preceded it. Thetheme furnished by the imaginary Pyncheon family ranges from the tragicin the Judge, through the picturesquely pathetic in Clifford, to agrotesque cast of pathos and humor in Hepzibah. Thence we are led toanother vein of simple, fun-breeding characterization in Uncle Vennerand Ned Higgins. The exquisite perception which draws old Uncle Vennerin such wholesome colors, tones him up to just one degree of sunninessabove the dubious light in which Hepzibah stands, so that he may softenthe contrast of broad humor presented by little Ned Higgins, the "FirstCustomer. " I cannot but regret that Hawthorne did not give freer scopeto his delicious faculty for the humorous, exemplified in the "SevenGables. " If he had let his genius career as forcibly in this directionas it does in another, when burdened with the black weight of the deadJudge Pyncheon, he might have secured as wide an acceptance for the bookas Dickens, with so much more melodrama and so much less art, could gainfor less perfect works. Hawthorne's concentration upon the tragicelement, and comparative neglect of the other, was in one sense anadvantage; but if in the case under discussion he had given more bulkand saliency to the humorous quality, he might also have been morelikely to avoid a fault which creeps in, immediately after thatmarvellous chapter chanted like an unholy requiem over the lifelessJudge. This is the sudden culmination of the passion of Holgrave forPhoebe, just at the moment when he has admitted her to the house whereDeath and himself were keeping vigil. The revulsion, here, is tooviolent, and seems to throw a dank and deathly exhalation into the midstof the sweetness which the mutual disclosure of love should have spreadaround itself. There is need of an enharmonic change, at this point; andit might have been effected, perhaps, by a slower passage from gloom togladness just here, and a more frequent play of the brighter moodthroughout the book. But the tragic predilection seems ultimately togain the day over the comic, in every great creative mind, and it was sostrong with Hawthorne, that instead of giving greater play to humor inlater fictions, it curtailed it more and more, from the production ofthe "Seven Gables" onward. 

Mr. Curtis has shown me a letter written soon after the publication ofthe new book, which, as it gives another instance of the writer's keenenjoyment of other men's work, and ends with a glimpse of the life atLenox, I will copy at length:--

LENOX, April 29, 1851. 

MY DEAR HOWADJI:--I ought to be ashamed (and so I really am) of nothaving sooner responded to your note of more than a month ago, accompanied as it was by the admirable "Nile Notes. " The fact is, I havebeen waiting to find myself in an eminently epistolary mood, so that Imight pay my thanks and compliments in a style not unworthy of theoccasion. But the moment has not yet come, and doubtless never will; andnow I have delayed so long, that America and England seem to haveanticipated me in their congratulations. 

I read the book aloud to my wife, and both she and I have felt that wenever knew anything of the Nile before. There is something beyonddescriptive power in it. You make me feel almost as if we had been thereourselves. And then you are such a luxurious traveller. .. . The fragranceof your chibonque was a marvellous blessing to me. It cannot beconcealed that I felt a little alarm, as I penetrated the depths ofthose chapters about the dancing-girls, lest they might result insomething not altogether accordant with our New England morality; andeven now I hardly know whether we escaped the peril, or were utterlyoverwhelmed by it. But at any rate, those passages are gorgeous in theutmost degree. However, I suppose you are weary of praise; and as I havenothing else to inflict, I may as well stop here. 

S---- and the children and I are plodding onward in good health, and ina fair medium state of prosperity; and on the whole, we are quite thehappiest family to be found anywhere. We live in the ugliest little oldred farm-house you ever saw. .. . 

What shall you write next? For of course you are an author forever. I amglad, for the sake of the public, but not particularly so for your own. 

Very soon after the issue of the "Seven Gables, " another lighterliterary project was put into execution. 

"I mean [he had announced on the 23d of May] to write within six weeksor two months next ensuing, a book of stories made up of classicalmyths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch;Pandora's Box; The Adventure of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples;Bellerophon and the Chimera; Baucis and Philemon; Perseus and Medusa. "

The "Wonder-Book" was begun on the first of June, and finished by themiddle of July; so that the intention of writing it within six weeks wasstrictly carried out: certainly a rapid achievement, considering theexcellent proportion and finish bestowed upon the book. It is a minorwork, but a remarkable one; not its least important trait being theperfect simplicity of its style and scope, which, nevertheless, omitsnothing essential, and preserves a thorough elegance. Its peculiarexcellences come out still more distinctly when contrasted with CharlesKingsley's "The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales, " published in Englandfive years after the appearance of the "Wonder-Book" here. The fresherplay of Hawthorne's mind with those old subjects is seen in nothing moreagreeably than in the graceful Introduction and interludes which he hasthrown around the mythological tales, like the tendrils of a vinecurling over a sculptured capital. This midsummer task--it was veryuncommon for him to write in the hot season--perhaps had something to dowith further unsettling Hawthorne's health, which at this time was notgood. The somewhat sluggish atmosphere of the far inland valley did notsuit his sea-braced temperament; and so, instead of renting Mrs. Kemble's country place, as he had thought of doing, he decided to leaveBerkshire with the birds; but not to go southward. Moving to WestNewton, near Boston, he remained there for the winter, writing"Blithedale, " which was put forth in 1852. 

The special characteristic of "The Blithedale Romance" seems to me to beits appearance of unlabored ease, and a consequent breeziness of effectdistinguishing its atmosphere from that of any of the other romances. The style is admirably finished, and yet there is no part of the bookthat gives the same impression of almost unnecessary polish whichoccasionally intervenes between one's admiration and the "Seven Gables. "On this score, "Blithedale" is certainly the most consummate of the fourcompleted romances. And as Hawthorne has nowhere given us more robustand splendid characterization than that of Zenobia and Hollingsworth, the work also takes high rank on this ground. The shadows, which seemedpartly dispersed in the "Seven Gables, " gather again in this succeedingstory; but, on the other hand, it is not so jarringly terrible as "TheScarlet Letter. " From this it is saved partly by the sylvan surroundingand the pleasant changes of scene. In comparing it with the other works, I find that it lets itself be best defined as a mean between extremes;so that it ought to have the credit of being the most evenly attemperedof all. The theme is certainly as deep as that of the earlier ones, andmore tangible to the general reader than that of "The Marble Faun"; itis also more novel than that of "The Scarlet Letter" or even the "SevenGables, " and has an attractive air of growing simply and naturally outof a phenomenon extremely common in New England, namely, the man who isdominated and blinded by a theory. And the way in which Hollingsworth, through this very prepossession and absorption, is brought to the ruinof his own scheme, and has to concentrate his charity for criminals uponhimself as the first criminal needing reformation, is very masterly. Yet, in discussing the relative positions of these four works. I am notsure that we can reach any decision more stable than that of merepreference. 

There is a train of thought suggested in "Blithedale" which receivesonly partial illustration in that story, touching the possible identityof love and hate. It had evidently engaged Hawthorne from a very earlyperiod, and would have made rich material for an entire romance, or forseveral treating different phases of it. Perhaps he would have followedout the suggestion, but for the intervention of so many years ofunproductiveness in the height of his powers, and his subsequent tooearly death. 

It was while at West Newton, just before coming to the Wayside, that hewrote a note in response to an invitation to attend the memorial meetingat New York, in honor of the novelist, Cooper, which should be read forits cordial admiration of a literary brother, and for the tender thoughtof the closing sentence. 

_To Rev. R. W. Griswold. _

February 20, 1852. 

Dear Sir:--I greatly regret that circumstances render it impossible forme to be present on the occasion of Mr. Bryant's discourse in honor ofJames Fenimore Cooper. No man has a better right to be present thanmyself, if many years of most sincere and unwavering admiration of Mr. Cooper's writings can establish a claim. It is gratifying to observe theearnestness with which the literary men of our country unite in payinghonor to the deceased; and it may not be too much to hope that, in theeyes of the public at large, American literature may henceforth acquirea weight and value which have not heretofore been conceded to it: timeand death have begun to hallow it. 

Very respectfully yours, Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Early in the summer of 1852 he went to Concord again, where he hadbought a small house, there to establish his permanent home. Mr. Curtiswas at this time writing some chapters for a book on "The Homes ofAmerican Authors, " among which was to be included the new abode ofHawthorne. The project called forth from the romancer this letter:--

CONCORD, July 14, 1852. 

MY HEAR HOWADJI:--I think (and am glad to think) that you will find itnecessary to come hither in order to write your Concord Sketches; and asfor my old house, you will understand it better after spending a day ortwo in it. Before Mr. Alcott took it in hand, it was a mean-lookingaffair, with two peaked gables; no suggestiveness about it and novenerableness, although from the style of its construction it seems tohave survived beyond its first century. He added a porch in front, and acentral peak, and a piazza at each end, and painted it a rusty olivehue, and invested the whole with a modest picturesqueness; all whichimprovements, together with its situation at the foot of a wooded hill, make it a place that one notices and remembers for a few moments afterpassing it. Mr. Alcott expended a good deal of taste and some money (tono great purpose) in forming the hillside behind the house intoterraces, and building arbors and summer-houses of rough stems andbranches and trees, on a system of his own. They must have been verypretty in their day, and are so still, although much decayed, andshattered more and more by every breeze that blows. The hillside iscovered chiefly with locust-trees, which come into luxuriant blossom inthe month of June, and look and smell very sweetly, intermixed with afew young elms and some white-pines and infant oaks, --the whole formingrather a thicket than a wood. Nevertheless, there is some very goodshade to be found there. I spend delectable hours there in the hottestpart of the day, stretched out at my lazy length, with a book in my handor an unwritten book in my thoughts. There is almost always a breezestirring along the sides or brow of the hill. 

From the hill-top there is a good view along the extensive levelsurfaces and gentle, hilly outlines, covered with wood, thatcharacterize the scenery of Concord. We have not so much as a gleam oflake or river in the prospect; if there were, it would add greatly tothe value of the place in my estimation. 

The house stands within ten or fifteen feet of the old Boston road(along which the British marched and retreated), divided from it by afence, and some trees and shrubbery of Mr. Alcott's setting out. Whereupon I have called it "The Wayside, " which I think a better nameand more morally suggestive than that which, as Mr. Alcott has sincetold me, he bestowed on it, --"The Hillside. " In front of the house, onthe opposite side of the road, I have eight acres of land, --the onlyvaluable portion of the place in a farmer's eye, and which are capableof being made very fertile. On the hither side, my territory extendssome little distance over the brow of the hill, and is absolutely goodfor nothing, in a productive point of view, though very good for manyother purposes. 

I know nothing of the history of the house, except Thoreau's telling methat it was inhabited a generation or two ago by a man who believed heshould never die. [Footnote: This is the first intimation of the storyof Septimius Felton, so far as local setting is concerned. The sceneryof that romance was obviously taken from the Wayside and its hill. ] Ibelieve, however, he is dead; at least, I hope so; else he may probablyappear and dispute my title to his residence. .. . 

I asked Ticknor to send a copy of "The Blithedale Romance" to you. Donot read it as if it had anything to do with Brook Farm (whichessentially it has not), but merely for its own story and character. Truly yours, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

The Wayside was, perhaps, so named in remembrance of the time when itsowner had "sat down by the wayside like a man under enchantment. " Itcharacterized well, too, his mental attitude in maturity; though thespell that held him now was charged with happiness. The house itself wassmall, but the proprietor might have carved on his lintel the legendover Ariosto's door, _Parva, sed apta mihi_. In October, 1852, hewrote to Bridge that he intended to begin a new romance within a day ortwo, which he should make "more genial" than the last. What design thiswas cannot now be even conjectured. Hawthorne had written, in thepreceding year, "I find that my facility of labor increases with thedemand for it"; and he always felt that an unlimited reserve ofinvention and imagination awaited his drafts upon it, so that he couldproduce as many books as he might have time for writing. Butcircumstances again called him away from ideal occupations. Just as hewas preparing to write the "Tanglewood Tales, " as a sequel to the"Wonder-Book, " General Pierce, the Democratic nominee for President, urged him to write his biography, as a "campaign" measure. "I haveconsented to do so, " wrote Hawthorne, to his publisher; "somewhatreluctantly, however, for Pierce has now reached that altitude where aman careful of his personal dignity will begin to think of cutting hisacquaintance. But I seek nothing from him, and therefore need not beashamed to tell the truth of an old friend. " To Bridge, after the bookwas out, he wrote much more confidentially and strongly. "I tried topersuade Pierce that I could not perform it as well as many others; buthe thought differently, and of course, after a friendship of thirtyyears, it was impossible to refuse my best efforts in his behalf, at thegreat pinch of his life. " In this letter, also, he states that beforeundertaking the work, he resolved to "accept no office" from Pierce;though he raises the query whether this be not "rather folly thanheroism. " In discussing this point, he says, touching Pierce:--

"He certainly owes me something; for the biography has cost me hundredsof friends here at the North, who had a purer regard for me than FrankPierce or any other politician ever gained, and who drop off from melike autumn leaves, in consequence of what I say on the slaveryquestion. But they were my real sentiments, and I do not now regret thatthey are on record. "

These have to do with Hawthorne's attitude during the war. Speaking ofPierce's indorsement of the Compromise, both as it bore hard on Northernviews and exacted concessions from the South thought by it to be morethan reciprocal, he says:--

"It was impossible for him not to take his stand as the unshakenadvocate of Union, and of the mutual steps of compromise which thatgreat object unquestionably demanded. The fiercest, the leastscrupulous, and the most consistent of those who battle against slaveryrecognize the same fact that he does. They see that merely human wisdomand human efforts cannot subvert it, except by tearing to pieces theConstitution, breaking the pledges which it sanctions, and severing intodistracted fragments that common country which Providence brought intoone nation, through a continued miracle of almost two hundred years, from the first settlement of the American wilderness until theRevolution. "

He predicted, too, the evils of forcible abolition being certain, andthe good only a contingency, that the negroes would suffer aggravatedinjuries from the very process designed to better their state. It isuseless here to enter into the question of degrees of right and wrong oneither side, in the struggle which had already become formidable beforePierce's election; but one can see how sincerely, and with what generousmotives, a man like Hawthorne would feel that the Union must bemaintained peacefully. Without questioning the undoubted grandeur ofachievement which we sanely fell upon through the insane fit of civilwar, we may recognize a deep patriotism consistent with humanity whichforced itself to dissent from the noble action of the fighters, becauseit could not share in any triumph, however glorious, that rested on theshedding of brothers' blood. It was this kind of humanity that foundshelter in the heart of Hawthorne. 

Unwelcome as was the task, he wrote the biography of Pierce, infriendship, but in good faith also, even seeing the elements ofgreatness in his old classmate, which might yet lead him to a career. [Footnote: As a literary performance, the book is of course but slightlycharacteristic; and being distasteful to the author, it is even dry. Yetthere is a great deal of simple dignity about it. The Whig journalsbelabored it manfully, and exhausted the resources of those formidableweapons, italics and small capitals, in the attempt to throw aridiculous light on the facts most creditable to Pierce. Hawthorne camein for a share of the abuse too. One newspaper called the book his "newromance"; another made him out a worthy disciple of Simonides, who wasthe first poet to write for money. The other party, of course, tookquite another view of the work. A letter to Hawthorne from his eldersister bears well upon his fidelity. "Mr. D---- has bought your Life ofPierce, but he will not be convinced that you have told the precisetruth. I assure him that it is just what I have always heard you say. "]He had not much hope of his friend's election, but when that occurred, the question of office, which he had already mooted, was definitelybrought before him. When Pierce learned that he positively would nottake an office, because to do so now might compromise him, he wasextremely troubled. He had looked forward to giving Hawthorne some oneof the prizes in his hand, if he should be elected. But the service hehad exacted from his friend threatened to deprive Hawthorne of the verybenefit which Pierce had been most anxious he should receive. At last, Mr. Ticknor, Hawthorne's publisher, was made the agent of Pierce'sarguments, and to them he added personal considerations which werecertainly not without weight. Literature gave but a bare subsistence, and Hawthorne was no longer young, having passed his forty-ninth year. His books were not likely, it seemed, to fill the breach that would bemade in the fortunes of his family, were he to be suddenly removed. This, Mr. Ticknor urged, in addition to the friendly obligation whichPierce ought to be allowed to repay. Hawthorne, as we have seen, hadalways wished to travel, and the prospect of some years in Europe was analluring one: the decision was made, to take the Liverpool consulship. 

The appointment was well received, though many persons professedsurprise that Hawthorne could accept it. One gentleman in public life, however, who knew how unjust current judgments may often be, was not ofthis number, as appears from his note below. --

SENATE CHAMBER, March 26, 1853. 

MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--"Good! good!" I exclaimed aloud on the floor of theSenate as your nomination was announced. 

"Good! good!" I now write to you, on its confirmation. Nothing could bemore grateful to me. Before you go, I hope to see you. 

Ever yours, CHARLES SUMNER. 

IX. 

ENGLAND AND ITALY. 

1853-1860. 

It is very instructive to trace the contact of Hawthorne's mind withEurope, as exhibited in his "English Note-Books" and "French and ItalianNote-Books. " But in these records three things are especiallyobservable. He goes to Europe as unperturbed, with an individual mood aseasily sustained, as he would enter Boston or New York. He carries nopreconception of what may be the most admirable way of looking at it. There has never been a more complete and charming presentment of amultitude of ingenuous impressions common to many travellers of widelydiffering endowment than here, at the same time that you have alwaysbefore you the finished writer and the possible romancer, who suddenlyand without warning flashes over his pages of quiet description a far, fleeting light of delicious imagination. It is as if two brothers, one adreamer, and one a well-developed, intellectual, but slightly stoicaland even shrewd American, dealing exclusively in common-sense, had goneabroad together, agreeing to write their opinions in the same book andin a style of perfect homogeneity. Sometimes one has the blank sheet tohimself, sometimes the other; and occasionally they con each other'sparagraphs, and the second modifies the ideas of the first. It isinteresting to note their twofold inspection of Westminster Hall, forexample. The understanding twin examines it methodically, finding itslength to be eighty paces, and its effect "the ideal of an immensebarn. " The reasoning and imagining one interposes to this, "be it notirreverently spoken"; and also conjures up this splendid vision: "Iwonder it does not occur to modern ingenuity to make a scenicrepresentation, in this very hall, of the ancient trials for life ordeath, pomps, feasts, coronations, and every great historic incident . .. That has occurred here. The whole world cannot show another hall such asthis, so tapestried with recollections. " But in any case it is alwaysapparent that the thought is colored by a New World nurture. From thisfreshness of view there proceeded one result, the searching, unembarrassed, yet sympathetic and, as we may say, cordial criticism ofEngland in "Our Old Home. " But it also gave rise to the second notablequality, that exquisite apprehension of the real meaning of thingsEuropean, both institutions and popular manners and the varied productsof art. At times, Hawthorne seems to have been born for the one end ofadding this final grace of definition which he so deftly attaches to themonuments of that older civilization. He brings a perception so keen andan innate sympathy so true for everything beautiful or significant, thatthe mere flowing out of this fine intellectual atmosphere upon the objectsbefore him invests them with a quality which we feel to be theirs, evenwhile we know that it could not have become _ours_ without his aid. A breath of New England air touches the cathedral windows of the Old World, and--I had almost said--bedims them with a film of evanescent frost-work;yet, as that lingers, we suddenly discern through the veil a charm, alegendary fascination in their deep-gemmed gorgeousness, which, althoughwe have felt it and read of it before, we never seized till now. I speak, of course, from the American point of view; though in a great measure theeffect upon foreign readers may be similar. But I fancy a specialappropriateness for us in the peculiar mixture of estimation andenthusiasm which forms the medium through which Hawthorne looks at thespectacle of transatlantic life and its surroundings. He visits theBritish Museum, and encounters only disappointment at the mutilatedsculptures of the Parthenon; but out of this confession, which is truth, slowly arises the higher truth of that airy yet profound response withwhich he greets the multiform mute company of marble or painted shapesthat form the real population of Rome. 

Even there, he has much dissent to make, still; and we may not findit at all essential or beneficial to follow each of his deviationsourselves. But however we may differ with him, it is impossible not tofeel sure that within this circle of contradictions, of preference fornew frames and of his friend Thompson's pictures to all but a very fewof the old masters', somewhere within there is a perfectly trustworthyaesthetic sensibility which grasps the "unwritten rules of taste, " theinmost truth of all art. This inmost secret is, however we may turn it, a matter of paradox, and the moment it professes to be explained, thatmoment are the gates of the penetralia shut upon us. The evasiveness andthe protest, then, with which Hawthorne discourses to himself as hewanders through the galleries of Europe, are the trembling of theneedle, perfectly steadfast to the polar opposites of truth, yetquivering as with a fear that it may be unsettled by some artificialinfluence from its deep office of inner constancy. And as if, in thissingular world, all truth must turn to paradox at the touch of an indexfinger, that almost faulty abstention from assuming the European tonewhich has made Hawthorne the traveller appear to certain readers alittle crude, --that very air of being the uncritical and slightlypuzzled American is precisely the source of his most delightfulaccuracies of interpretation. 

The third greatest distinction of his foreign observation is its entirefreedom from specialism. Perhaps this cannot be made to appear moreclearly than in the contrast presented by his "English Note-Books" and"Our Old Home" to Emerson's "English Traits, " and Taine's "Notes onEngland. " The latter writer is an acute, alert, industrious, andpicturesque comparer of his own and a neighboring country, and isaccompanied by a light battery of literary and pictorial criticism, detached from his heavier home armament. Emerson, on the other hand, gives us probably the most masterly and startling analysis of a peoplewhich has ever been offered in the same slight bulk, unsurpassed, too, in brilliancy and penetration of statement. But the "English Traits" isas clear, fixed, and accurate as a machinist's plan, and perhaps alittle too rigidly defined. Hawthorne's review of England, though notcomparable to Emerson's work for analysis, has this advantage, that itsoutline is more flexible and leaves room for many individualdiscriminations to which it supplies an easily harmonized groundwork. Emerson and Taine give us their impressions of a foreign land: Hawthornecauses us to inhale its very atmosphere, and makes the country ours forthe time being, rather than an alien area which we scrutinize inpassing. Yet here and there he partakes of the very qualities that aredominant with Emerson and Taine. "Every Englishman runs to 'The Times'with his little grievance, as a child runs to his mother, " is asepigrammatic as anything in "English Traits"; [Footnote: No one, Ithink, has so well defined our relation to the English as Hawthorne, ina casual phrase from one of his printed letters: "We stand in the lightof posterity to them, and have the privileges of posterity. " This, onLondon, ought to become proverbial: "London is like the grave in onerespect, --any man can make himself at home there; and whenever a manfinds himself homeless elsewhere, he had better die, or go to London. "]and there is a tendency in his pages to present the national characterin a concrete form, as the French writer gives it. But, in addition, Hawthorne is an artist and a man of humor; and renders human characterwith a force and fineness which give it its true value as being, afterall, far weightier and dearer to us than the most important or famous ofcongealed _results_ of character. Withal a wide and keen observerand a hospitable entertainer of opinions, he does not force these uponus as final. Coming and going at ease, they leave a mysterious sense ofgreater wisdom with us, an indefinable residue of refined truth. 

It is a natural question, why did not Hawthorne write an Englishromance, as well, or rather than an Italian one? More than half his stayabroad was north of the Channel, and one would infer that there couldhave been no lack of suggestion there. "My ancestor left England, " hewrote, "in 1630. I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself hadbeen absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, leaving Englandjust emerging from the feudal system, and finding it, on my return, onthe verge of republicanism. " Herein lay a source of romanticpossibilities from which he certainly meant to derive a story. But thegreater part of his four years in England was spent in Liverpool, wherehis consular duties suppressed fiction-making. [Footnote: And it was nottill he reached the villa of Montauto at Florence that he could write:--

"It is pleasant to feel at last that I am really away from America, --asatisfaction that I never enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shakingYankee-dom was continually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my owncountrymen there. At Rome, too, it was not much better. But here inFlorence, and in the summer-time, and in this secluded villa, I haveescaped out of all my old tracks, and am really remote. "]

Hawthorne's genius was extremely susceptible to every influence aboutit. One might liken its quality to that of a violin which owes its fineproperties to the tempering of time and atmosphere, and transmitsthrough its strings the very thrill of sunshine that has sunk into itswood. His utterances are modulated by the very changes of the air. Inone of his letters from Florence he wrote:--

"Speaking of romances, I have planned two, one or both of which I couldhave ready for the press in a few months if I were either in England orAmerica. But I find this Italian atmosphere not favorable to the closetoil of composition, although it is a very good air to dream in. I mustbreathe the fogs of old England or the east-winds of Massachusetts, inorder to put me into working trim. "

But though England might be his workshop for books dreamed of in Italy, yet the aspect of English life seems much more fittingly represented byhis less excursively imaginative side, as in "Our Old Home, " than in aromance. Perhaps this is too ingenious a consolation; but I believe wemay much better spare the possible English romance, than we could haveforegone the actual Italian one. 

In "The Marble Faun" Hawthorne's genius took a more daring andimpressive range than ever before, and showed conclusively--what, without this testimony, would most likely have been questioned, or evenby some denied--that his previous works had given the arc of a circlewhich no English or American writer of prose fiction besides himself haseven begun to span. It is not alone that he plucks from a prehistorictime--"a period when man's affinity with nature was more strict, and hisfellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear"--thisconception of Donatello, the fresh, free, sylvan man untouched by sin orcrime. Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations which hasnearly become extinct among modern writers: he belongs to the world ofCaliban, Puck, and Ariel. But besides this unique creation, the bookreveals regions of thought wide, ruin-scarred, and verdurously fair asthe Campagna itself, winning the mind back through history to theprimitive purity of man and of Christianity. I recoil from any attemptat adequate analysis of this marvellous production, for it is one ofthose works of art which are also works of nature, and will present toeach thoughtful reader a new set of meanings, according to hisindividuality, insight, or experience. The most obvious part of thetheme is that which is represented in the title, the study of the Faun'snature; and this embraces the whole question of sin and crime, theirorigin and distinction. But it is not the case, as has been assumed, that in this study the author takes the position of advocate to a theorythat sin was requisite to the development of soul in man. For, though heshows that remorse developed in Donatello "a more definite and noblerindividuality, " he also reminds us that "sometimes the instruction comeswithout the sorrow, and oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abideswith us"; and he illustrates this in the exquisite height ofspirituality to which Hilda has attained through sinlessness. He is not, I say, the advocate of a theory: this charge has been made byself-confident critics, who saw only the one idea, --that of aBeneficence which has so handled sin, that, instead of destroying man, "it has really become an instrument most effective in the education ofintellect and soul. " This idea is several times urged by Miriam andKenyon, but quickly rejected each time; first by Kenyon, and then byHilda; so that, while it is suggested, it is also shown to be one whichhuman nature cannot trust itself to dwell upon. But the real function ofthe author is that of a profound religious teacher. The "Romance ofMonte Beni" is, as Miriam plainly says, the story of the fall of manrepeated. It takes us with fearless originality to the source of allreligious problems, affirming, --as one interpreter [Footnote: See anunsigned article, "The Genius of Hawthorne, " in the Atlantic Monthly forSeptember, 1868. ] has said, --"the inherent freedom of man, " andillustrating how he may choose the good or the evil. Donatello is theideal of the childlike nature on the threshold of history who has livedwithout choosing either, up to the time when his love and defence ofMiriam involve him in crime. Father Antonio, "the spectre of thecatacombs, " and Miriam's persecutor, is the outcome of a continualchoice of evil and of utter degradation. These two extremes, more widelyasunder than Prospero and Caliban, Hawthorne has linked together in hisimmense grasp of the inmost laws of life, and with a miraculous nicetyof artistic skill. Then comes Donatello's fall, illustrating the genesisof sin from crime, in accordance with the Biblical story of Cain; andthis precipitates an examination, not only of the result upon Donatellohimself, but of the degree in which others, even the most guiltless, areinvolved. There is first the reaction upon and inculpation of Miriam, whose glance had confirmed Donatello's murderous intent; only a glance, yet enough to involve her in the doom of change and separation--of sinin short--which falls upon the Faun. And in Hilda's case, it is thesimple consciousness of another's guilt, which is "almost the same as ifshe had participated" in it. The mutual relations of these persons, whoare made to represent the whole of society, afford matter for infinitemeditation, the artistic and moral abstract of which the author hasgiven. 

But with this main theme is joined a very marvellous and intricate studyof the psychology of Beatrice Cenci's story, in a new form. Miriam is adifferent woman placed in the same circumstances which made the Cencitragedy. In the "French and Italian Note-Books, " Hawthorne describes thelook he caught sight of in Guido's picture, --that "of a beingunhumanized by some terrible fate, and gazing out of a remote andinaccessible region, where she was frightened to be alone, but where nohuman sympathy could reach her. " It was of this single insight that bothMiriam and Hilda were born to his mind. He reproduces this description, slightly modified, in the romance (Vol. I. Chap. XXIII. ): "It was theintimate consciousness of her father's guilt that threw its shadow overher, and frightened her into" this region. Now, in the chapter called"Beatrice, " quite early in the story, he brings out between Miriam andHilda a discussion of Beatrice and her history. It is evident, from theemphasis given by the chapter-title, that this subject is very deeplyrelated to the theme of the romance; and no theory can explain Miriam'spassionate utterances about the copy of Guido's portrait, except thatwhich supposes her own situation to be that of Beatrice. This chapter isfull of the strongest hints of the fact. Miriam's sudden resemblance tothe picture, at the instant when she so yearns to grasp the secret ofBeatrice's view of her own guilt or innocence; her ardent defence ofBeatrice's course, as "the best virtue possible under thecircumstances, " when Hilda condemns it; her suggestion that, after all, only a woman could have painted the poor girl's thoughts upon her face, and that _she herself_ has "a great mind to undertake a copy, "giving it "what it lacks";--all these things point clearly. But there isa mass of inferential evidence, besides; many veiled allusions andapproaches to a revelation, as well as that very marked description ofthe sketches in which Miriam has portrayed in various moods a "womanacting the part of a revengeful mischief towards man, " and the hint, inthe description of her portrait of herself, that "she might ripen to bewhat Judith was, when she vanquished Holofernes with her beauty, andslew him for too much adoring it. " There is no need to pursue the prooffurther: readers will easily find it on re-examining the book. But whatis most interesting, is to observe how Hawthorne has imagined two womenof natures so widely opposed as Hilda and Miriam under a similarpressure of questionable blood-guiltiness. With Miriam, it is a guiltwhich has for excuse that it was the only resort against an unnaturaldepravity in Father Antonio. But as if to emphasize the indelibleness ofblood-stains, however justly inflicted, we have as a foil to Miriam thewhite sensitiveness of Hilda's conscience, which makes her--thoughperfectly free from even the indirect responsibility of Miriam--believeherself actually infected. In both cases, it is the shadow of crimewhich weighs upon the soul; but Miriam, in exactly the position ofBeatrice Cenci, is a more complex and deep-colored nature than she; andHilda, differently affected by the same question of conscience, is avastly spiritualized image of the historic sufferer. Miriam, after theavenging of her nameless wrong, doubts, as Beatrice must have done, whether there be any guilt in such avengement; but being of so differenta temperament, and having before her eyes the effect of this murder uponthe hitherto sinless Faun, the reality of her responsibility is broughthome to her. The clear conscience of Hilda confirms it. Thus by takingtwo extremes on either side of Beatrice, --one, a woman less simply andethereally organized, and the other one who is only indirectly connectedwith wrong or crime, --Hawthorne seems to extract from the problem ofBeatrice all its most subtle significance. He does not coldly condemnBeatrice; but by re-combining the elements of her case, he succeeds inmagnifying into startling distinctness the whole awful knot of crime andits consequence, which lies inextricably tangled up within it. Howdifferent from Shelley's use of the theme! There is certainly nothing inthe "Marble Faun" to equal the impassioned expression of wrong, and thepiercing outcry against the shallow but awful errors of human justice, which uplift Shelley's drama. But Shelley stops, on the one side, withthis climax:--

 "O plead With famine or wind-walking pestilence, Blind lightning or the deaf sea, not with man!"

And on the side of the moral question, he leaves us with Beatrice'scharacterization of the parricide, "Which is, or is not, what men call a crime. "

Hawthorne, on the contrary, starts from this latter doubt. "The foremostresult of a broken law, " he says, "is ever an ecstatic freedom. " Butinstead of pausing to give this his whole weight, as Shelley does, hedistinctly pronounces the murder of Miriam's degraded father to becrime, and proceeds to inquire how Miriam and Donatello may work outtheir purification. So that if the first part of the romance is the Fallof Man repeated, the second part is the proem to a new ParadiseRegained; and the seclusion of the sculptor and the Faun, and theirjourney together to Perugia, seasoned with Kenyon's noble andpure-hearted advice, compose a sort of seven-times-refined Pilgrim'sProgress. Apt culmination of a genius whose relations to Milton andBunyan we found to be so suggestive! The chief means which Kenyon offersfor regeneration is that Miriam and the Faun shall abandon any hope ofmutual joy, and consecrate themselves to the alleviation of misery inthe world. Having by violence and crime thrust one evil out of life, they are now by patience and benevolence to endeavor to exorcise others. At the same time, remarking that Providence has infinitely varied waysof dealing with any deed, Hawthorne leaves a possibility of happinessfor the two penitents, which may become theirs as "a wayside flower, springing along a path that leads to higher ends. " But he also shows, inDonatello's final delivering of himself up to justice, the wisdom ofsome definite judgment and perhaps punishment bestowed by society. Thus, avenues of thought are opened to us on every side, which we are atliberty to follow out; but we are not forced, as a mere theorist wouldcompel us, to pursue any particular one to the exclusion of the others. In all we may find our way to some mystic monument of eternal law, orpluck garlands from some new-budded bough of moral truth. The romance islike a portal of ebony inlaid with ivory, --another gate ofdreams, --swinging softly open into regions of illimitable wisdom. Butsome pause on the threshold, unused to such large liberty; and these cryout, in the words of a well-known critic, "It begins in mystery, andends in mist. "

Though the book was very successful, few readers grasped the profounderportions. It is a vast exemplar of the author's consummate charm as asimple storyteller, however, that he exercised a brilliant fascinationover all readers, notwithstanding the heavy burden of uncomprehendedtruths which they were obliged to carry with them. Some critics complainof the extent to which Roman scenery and the artistic life in Rome havebeen introduced; but, to my mind, there is scarcely a word wasted in thetwo volumes. The "vague sense of ponderous remembrances" pressing downand crowding out the present moment till "our individual affairs are buthalf as real here as elsewhere, " is essential to the perspective of thewhole; and nothing but this rich picturesqueness and variety could availto balance the depth of tragedy which has to be encountered; so that thenicety of art is unquestionable. It is strange, indeed, that this greatmodern religious romance should thus have become also the idealrepresentative of ruined Rome--the home of ruined religions--in itsaesthetic aspects. But one instance of appreciation must be recordedhere, as giving the highest pitch of that delightful literary fellowshipwhich Hawthorne seems constantly to have enjoyed in England. His friendJohn Lothrop Motley, the historian, wrote thus of "The Marble Faun, "from Walton-on-Thames, March 29, 1860:--

"Everything that you have ever written, I believe, I have read manytimes, and I am particularly vain of having admired 'Sights from aSteeple, ' when I first read it in the Boston 'Token, ' several hundredyears ago, when we were both younger than we are now; of having detectedand cherished, at a later day, an old Apple-Dealer, whom, I believe, youhave unhandsomely thrust out of your presence, now that you are grown sogreat. But the 'Romance of Monte Beni' has the additional charm for me, that it is the first book of yours that I have read since I had theprivilege of making your personal acquaintance. My memory goes back atonce to those walks (alas, not too frequent) we used to take along theTiber, or in the Campagna; . .. And it is delightful to get hold of thebook now, and know that it is impossible for you any longer, afterwaving your wand as you occasionally did then, indicating where thetreasure was hidden, to sink it again beyond plummet's sound. 

"I admire the book exceedingly. .. . It is one which, for the firstreading, at least, I didn't like to hear aloud. .. . If I were composingan article for a review, of course, I should feel obliged to show causefor my admiration; but I am only obeying an impulse. Permit me to say, however, that your style seems, if possible, more perfect than ever. Where, O where is the godmother who gave you to talk pearls anddiamonds?. .. Believe me, I don't say to you half what I say behind yourback; and I have said a dozen times that nobody can write English butyou. With regard to the story, which has been somewhat criticised, I canonly say that to me it is quite satisfactory. I like those shadowy, weird, fantastic, Hawthornesque shapes flitting through the goldengloom, which is the atmosphere of the book. I like the misty way inwhich the story is indicated rather than revealed; the outlines arequite definite enough from the beginning to the end to those who haveimagination enough to follow you in your airy flights; and to those whocomplain, I suppose that nothing less than an illustrated edition, witha large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most pensile ofattitudes, --his ears revealed through a white nightcap, --would besatisfactory. I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it reallymoves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatilefigures of your romance to the level of an every-day romance. .. . The wayin which the two victims dance through the Carnival on the last day isvery striking. It is like a Greek tragedy in its effect, without beingin the least Greek. "

To this Hawthorne replied from Bath (April 1, 1860); and Mr. Motley haskindly sent me a copy of the letter. 

MY DEAR MOTLEY:--You are certainly that Gentle Reader for whom all mybooks were exclusively written. Nobody else (my wife excepted, whospeaks so near me that I cannot tell her voice from my own) has eversaid exactly what I loved to hear. It is most satisfactory to be hitupon the raw, to be shot straight through the heart. It is not thequantity of your praise that I care so much about (though I gather itall up most carefully, lavish as you are of it), but the kind, for youtake the book precisely as I meant it; and if your note had come a fewdays sooner, I believe I would have printed it in a postscript which Ihave added to the second edition, because it explains better than Ifound possible to do the way in which my romance ought to be taken. .. . Now don't suppose that I fancy the book to be a tenth part as good asyou say it is. You work out my imperfect efforts, and half make the bookwith your warm imagination; and see what I myself saw, but could onlyhint at. Well, the romance is a success, even if it never finds anotherreader. 

We spent the winter in Leamington, whither we had come from thesea-coast in October. I am sorry to say that it was another winter ofsorrow and anxiety. .. . [The allusion here is to illness in the family, of which there had also been a protracted case in Rome]. I have engagedour passages for June 16th. .. . Mrs. Hawthorne and the children willprobably remain in Bath till the eve of our departure; but I intend topay one more visit of a week or two to London, and shall certainly comeand see you. I wonder at your lack of recognition of my socialpropensities. I take so much delight in my friends, that a littleintercourse goes a great way, and illuminates my life before andafter. .. . 

Your friend, NATH. HAWTHORNE. 

These seven years in Europe formed, outwardly, the most opulently happypart of Hawthorne's life. Before he left America, although he had beenwriting--with several interruptions--for twenty-four years, he had onlyjust reached a meagre prosperity. I have touched upon the petty clamorwhich his Custom-House pictures aroused, and the offensive politicalattacks following the Life of Pierce. These disagreeables, scatteredalong the way, added to the weary delay that had attended his firstefforts, made the enthusiastic personal welcome with which he everywheremet in England, and the charm of highly organized society, with itspowerful artistic classes centred upon great capitals there and inItaly, a very captivating contrast. Still there were drawbacks. The mostserious one was the change in the consular service made during his termat Liverpool. The consulate there was considered the most lucrative postin the President's gift, at the time of his appointment. But, to beginwith, Pierce allowed the previous incumbent to resign prospectively, sothat Hawthorne lost entirely the first five months of his tenure. Thesewere very valuable months, and after the new consul came into office thedull season set in, reducing his fees materially. Business continued badso long, that even up to 1855 little more than a living could be made inthe consulate. In February of that year a bill was passed by Congress, remodelling the diplomatic and consular system, and fixing the salary ofthe Liverpool consul at $7, 500, --less than half the amount of the bestannual income from it before that time. The position was one ofimportance, and involved an expensive mode of life; so that even beforethis bill went into operation, though practising "as stern an economy, "he wrote home, "as ever I did in my life, " Hawthorne could save butlittle; and the effect of it would have been not only to prevent hisaccomplishing what he took the office for, but even to have imposed lossupon him. For, in addition to social demands, the mere necessary officeexpenses (including the pay of three clerks) were very large, amountingto some thousands yearly; and the needs of unfortunate fellow-citizens, to whom Hawthorne could not bring himself to be indifferent, carried offa good portion of his income. As he says, "If the government chooses tostarve the consul, a good many will starve with him. " The mostirritating thing about the new law was that it merely cut down theconsular fees, without bringing the government anything; for the feescame from business that a notary-public could perform, and the consulwould naturally decline to take it upon himself when his interest in itwas removed. Fortunately, the President was given some discretion aboutthe date of reappointment, and allowed the old commission to continuefor a time. Meanwhile, Hawthorne was obliged, in anticipation of the newrule, to alter his mode of life materially. He now planned to give upthe place in the autumn of 1855, and go to Italy; but this was notcarried out till two years later. 

Italy charmed him wholly, and he longed to make it his home. There hadnot been want of unjust criticism of him in America, while at Liverpool. When some shipwrecked steamer passengers were thrown upon his hands, forwhom he provided extra-officially, on Mr. Buchanan's (then minister)refusing to have anything to do with the matter, a newspaper rumor wasstarted at home that Mr. Hawthorne would do nothing for them untilordered to by Mr. Buchanan. 

"It sickens me, " he wrote at that time, "to look back to America. I amsick to death of the continual fuss and tumult and excitement and badblood which we keep up about political topics. If it were not for mychildren, I should probably never return. "

And on the eve of sailing, he wrote to another friend:--

"I shall go home, I fear, with a heavy heart, not expecting to be verywell contented there. "

But his sense of duty, stronger than that of many Americans undersimilar circumstances, was rigorously obeyed. We shall see what sort ofreward this fidelity to country won from public opinion at home. 

X. 

THE LAST ROMANCE. 

1860-1863. 

There are in the "English Note-Books" several dismal and patheticrecords of tragic cases of brutality or murder on shipboard, which itwas Hawthorne's duty as consul to investigate. These things, as onemight have divined they would, made a very strong and deep impressionupon him; and he tried strenuously to interest the United Statesgovernment in bettering the state of the marine by new laws. But thoughthis evil was and is still quite as monstrous as that of slavery, therewas no means of mixing up prejudice and jealousy with the reform, tohelp it along, and he could effect nothing. He resolved, on returninghome, to write some articles--perhaps a volume--exposing the horrors socalmly overlooked; but the slavery agitation, absorbing everybody, perhaps discouraged him: the scheme was never carried out. It is a pity;for, aside from the weight which so eminent a name might have given to agood cause, the work would have clearly proven the quick, responsive, practical nature of his humanity--a quality which some persons have seenfit to deny him--in a case where no question of conflicting rightsdivided his sense of duty. 

He came to America in June, 1860. For several years the mutterings ofrising war between the States had been growing louder. In June of 1856he had written to Bridge, expressing great hope that all would yet turnout well. But so rapidly did the horizon blacken, that later in the sameyear he declared that "an actual fissure" seemed to him to be openingbetween the two sections of the country. In January, 1857:--

"I regret that you think so doubtfully of the prospects of the Union;for I should like well enough to hold on to the old thing. And yet Imust confess that I sympathize to a large extent with the Northernfeeling, and think it is about time for us to make a stand. If compelledto choose, I go for the North. New England is quite as large a lump ofearth as my heart can really take in. .. . However, I have no kindred withnor leaning toward the Abolitionists. "

He felt, no doubt, that the vital principle of The Union from thebeginning had been compromise, mutual concession, and if it was to besevered, preferred that it should be peacefully. Still, his moods andwishes varied as did those of many careful watchers at that time; and hesaw too clearly the arguments on either side to hold fixedly to onecourse. In the December after his return, secession began; and for morethan a year following he could not fix his attention upon literarymatters. He wrote little, not even his journal, as Mrs. Hawthorne hastold us, until 1862. Accustomed to respond accurately to every influenceabout him, with that sensitized exterior of receptive imagination whichoverlay the fixed substance of personal character, --so that, as we haveseen, even a change of climate left its impress on his productions, --itwas not strange that the emotions of horror and pain, the passion ofhate, the splendid heroism which charged the whole atmosphere about him, now, should absorb his whole sensibility, and paralyze his imagination. It was no time for quiet observation or creative revery. A new era hadbroken upon us, ushered by the wild din of trumpet and cannon, andbattle-cry; an era which was to form new men, and shape a new generation. He must pause and listen to the agonies of this birth, striving vainly toabsorb the commotion into himself and to let it subside into clear visionsof the future. No hope! He could not pierce the war-smoke to any horizonof better things. He who had schooled himself so unceasingly to feel withutmost intensity the responsibility of each soul for any violence or crimeof others, could not cancel the fact of multitudinous murder by anyhypothesis of prospective benefit. Thus, in the midst of that magnificentturbulence, he was like the central quiet of a whirlpool: all the fiercecurrents met there, and seemed to pause, --but only seemed. Full ofsympathy as he was for his fellows, and agitated at times by the samewarlike impulses, he could not give himself rein as they did, nor daredto raise any encouraging strain in his writing, as others felt that theymight freely do. His Puritan sense of justice, refined by descent andwedded to mercy, compelled him to weigh all carefully, to debate long andcompassionately. But meantime the popular sense of justice--that sameNew England sentiment, of which his own was a development--cared nothingfor these fine considerations, and Hawthorne was generally condemned byit as being warped by his old Democratic alliances into what was calledtreason. Nevertheless, he was glad to be in his native land, and sufferbitter criticism here, --if that were all that could be granted, --ratherthan to remain an unmolested exile. 

An article which he contributed to the "Atlantic Monthly" in July, 1862, gives a faint inkling of his state of mind at this time; but nothingillustrates more clearly, either, the reserve which he always claimedlay behind his seemingly most frank expressions in print. For he theregives the idea of something like coldness in his attitude touching thewhole great tragedy. But those who saw him daily, and knew his realmood, have remembered how deeply his heart was shaken by it. Fortunately, there are one or two epistolary proofs of the degree inwhich his sympathy with his own side of the struggle sometimes masteredhim. He used to say that he only regretted that his son was too youngand himself too old to admit of either of them entering the army; andjust after the first battle of Bull Run he wrote to Mr. Lowell, atCambridge, declining an invitation:--

THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD, July 23, 1861. 

DEAR LOWELL:--I am to start, in two or three days, on an excursionwith----, who has something the matter with him, and seems to needsea-air and change. If I alone were concerned, . .. I would most gladlyput off my trip till after your dinner; but, as the case stands, I amcompelled to decline. Speaking of dinner, last evening's news will dullthe edge of many a Northern appetite; but if it puts all of us into thesame grim and bloody humor that it does me, the South had better havesuffered ten defeats than won this victory. 

Sincerely yours, NATH. HAWTHORNE. 

And to another friend, in October:--

"For my part, I don't hope (nor, indeed, wish) to see the Union restoredas it was; amputation seems to me much the better plan. .. . I would fightto the death for the Northern slave States, and let the rest go. .. . Ihave not found it possible to occupy my mind with its usual trash andnonsense during these anxious times; but as the autumn advances, I findmyself sitting down at my desk and blotting successive sheets of paperas of yore. "

He had now begun, I suppose, the "Romance of Immortality, " or "SeptimiusFelton, " which has been posthumously printed, but had been abandoned byhim for another treatment of the same theme, called "The DolliverRomance. " This last, of which two chapters appeared, was left unfinishedat his death. Of "Septimius" I shall not attempt an analysis: itcontains several related and concentric circles of meaning, to surveywhich would require too much space. The subject had been one of theearliest themes of meditation with Hawthorne, and he wrote as with afountain-pen in which was locked the fluid thought of a lifetime. One of the less obvious aspects of the book is the typificationin Septimius's case of that endless struggle which is the lot ofevery man inspired by an ideal aim. The poet and the painter are, equally with Septimius, seekers after immortality, though of a moreethereal kind; and his morbidness and exaggeration serve to excite in usa tenderness and pity over him, assisting the reception of truth. Theserelate mainly to the temptation of the artist to effect a severance ofordinary, active human relations. (Sad to think what bitter cause theauthor had to brood upon this, the fault attributed to himself!) Thepoet, the creator in whatever art, must maintain his own circle ofserene air, shutting out from it the flat reverberations of common life;but if he fail to live generously toward his fellows, --if he cannot makethe light of every day supply the nimbus in which he hopes to appearshining to posterity, --then he will fall into the treacherous pit ofselfishness where Septimius's soul lies smothered. But this set ofmeanings runs imperceptibly into others, for the book is much like thecabalistic manuscript described in its pages: now it is blurred overwith deceptive sameness, and again it brims with multifarious beautieslike those that swim within the golden depth of Tieck's enchantedgoblet. The ultimate and most insistent moral is perhaps that whichbrings it into comparison with Goethe's "Faust"; this, namely, that, inorder to defraud Nature of her dues, we must enter into compact with theDevil. Both Faust and Septimius study magic in their separate ways, withthe hope of securing results denied to their kind by a common destiny;but Faust proves infinitely the meaner of the two, since he desires onlyto restore his youth, that he may engage in the mere mad joy of a lustyexistence for a few years, while Septimius seeks some mode, howeveraustere and cheerless, of prolonging his life through centuries ofworld-wide beneficence. Yet the satanically refined egoism which layshold of Septimius is the same spirit incarnated in Goethe'sMephistopheles, --_der Geist der stets verneint_. To Faust he deniesthe existence of good in anything, primarily the good of that universalknowledge to the acquisition of which he has devoted his life, butthrough this scepticism mining his faith in all besides. To Septimius hedenies the worth of so brief a life as ours, and the good of living towhatever end seems for the hour most needful and noble. Septimius mightperhaps be described as Faust at an earlier stage of development thanthat in which Goethe represents him. [Footnote: Indeed, these words, applied by Mephistopheles to Faust, suit Septimius equally well:--

 "Ihm hat das Schicksal einen Geist gegeben Der ungebändigt immer vorwarts dringt Und dessen übereiltes Streben Der Erde Freuden überspringt. "]

As a further point of resemblance between the two cases, it may benoticed that the false dreams of both are dispelled by the exorcisingtouch of a woman. Both have fallen into error through perceiving onlyhalf of the truth which has hovered glimmering before them; these errorsoriginate in the exclusively masculine mood, the asceticism, which hasprevailed in their minds. It will be observed that, in the firstrelation of Rose to Septimius, Hawthorne takes pains to contrast withthis mood, delicately but strongly, the woman's gentle conservatism andwisely practical tendency to be satisfied with life, which make herinfluence so admirable a poising force to man. The subsequent alterationof the situation, by which he makes her the half-sister of his hero, isowing, as Mr. Higginson has pointed out, to the fact "that a heroinemust be supplied who corresponds to the idea in the lover's soul; likeHelena in the second part of Faust. " [Footnote: A phase of characterrich in interest, but which I can only mention, in passing, is presentedin the person of Sybil Dacy, who here occupies very much the same place, in some regards, as Roger Chillingworth in "The Scarlet Letter. " Themovement of the story largely depends on a subtle scheme of revengeundertaken by her, as that of "The Scarlet Letter" hangs upon the modeof retribution sought by the physician; but her malice is directed, characteristically, against the slayer of the young officer who haddespoiled her of her honor, and, again characteristically, she is unableto consummate her plan, from the very tenderness of her feminine heart, which leads her first to half sympathize with his dreams, then pity himfor the deceit she practised on him, and at last to rather love thanhate him. ]

But there is a suitable difference between the working of the womanlyelement in "Faust" and in Hawthorne's romance. In the former instance itis through the gratification of his infernal desire that the hero isawakened from his trance of error and restored to remorse; whileSeptimius's failure to accomplish his intended destiny appears to beowing to the inability of his aspiring nature to accommodate itself tothat code of "moral dietetics" which is to assist his strange project. "Kiss no woman if her lips be red; look not upon her if she be veryfair, " is the maxim taught him. "If thou love her, all is over, and thywhole past and remaining labor and pains will be in vain. " How pathetica situation this, how much more terrible than that of Faust, when he hasreached the turning-point in his career! A nature which could accept anearthly immortality on these terms, for the sake of his fellows, mustindeed have been a hard and chilly one. But there is still too much ofthe heart in it, to admit of being satisfied with so cruel anabstraction. On the verge of success, as he supposes, with thelong-sought drink standing ready for his lips, Septimius neverthelessseeks a companion. Half unawares, he has fallen in love with Sybil, andthenceforth, though in a way he had not anticipated, "all is over. " Yet, saved from death by the poison in which he had hoped to find the springof endless life, his fate appears admirably fitting. There is no pictureof Mephisto hurrying him off to an apparently irrevocable doom. Thewrongs he has committed against himself, his friends, humanity, --these, indeed, remain, and are remembered. He has undoubtedly fallen from hisfirst purity and earnestness, and must hereafter be content to live alife of mere conventional comfort, full of mere conventional goodness, conventional charities, in that substantial English home of his. Couldanything be more perfectly compensatory?

Nothing is more noticeable than the way in which, while so manysymbolisms spring up out of the story, the hero's half-crazed andbewildered atmosphere is the one which we really accept, until thereading is ended. By this means we are enabled to live through the wholeimmortal future which he projects for himself, though he never inreality achieves any of it. This forcing of the infinite into thefinite, we are again indebted to Mr. Higginson for emphasizing as "oneof the very greatest triumphs in all literature. " "A hundred separatetragedies, " he says, "would be easier to depict than this which combinesso many in one. "

But notice the growth of the romance in Hawthorne's mind. "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, " in which several people are restored to youthfor an hour by a life-elixir, was published before 1837. In 1840 we havethis entry in the journal: "If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring. " A few years afterward, in "AVirtuoso's Collection, " the elixir vitae is introduced, "in an antiquesepulchral urn, " but the narrator refuses to quaff it. "'No; I desirenot an earthly immortality, ' said I. 'Were man to live longer on theearth, the spiritual would die out of him. .. . There is a celestialsomething within us, that requires, after a certain time, the atmosphereof heaven to preserve it from ruin. '" But the revolt against death, andthen the reactionary meditation upon it, and final reverence for it, must, from the circumstances of his youngest years, have been very earlyfamiliar to Hawthorne; and in the course of these meditations, theconception of deathlessness must often have floated before him. Thetradition as to the former owner of the Wayside, who had thought heshould never die (alluded to in the letter to Curtis, in 1852 [Footnote:See ante, p. 244. ]), brought it definitely home to him. He had in 1837thought of this: "A person to spend all his life and splendid talents, in trying to achieve something totally impossible, --as, to make aconquest over nature"; but the knowledge of an actual person who hadexpected to live forever gave the scattered elements coherence. The wayin which other suggestions came into the plan is exceedingly curious. The idea of a bloody footstep appears in the Note-Books in 1850: "Theprint in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of atown. " By a singular corroboration, he encountered five years afterwardin England an actual bloody footprint, or a mark held to be such, atSmithell's Hall in Lancashire. ("English Note-Books, " Vol. I. April 7, and August 25, 1855. ) The parting request of his hostess there was thathe "should write a ghost-story for her house, " and he observes that "thelegend is a good one. " Only five days after first hearing it he makes anote thus: "In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may havecarried away with him a family secret, by which it was in his power, hadhe so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secrethe transmitted to his American progeny, by whom it is inheritedthroughout all the intermediate generations. At last the hero of myRomance comes to England, and finds that, by means of this secret, hestill has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family. " Thisclearly refers to something already rapidly taking shape in his mind, and recalls at once the antique chest containing family papers, and theestate in England waiting for an heir, of "Septimius. " Could he havealready connected the two things, the bloody footstep and thisAnglo-American interest? The next piece of history comes in the shape ofa manuscript book in journal form, written in 1858, after Hawthorne hadleft the consulate, and containing what must have been the earliestsketch of the story, as he then conceived it. It begins abruptly, andproceeds uncertainly, at the rate of a few pages each day, for about amonth. Detached passages of narration alternate with abstracts of theproposed plot, and analysis of the characters. The chief interest seemsto lie in the project which a young American has formed, during a visitto England, of tracing out and proving his inherited right to an oldmanor-house formerly the property of his ancestors. This old hallpossesses the peculiarity of the bloody footstep, and with this somemystery is connected, which the writer himself does not yet seem to havediscovered. He takes a characteristic pleasure in waiting for thissuggestive footstep to track the lurking interest of his story to itslair, and lingers on the threshold of the tale, gazing upon it, indulging himself with that tantalizing pleasure of vague anticipationin which he hopes to envelop the good reader. The perusal of thissingular journal, in which the transactions recorded are but day-dreams, is absorbing beyond description. But though at times he seems to berapidly approaching the heart of the story, yet at every point thesubtle darkness and coming terror of the theme seem to baffle theauthor, and he retires, to await a more favorable moment. At itsconclusion, though he appears now to have formed a clear picture enoughof what his persons are to do, there is still wanting the underlyingthought, which he at moments dimly feels but cannot bring to light, andwithout which he is unable to fuse the materials into readiness for themould. 

Our only information as to the course of the story between April, 1858, and the time of writing "Septimius, " must be gathered from a sketchfound among the author's papers, the date of which it is not possible todetermine with precision, though both its matter and form indicate thatit must have been written subsequently to the journal above mentioned. Herein are curiously mingled certain features of both "Septimius" andthe "Dolliver Romance. " So far as is consistent with the essentialprivacy of the manuscript, I shall give a general outline of itscontents. It consists of two sections, in the second of which a lapse ofsome years is implied. In the first of these chapters, for they hardlyexceed that limit, the most prominent figure is that of a singular, morose old man, who inhabits a house overlooking a New Englandgraveyard. But though his situation resembles in this particular that ofGrandsir Dolliver, his characteristics resemble more those of Dr. Portsoaken. He is constantly accompanied, too, by brandy-and-water and acloud-compelling pipe; and his study, like the doctor's chamber in"Septimius, " is tapestried with spider-webs; a particularly virulentspider which dangles over his head, as he sits at his writing-desk, being made to assume the aspect of a devilish familiar. On the otherhand, his is a far richer and less debased nature than that ofPortsoaken. Hawthorne appears subsequently to have divided him, straining off from the rank sediments which settle into the character ofDr. Portsoaken the clear sweetness of good Grandsir Dolliver. This "grimdoctor, " as he is almost invariably styled in the manuscript, seems tohave originated in Hawthorne's knowledge of a Mr. Kirkup, painter, spiritualist and antiquarian, of Florence, [Footnote: French and ItalianNote-Books, Vol. II. ] who also probably stood as a model for GrandsirDolliver. Not that either of these personages is copied from Mr. Kirkup;but the personality and surroundings of this quaint old gentleman hadsome sort of affinity with the author's idea, which led him to maintaina certain likeness between him and his own fictitious persons. As in thecase of the Florentine antiquary, a little girl dwells in the house ofthe doctor, her chief playmate being, like that of Mr. Kirkup's adopteddaughter, a very beautiful Persian kitten. There is much about her likePansie, of the "Dolliver" fragment, but she is still only dimly broughtout. The boy is described as of superior nature, but strangely addictedto revery. Though his traits are but slightly indicated, he suggests ingeneral the character of Septimius, and may very easily have grown intohim, at a later period. At first he is much neglected by the doctor, butafterwards, by resolute and manly behavior in questioning his mysteriousguardian as to his own origin, and the connection subsisting betweenthem, he secures greater consideration. The doctor gradually hints tohim the fact of his descent from an old English family, and frequentmention is made of the ancestral hall, the threshold of which is stainedby the imprint of a bloody footstep marking the scene of some darktragedy, which, in the superstitious haze thrown over it by time, assumes various and uncertain forms. At different times two strangersare introduced, who appear to have some obscure knowledge of, andconnection with, the ghastly footstep; and, finally, a headstone isdiscovered in the neighboring cemetery, marking the spot where an oldman had been buried many years since, and engraved with the likeness ofa foot. The grave has been recently opened to admit a new occupant, andthe children, in playing about it, discover a little silver key, whichthe doctor, so soon as it is shown him, pockets, with the declarationthat it is of no value. After this, the boy's education is taken in handby his being sent to school; but presently the doctor sickens of life, and characteristically resolving to abandon brandy-drinking, and die, does so accordingly. Mention has previously been made of certain paperswhich he had kept in a secret place, and these the youth now secures. The second part describes his advent into England. He soon makes his wayto the old hall, but just as his connection with it and its inmatesbegins, the manuscript terminates. 

It will be noticed that in this fragment the scene is at first laid inNew England, whereas the journalized sketch opened the drama in England. From this I infer that the former was written after the return to thiscountry. "The Marble Faun" appropriated the author's attention, afterthe sketch of 1858; and in this, which was probably written just beforethe commencement of the war, he had not yet clearly struck the key-noteof the story. When he recurred to it, in the autumn of 1861, onbeginning to "blot successive sheets as of yore, " it was at last withthe definite design of uniting the legend of the deathless man with thelegend of Smithell's Hall. It is as if, having left England, he could nolonger write an English romance, but must give the book mainly anAmerican coloring again. There is a pathetic interest, too, in his thuswavering between the two countries, which now so nearly equally dividedhis affections, and striving to unite the Wayside with the far-offEnglish manor. Under the new design, everything began to fall intoplace. The deathless man was made the hero; the English inheritancebecame an inferior motive-power, on which, however, the romantic actiondepends; the family papers and the silver key came well to hand for theelucidation of the plot; the bloody footstep gained a new and deepsignificance; and a "purple everlasting flower, " presented in 1854 toMrs. Hawthorne by the gardener of Eaton Hall, blossomed out, withsupernatural splendor, as a central point in the design. The scene beingin Concord, and the time of writing that of war, the Revolutionaryassociation was natural. But the public phase of that epoch could notassume an important place: it was sunk into the background, formingmerely a lurid field on which the figures of this most solemn andterrific of all Hawthorne's works stand out in portentous relief. Onesingular result of the historic location, however, is the use that wasnow made of that tradition which Lowell had told him at the Old Manse, concerning a boy who was chopping wood on the April morning of thefamous fight, and found a wounded British soldier on the field, whom hekilled with his axe. "Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise, I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent career, and observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain. .. . This onecircumstance has borne more fruit for me than all that history tells usof the fight. " Thus had he written, fourteen years before; and now thatsombre study furnished him with the psychology of the death-scene in thebeginning of "Septimius. "

But the romance, even in this form, was again abandoned, as we learnfrom the prefatory note to Pierce in "Our Old Home, " written in July, 1863. He there speaks of it as an "abortive project, utterly thrownaside, " which "will never now be accomplished. " In November of thatyear, "The Dolliver Romance" was announced for serial publication; andin the first page of the isolated opening scene, published in July, 1864, occurs the mention of a certain potent cordial, from which thegood doctor had received great invigoration, and which we may wellsuppose was destined to tincture the whole story. Another point fromwhich a connection with "Septimius Felton" may perhaps be traced is thepassing mention of Grandsir Dolliver's grandson Cornelius, by whom thiscordial had been compounded, he having displayed a great efficiency withpowerful drugs. Recalling that the author describes many nostrums ashaving been attributed to Septimius, which he had perhaps chanced uponin his unsuccessful attempts to distil the elixir of life, we may fairlyconjecture this posthumous character of Cornelius, this mere memory, tobe the remains of Septimius, who, it would seem, was to have been buriedby the author under the splendid monument of a still more highly wroughtand more aspiring form of the romance. The only remaining portions ofthis latest form have been printed, and are lull of a silvery andresonant promise. Unquestionably it was to have been as much a "Romanceof Immortality" as "Septimius"; and the exquisite contrast of the childPansie--who promised to be the author's most captivating femininecreation--with the aged man, would no doubt have given us a theme ofcelestial loveliness, as compared with the forbidding and remorselessmournfulness of the preliminary work. In the manuscript sketch for"Septimius" there is a note referring to a description in the "EnglishNote-Books" of two pine-trees at Lowood, on Windermere, "quite dead anddry, although they have the aspect of dark, rich life. But this iscaused by the verdure of two great ivy-vines which have twisted roundthem like gigantic snakes, . .. Throttling the life out of them, . .. Andone feels that they have _stolen the life_ that belonged to thepines. " This does not seem to have been used; but the necessity of somelife being stolen in order to add to any other life more than its share, is an idea that very clearly appears in the romance. In "Dolliver" thesame strain of feeling would probably have reappeared; but it wouldthere perhaps have been beautified, softened, expiated by the mutuallove of Pansie and the grandsire; each wishing to live forever, for theother. Even in "Septimius" we can discern Hawthorne standing upon thewayside hill-top, and, through the turbid medium of the unhappy hero, tenderly diffusing the essence of his own concluding thoughts on art andexistence. Like Mozart, writing what he felt to be a requiem for his owndeath, like Mozart, too, throwing down the pen in midmost of the melody, leaving the strain unfinished, he labors on, prescient of theoverhanging doom. Genial and tender at times, amidst their sadness, hisreveries are nevertheless darkened by the shadow of coming death; and itis not until the opening of "The Dolliver Romance" that the darknessbreaks away. Then, indeed, we feel once more the dewy freshness of thelong-past prime, with a radiance unearthly fair, besides, of some new, undreamed-of morning. He who has gone down into the dark valley appearsfor a brief space with the light of the heavenly city on hiscountenance. Ah, prophet, who spoke but now so sadly, what is this newmessage that we see brightening on your lips? Will it solve the riddleof sin and beauty, at last? We listen intently; we seem to lean out alittle way from earth. 

Only an eddying silence! And yet the air seems even now alive with hislast words. 

XI. 

PERSONALITY. 

What has thus far been developed in this essay, concerning Hawthorne'spersonality, though incidental, has, I hope, served the end inview, --that of suggesting a large, healthy nature, capable of the mostprofound thought and the most graceful and humorous mental play. Thedetails of his early life already given show how soon the inborn honorof his nature began to shine. The small irregularities in his collegecourse have seemed to me to bring him nearer and to endear him, withoutin any way impairing the dignity and beauty of character which prevailedin him from the beginning. It is good to know that he shared the averagehuman history in these harmless peccadilloes; for they never hurt hisintegrity, and they are reminders of that old but welcome truth, thatthe greatest men do not need a constant diet of great circumstances. Hehad many difficulties to deal with, as unpicturesque and harassing asany we have to encounter in our daily courses, --a thing which people arecuriously prone to forget in the case of eminent authors. The way inwhich he dealt with these throws back light on himself. We discover howwell the high qualities of genius were matched by those of character. 

Fragmentary anecdotes have a value, but so relative that to attempt toconstruct the subject's character out of them is hazardous. Conceptionsof a man derived only from such matter remind one of Charles Lamb'sghosts, formed of the particles which, every seven years, are replacedthroughout the body by new ones. Likewise, the grossest errors have beencommitted through the assumption that particular passages in Hawthorne'swritings apply directly and unqualifiedly to himself. There is so muchimagination interfused with them, that only a reverent and carefulimagination can apply them aright. Nor are private letters to beinterpreted in any other way than as the talk of the hour, veryinadequately representative, and often--unless read in manylights--positively untrue, to the writer. It gives an entirely falsenotion, for example, to accept as a trait of character this modestcovering up of a noble sentiment, which occurs in a letter refusing towithdraw the dedication of "Our Old Home" to Pierce, in the time of thelatter's unpopularity:--

"Nevertheless, I have no fancy for making myself a martyr when it ishonorably and conscientiously possible to avoid it; and I always measureout my heroism very accurately according to the exigencies of theoccasion, and should be the last man in the world to throw away a bit ofit needlessly. "

Such a passage ought never to have been printed without some modifyingword; for it has been execrably misused. "I have often felt, " Hawthornesays, "that words may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery betweenthe soul and the truth which it seeks. " What injustice, then, that heshould be judged by a literal construction of words quickly chosen forthe transient embodiment of a mood!

The first and most common opinion about the man Hawthorne is, that hemust have been extremely gloomy, because his mind nourished so manygrave thoughts and solemn fancies. But this merely proves that, as hehimself says, when people think he is pouring himself out in a tale oran essay, he is merely telling what is common to human nature, not whatis peculiar to himself. "I sympathize with them, not they with me. " Hesympathizes in the special direction of our darker side. A creative mindof the higher order holds the thread which guides it surely throughlife's labyrinths; but all the more on this account its attention iscalled to the erratic movement of other travellers around it. The geniuswho has the clew begins, therefore, to study these errors and todescribe them for our behoof. It is a great mistake to suppose that theabnormal or preposterous phases which he describes are the fruit of_self_-study, --personal traits disguised in fiction; yet this iswhat has often been affirmed of Hawthorne. We don't think of attributingto Dickens the multiform oddities which he pictures with such power, itbeing manifestly absurd to do so. As Dickens raises the laugh againstthem, we at once perceive that they are outside of himself. Hawthorne isso serious, that we are absorbed in the sober earnest of the thing, andforget to apply the rule in his case. Dickens's distinct aim is toexcite us with something uncommon; Hawthorne's, to show us that theelements of all tragedies lie within our individual natures; thereforewe begin to attribute in undue measure to _his_ individual natureall the abnormal conditions that he has shown to be potential in any ofus. But in truth he was a perfectly healthy person. 

"You are, intellectually speaking, quite a puzzle to me, " his friendGeorge Hillard wrote to him, once. "How comes it that, with sothoroughly healthy an organization as you have, you have such a tastefor the morbid anatomy of the human heart, and such a knowledge of it, too? I should fancy, from your books, that you were burdened with somesecret sorrow, that you had some blue chamber in your soul, into whichyou hardly dared to enter yourself; but when I see you, you give me theimpression of a man as healthy as Adam in Paradise. "

This very healthiness was his qualification for his office. By virtue ofhis mental integrity and absolute moral purity, he was able to handleunhurt all disintegrated and sinful forms of character; and when soulsin trouble, persons with moral doubts to solve and criminals wrote tohim for counsel, they recognized the healing touch of one whose pityingimmaculateness could make them well. 

She who knew best his habitual tone through a sympathy such as hasrarely been given to any man, who lived with him a life so exquisitelyfair and high, that to speak of it publicly is almost irreverent, haswritten:--

"He had the inevitable pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessedwhat a friend has called his 'awful power of insight'; but his mood wasalways cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and theairy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw toofar to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shapingimagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceivedmorbidness wherever it existed instantly, as if by the illumination ofhis own steady cheer. "

His closest friends, too, speak with delight of his genial warmth andease in converse with them. He could seldom talk freely with more thantwo or three, however, on account of his constitutional shyness, andperhaps of a peculiarly concentrative cast of mind; though he possesseda ready adaptability. "I talk with everybody: to Mrs. T---- good sense;to Mary, good sense, with a mixture of fun; to Mrs. G----, sentiment, romance, and nonsense. " [Footnote: American Note-Books, 1837. ] Agentleman who was with him at Brook farm, and knew him well, tells methat his presence was very attractive, and that he inspired great esteemamong all at the farm by his personal qualities. On a walking trip toWachusett, which they once made together, Hawthorne showed a greatinterest in sitting in the bar-rooms of country taverns, to listen tothe talk of the attendant farmers and villagers. The manner in which hewas approached had a great deal to do with his response. If treatedsimply and wisely, he would answer cordially; but he was entirelydismayed, as a rule, by those who made demonstrations of admiration orawe. "Why do they treat me so?" he asked a friend, in one case of thissort. "Why, they're afraid of you. " "But I tremble at _them_, " hesaid. "They think, " she explained, "that you're imagining all sorts ofterrible things. " "Heavens!" he answered; "if they only knew what I_do_ think about. " At one time, when he was visiting this samefriend, he was obliged to return some calls, and his companion in themidst of conversation left him to continue it. He had previously askedhis hostess, in assumed terror, what he should talk about, and sheadvised "climate. " Accordingly, he turned to the naval officer whom hewas calling upon, and asked him if he had ever been to the SandwichIslands. "The man started, " he said, on returning, "as if he had beenstruck. He had evidently been there and committed some terrible crime, which my allusion recalled. I had made a frightful mess of it. B---- ledme away to the door. " This woful account was, of course, an imaginaryand symbolical representation of the terrors which enforced conversationcaused him; the good officer's surprise at the abrupt introduction of anew subject had supplied him with the ludicrous suggestion. Mr. Curtishas given an account of his demeanor on another occasion:--

"I had driven up with some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the winter, and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitablehearth. There were various men and women of note assembled; and I, wholistened attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for sometime scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, alittle withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, andhis black eyes ['black' is an error] clearly burning under his blackbrow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person, who sat silentas a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been apoet, --a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the window, andstood there quietly for a long time, watching the dead-white landscape. No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him; the conversationflowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his silence was tobe respected. It was the same thing at table. In vain the silent manimbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower athis lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me nothing waslost. So supreme was his silence, that it presently engrossed me, to theexclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, butthis silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were saidby the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbnessof this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presentlyrose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over hisface like day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of thenight. '"

He was not a lover of argumentation. "His principle seemed to be, if aman cannot understand without talking to him, it is useless to talk, because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not. " And thesame writer says:----

"His own sympathy was so broad and sure, that, although nothing had beensaid for hours, his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his eye, nor a single pulse of beauty in the day, or scene, or society, failed tothrill his heart. In this way his silence was most social. Everythingseemed to have been said. "

I am told that in his own home, though he was often silent, it was neverwith sadness except in seasons of great illness in the house, theprevailing effect of his manner being usually that of a cheerful andalmost humorous calm. Mr. Curtis gives perhaps one of the bestdescriptions of his aspect, when he speaks of his "glimmering smile";and of his atmosphere, when he says that at Emerson's house it seemedalways morning, but at Hawthorne's you passed into

 "A land in which it seemed always afternoon. "

Hawthorne's personal appearance is said by those who knew him to havebeen always very impressive. He was tall and strongly built, withbeautiful and lustrous gray-blue eyes, and luxuriant dark brown hair ofgreat softness, which grew far back from his forehead, as in the earlyengraved portrait of him. His skin had a peculiar fineness and delicacy, giving unusual softness to his complexion. After his Italian sojourn healtered much, his hair having begun to whiten, and a thick dark mustachebeing permitted to grow, so that a wit described him as looking like a"boned pirate. " When it became imperative to shake off his reticence, heseems to have had the power of impressing as much by speech as he hadbefore done by silence. It was the same abundant, ardent, butself-contained and perfectly balanced nature that informed either phase. How commanding was this nature may be judged from the fact related ofhim by an acquaintance, that rude people jostling him in a crowd wouldgive way at once "at the sound of his low and almost irresolute voice. "The occasions on which he gave full vent to his indignation at anythingwere very rare; but when these came, he manifested a strength of swayonly to be described as regal. Without the least violence, he brought asearching sternness to bear that was utterly overwhelming, carrying asit did the weight of perfect self-control. Something even of theeloquent gift of old Colonel Hathorne seemed to be locked within him, like a precious heirloom rarely shown; for in England, where hisposition called for speech-making, he acquitted himself with brillianthonor. But the effort which this compelled was no doubt quitecommensurate with the success. He never shrank, notwithstanding, fromeffort, when obligation to others put in a plea. A member of his familyhas told me that, when talking to any one not congenial to him, theeffect of the contact was so strong as to cause an almost physicalcontraction of his whole stalwart frame, though so slight as to beperceptible only to eyes that knew his habitual and informal aspects;yet he would have sunk through the floor rather than betray hissensations to the person causing them. Mr. Curtis, too, records theamusement with which he watched Hawthorne paddling on the Concord Riverwith a friend whose want of skill caused the boat continually to veerthe wrong way, and the silent generosity with which he put forth hiswhole strength to neutralize the error, rather than mortify hiscompanion by an explanation. His considerateness was always delicate andalert, and has left in his family a reverence for qualities that havecertainly never been surpassed and not often equalled in sweetness. 

He was simple in his habits, and fond of being out of doors, butnot--after his college days--as a sportsman. While living beside theConcord, he rowed frequently, with a dreamy devotion to the pastime, andwas fond of fishing; swimming, too, he enjoyed. But his chief exercisewas walking; he had a vast capacity for it, and was, I think, never evenseen upon horseback. At Brook Farm he "belabored the rugged furrows"with a will; and at the Old Manse he presided over his garden in aparadisiacal sort of way. Books in every form he was always eager for, sometimes, as has been reported, satisfying himself with an old almanacor newspaper, over which he would brood as deeply as over richly storedvolumes of classic literature. At other times he was fastidious in hischoice, and threw aside many books before he found the right one for thehour. [Footnote: He would attach himself to a book or a poem apparentlyby some law perceptible only to himself, perhaps often giving aninterest by his own genius. A poem On Solitude, in Dryden's Miscellany, was at one time a special favorite with him. 

It begins:--

 "O Solitude, my sweetest choice, Places devoted to the Night, Remote from Tumult and from Noise, How you my restless thoughts delight!"

And the last stanza has these lines:--

 "O, how I solitude adore, That element of noblest wit, Where I have learned Apollo's lore, Without the pains to study it. "]

An impression has been set afloat that he cared nothing for books inthemselves, but this is incorrect. He never had the means to accumulatea library of any size, but he had a passion for books. 

"There yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for literature ofall kinds, " he writes in "The Old Manse. " "A bound volume has a charm inmy eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for the goodMussulman; . .. Every new book or antique one may contain the 'opensesame, '--the spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspectedcave of Truth. "

When he lived at the Wayside, and would occasionally bring home a smallpackage of books from Boston, these furnished him fresh pleasure formany days. He would carry some favorite of them with him everywhere, from room to room or to his hill-top. He was, as we have seen, a cordialadmirer of other writers, seldom vexing himself with a critical reviewof their merits and defects, but applying to them instead the test ofhis own catholic capacity for enjoyment. The deliberate tone in which hejudges his own works, in his letters, shows how little his mind wasimpressed by the greatness of their fame and of the genius found inthem. There could not have been a more modest author, though he did notweakly underrate his work. "Recognition, " he once said to Mr. Howells, "makes a man very modest. "

An attempt has also been made to show that he had little interest inanimals, partly based, ludicrous as it may seem, on his bringing theminto only one of his books. In his American journals, however, there isabundant evidence of his acute sympathy in this direction; at the OldManse he fried fish for his dog Leo, when he says he should not havedone it for himself; and in the Trosachs he finds a moment for pityingsome little lambs startled by the approach of his party. [Footnote:English Note-Books (May, 1856). ] I have already mentioned his fondnessfor cats. It has further been said that he did not enjoy wild nature, because in the "English Note-Books" there is no outgushing of ecstaticdescription. But in fact he had the keenest enjoyment of it. He couldnot enter into the spectacle when hurrying through strange regions. Among the English lakes he writes:--

"To say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed to methat I had eaten a score of mountains and quaffed as many lakes, all inthe space of two or three days, and the natural consequence was asurfeit. 

"I doubt if anybody ever does really see a mountain, who goes for theset and sole purpose of seeing it. Nature will not let herself be seenin such cases. You must patiently bide her time; and by and by, at someunforeseen moment, she will quietly and suddenly unveil herself and fora brief space allow you to look right into the heart of her mystery. Butif you call out to her peremptorily, 'Nature! unveil yourself this verymoment!' she only draws her veil the closer; and you may look with allyour eyes, and imagine that you see all that she can show, and yet seenothing. "

But this was because his sensibility was so great that he drew fromlittle things a larger pleasure than many feel when excited by grandones; and knowing this deeper phase, he could not be content with thehasty admiration on which tourists flatter themselves. The beauty of ascene which he could absorb in peace was never lost upon him. Every yearthe recurrent changes of season filled him with untold pleasure; and inthe spring, Mrs. Hawthorne has been heard to say, he would walk with herin continuous silence, his heart full of the awe and delight with whichthe miracle of buds and new verdure inspired him. Nothing could be moreaccurate or sensitive than the brief descriptions of nature in hisworks. But there is nothing sentimental about them; partly owing to theAnglo-Saxon instinct which caused him to seek precise and detailedstatement first of all, and partly because of a certain classic, awe-inspired reserve, like that of Horace and Virgil. 

There was a commendable indolence in his character. It was not aconstitutional weakness, overcoming will, but the instinctive precautionof a man whose errand it was to rise to great emergencies of exertion. He always waited for an adequate mood, before writing. But theseintervals, of course, were richly productive of revery which afterwardentered into the creative moments. He would sometimes become deeplyabstracted in imagination; and while he was writing "The Scarlet Letter"it is related by a trustworthy person that, sitting in the room wherehis wife was doing some sewing, he unconsciously took up a part of thework and cut it into minute fragments with the scissors, without beingaware that he had done so. At some previous time, he had in the same waygradually chipped off with a knife portions of a table, until the entirefolding-leaf was worn away by the process. The opinion was sometimesadvanced by him that without a certain mixture of uncongenial labor hemight not have done so much with the pen; but in this he perhapsunderestimated the leisure in his blood, which was one of the elementsof his power. Men of smaller calibre are hollowed out by the fire ofideas, and decay too quickly; but this trait preserved him from such afate. Combined with his far-reaching foresight, it may have hadsomething to do with his comparative withdrawal from practical affairsother than those which necessity connected him with. Of Holgrave hewrites:--

"His error lay in supposing that this age more than any past or futureone is destined to see the garments of antiquity exchanged for a newsuit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; . .. Andmore than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end inview whether he himself should contend for it or against it. "

The implied opinion of the author, here, is not that of a fatalist, butof an optimist (if we must connect him with any "ism") who has a veryprofound faith in Providence; not in any "special providence, " but inthat operation of divine laws through unexpected agencies andconflicting events, which is very gradually approximating human affairsto a state of truthfulness. Hawthorne was one of the great believers ofhis generation; but his faith expressed itself in the negative way ofshowing how fragile are the ordinary objects of reverence in the world, how subject the best of us are to the undermining influence of verygreat sin; and, on the other hand, how many traits of good there are, byconsequence, even in the worst of us. This, however, is a mere skeletonstatement: the noblest element in his mood is that he believes with hisheart. A good interpreter has said that he _feels_ with his _brain_, and_thinks_ with his _heart_, to show the completeness with which hemingled the two elements in his meditations on existence. A warm, pure, living sympathy pervaded all his analysis of mankind, without which thatanalysis would have taken no hold upon us. It is a crude view whichreckons him to have been wanting in moral enthusiasm: he had not thatkind which can crush out sympathy with suffering, for the sake ofcarrying out an idea. Perhaps in some cases this was a fault; but onecannot dwell on the mistaken side of such a phase, when it possessesanother side so full of beneficent aid to humanity. And it must beremembered that with all this susceptibility, he was not a sufferingpoet, like Shelley, but distinctly an endurer. His moral enthusiasm wasdeeper than that of any scheme or system. 

His distaste for society has been declared to proceed from the factthat, when he once became interested in people, he could no longerchemically resolve them into material for romance. But this assumptionis also erroneous; for Hawthorne, if he felt it needful, could bring tobear upon his best friends the same qualitative measuring skill that heexercised on any one. I do not doubt that he knew where to place hisfriends and acquaintance in the scale of relative excellence. All of uswho have not an equal analytic power with his own can at least reverencehis discretion so far as to believe that he had stand-points not open toevery one, from which he took views often more essentially just than ifhe had assumed a more sweeping estimate. In other cases, where hebestowed more friendship and confidence than the object of themespecially deserved, he no doubt sought the simple pleasure of acceptingwhat circumstances offered him. He was not a suspicious person;although, in fear of being fooled by his fancy, he cultivated what heoften spoke of to a friend as "morose common-sense, " deeming it adesirable alloy. There was even, in many relations, an unquestioningtrust on his part; for he might well be called

 "As the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime. "

The connection between Pierce and himself involved too manyconsiderations to make it possible to pass them with indifference; andhe perhaps condemned certain public acts of the President, while feelingit to be utter disloyalty to an old friend to discuss these mistakeswith any one. As to other slighter connections, it is very likely he didnot take the trouble that might have saved him from being imposed upon. 

But it is impossible to define Hawthorne's personality precisely. Apoet's whole effort is to indirectly express this, by expressing theeffect of things upon him; and we may read much of Hawthorne in hisbooks, if we have the skill. But it is very clear that he put only apart of himself into them; that part which best served the inexorablelaw of his genius for treating life in a given light. For the rest, histwo chapters on "The Custom-House" and "The Old Manse" show us somethingof his mode of taking daily affairs. But his real and inmost characterwas a mystery even to himself, and this, because he felt so profoundlythe impossibility of sounding to the bottom any human heart. "A cloudyveil stretches over the abyss of my nature, " he writes, at one time. "Ihave, however, no love of secrecy or darkness. " At another time: "Lightsand shadows are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I knowneither whence they come nor whither they go; nor do I look too closelyinto them. " A mind so conscious as his of the slight reality ofappearances would be dissatisfied with the few tangible qualities whichare all of himself that a man can discern: at the same time he wouldhesitate to probe the deeper self assiduously, for fear of turning hissearching gaze too intently within, and thus becoming morbid. In otherpersons, however, he could perceive a contour, and pursue his study ofinvestigation from without inward, --a more healthy method. His_instinctive_ knowledge of himself, being brought into play, wouldof course aid him. Incidentally, then, something of himself comes tolight in his investigation of others. And it is perhaps this inabilityto define their own natures, except by a roundabout method, which is thecreative impulse of all great novelists and dramatists. I doubt whethermany of the famous delineators of character could give us a verydistinct account of their own individualities; and if they did, it wouldprobably make them out the most uninteresting of beings. It wouldcertainly be divested of the special charm of their other writing. Imagine Dickens clearly accounting for himself and his peculiar traits:would he be able to excite even a smile? How much of his own deliciouspersonality could Thackeray have described without losing the zest ofhis other portraitures? Hawthorne has given a kind of picture of himselfin Coverdale, and was sometimes called after that character by hisfriends; but I suspect he has adroitly constructed Coverdale out of the_appearance_ which he knew himself to make in the eyes ofassociates. I do not mean that Hawthorne had not a very decisivepersonality; for indeed he had. But the essence of the person cannot becompressed into a few brief paragraphs, and must be slowly drawn in as apervasive elixir from his works, his letters, his note-books. In thelatter he has given as much definition of his interior self as we arelikely to get, for no one else can continue the broken jottings that hehas left, and extend them into outlines. We shall not greatly err if wetreat the hidden depths of his spirit with as much reverence as hehimself used in scrutinizing them. Curiously enough, many of those whohave studied this most careful and delicate of definers have embracedthe madness of attempting to bind him down in unhesitating, absolutestatements. He who mastered words so completely that he learned todespise their obscurity, has been made the victim of easy epithets and afew conventional phrases. But none can ever be said to know Hawthornewho do not leave large allowances for the unknowable. 

XII. 

POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE. 

The names of Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have been so often connectedwithout due discrimination, that it is imperative to consider here theactual relation between the three men. Inquiry might naturally be rousedby the circumstance that, although Hawthorne has freely been likened toIrving in some quarters, and in others to Poe, the latter two are neversupposed to hold anything in common. Indeed, they might aptly be citedin illustration of the widely opposed tendencies already developed inour brief national literature. Two things equal to the same thing areequal to each other; and if Poe and Irving were each equal to Hawthorne, there would be some similarity between them. But it is evident that theyare not like quantities; and we must conclude that they have beenunconsciously used by critics, in trying to find a unit of measure togauge the greatest of the triad with. 

Undoubtedly there are resemblances in Hawthorne to both Poe and Irving. Hawthorne and Irving represent a dignity and roundedness of dictionwhich is one of the old-fashioned merits in English writing; and becausethey especially, among eminent authors of the century, have stood forthis quality, they have been supposed to stand close together. ButIrving's speech is not so much an organic part of his genius as apreconceived method of expression which has a considerable share inmodifying his thought. It is rather a manner than a style. On the otherhand, it would be hard to find a style growing so naturally and stronglyout of elemental attributes as Hawthorne's, so deftly waiting upon theslightest movement of idea, at once disclosing and lightly veiling theinforming thought, --like the most delicate sculptured marble drapery. The radical differences of the two men were also obscured in thebeginning by the fact that Hawthorne did not for some time exhibit thatmassive power of hewing out individual character which afterward hadfull swing in his romances, and by a certain kinship of fancy in hislighter efforts, with Irving's. "The Art of Book-Making" and "TheMutability of Literature" are not far removed from some of Hawthorne'sconceits. And "The Vision of the Fountain" and "The Village Uncle" mighthave issued in their soft meditativeness from Geoffrey Crayon's ownrepertory, except that they are moulded with a so much more subtile artthan his, and with an instinct of proportion so much more sure. But evenin the earlier tales, taken all together, Hawthorne ranks higher thanIrving in the heraldry of genius: he has more quarterings in his shield. Not only does he excel the other in brief essay, depending only onendogenous forces, whereas Irving is always adorning his paragraphs withthat herb-o'-grace, quotation, but he also greatly surpasses him in theconstruction of his stories; and finally, his psychological analysis andsymbolic imagination place him beyond rivalry. It is a brilliantinstance of the more ideal mind asserting its commanding power, byadmirable achievements in the inferior styles, --so that even in those hewas at once ranked with the most famous practiser of them, --and thenquietly reaching out and grasping a higher order of truths, which no onehad even thought of competing for. I suppose it is not assumed for amoment that "Wolfert's Roost, " the "Tales of a Traveller, " the story of"Rip Van Winkle, " the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow, " and the picturesque butevanescent tales of "The Alhambra" can be brought into discussion on thesame terms with Hawthorne's romances, as works of art; and theyassuredly cannot be as studies of character, for of this they have nextto nothing. The only phases of character which Irving has any success indealing with are those of credulity and prejudice. The legendarytendency of the two men has perhaps confused some readers. Both werelovers of association, and turned naturally to the past for materials:the New-Yorker found delightful sources of tradition or of ludicrousinvention in the past of that city, where his family held along-established and estimable footing; and the New-Englander, as wehave seen, drew also through the channel of descent from the dark tarnof Puritan experience. But Irving turned his back upon everything elsewhen he entered the tapestried chamber of the past, while Hawthornesought that vantage-ground only to secure a more impressive view ofhumanity. There is one gift of Irving's which won him an easier as wellas a wider triumph than that which awaited Hawthorne; and this is hisability to take the simple story-teller's tone, devoid of doublemeanings. Poe, also, had the passion for narrative in and for itself, but in him it was disturbed by a diseased mind, and resulted in a horridfascination instead of cheerful attraction. Hawthorne, to be sure, possessed the gift of the _raconteur_; but in general he was atonce seer and teller, and the higher exertions of his imagination werealways in the peculiarly symbolic atmosphere we are wont to associatewith him. Irving's contented disposition in this regard is certainlyvery charming; there are often moods in which it is a great relief toturn to it; and he has in so far the advantage over the other two. Hepitches for us the tone of average cultured minds in his time andlocality; and in reading him we have a comfortable sense of reality, than which nothing in fiction is more reassuring. This is almostentirely absent from the spell with which Hawthorne holds us; and here, indeed, we touch the latter's most decided limitation as a writer offiction; for although his magnificently portrayed characters do not wantreality, an atmosphere of ghostliness surrounds them, warning us that wemust not look to find life there as we see it elsewhere. There is aNorthern legend of a man who lay down to sleep, and a thin smoke wasseen to issue from his nostrils, traverse the ground, cross a rivulet, and journey on, finally returning to the place whence it came. When heawoke, he described an imaginary excursion of his own, following exactlythe course which the smoke had taken. This indirect contact mightfurnish a partially true type of Hawthorne's mysterious intercourse withthe world through his books. 

It would be a mistake, however, to attribute this difference to thegreater strength of Irving's humor, --a trait, always much lauded in him. It is without doubt a good quality. This mild, sweet radiance of anuncontaminated and well-bred spirit is not a common thing in literature. But I cannot fall in with the judgment that calls it "freer and far morejoyous" than Addison's. Both in style and in humor Irving has caughtsomething of the grace of "The Spectator"; but as in the style hefrequently falls short, writing feeble or jarring sentences, so in humorI cannot see how he is to be brought at all on a level with Addison, whois primarily a grave, stately, scholarly mind, but all the deeper onthat account in the lustre of his humorous displays. Addison, too, hadsomewhat of the poet in him, and was capable of tragedy as well as ofneat satire and compact characterization. But if we looked for a pithyembodiment of the difference between Irving and Hawthorne, we might callthe former a "polite writer, " and the latter a profound poet: as, indeed, I have called him in this essay, though with no intent toconfuse the term with that given to poets who speak in verse. Pathos isthe great touchstone of humor, and Irving's pathos is always alamentable failure. Is it not very significant, that he should have madeso little of the story of Rip Van Winkle? In his sketch, which has wonso wide a fame and given a lasting association to the Kaatskills, thereis not a suspicion of the immense pathos which the skill of anindustrious playwright and the genius of that rare actor, Mr. Jefferson, have since developed from the tale. The Dame Van Winkle that we now knowis the creation of Mr. Boucicault; to him it is we owe that vigorouscharacter, --a scold, a tyrant to her husband, but nevertheless full ofrelentful womanliness, and by the justice of her cause exciting oursympathy almost as much as Rip himself does. In the story, she wears anaspect of singular causelessness, and Rip's devotion to the drinking-canis barely hinted: the marvellous tenderness, too, and joyful sorrow ofhis return after the twenty years' sleep, are apparently not evensuspected by the writer. It is the simple wonder and picturesqueness ofthe situation that charm him; and while in the drama we are moved to thebottom of our hearts by the humorous tragicalness it casts over thespectacle of conflicting passions, the only outcome of the written taleis a passing reflection on the woe of being henpecked. "And it is acommon wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when lifehangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught outof Rip Van Winkle's flagon. " To be sure, there is a hidden moral here, of the folly of driving men to drunkenness; but it is so much obscuredas to suggest that this was of small moment in the writer's mind. Such amoral, in any case, must necessarily have been very delicately advanced, in order not to becloud the artistic atmosphere; but a person ofsearching dramatic genius would have found means to emphasize it withoutinjury to art, just as it has been done on the stage. Imagine whatdivine vibrations of emotion Hawthorne would have smitten out of thistheme, had he been the originator of it. Certainly we should, as thecase stands, have missed the whole immortal figment, had not Irvinggiven it to us in germ; the fact that our playwright and our mastercomedian have made it so much greater and more beautiful does not annulthat primary service; but, looking at the matter historically, we mustadmit that Irving's share in the credit is that of the first projectorof a scientific improvement, and the latter sort of person always has toforego a great part of his fame in favor of the one who consummates thediscovery. I am willing to believe that there was a peculiar advantagein Irving's treatment; namely, that he secured for his story a quickerand more general acceptance than might have been granted to somethingmore profound; but this does not alter the critical judgment that wehave to pass upon it. If Irving had grasped the tragic sphere at all, hewould have shone more splendidly in the comic. But the literary part ofhim, at least, never passed into the shade: it somehow contrived to bealways on that side of the earth which was towards the sun. Observe, now, the vital office of humor in Hawthorne's thought. It gleams outupon us from behind many of the gravest of his conceptions, like thesilver side of a dark leaf turning in the wind. Wherever the concretionof guilt is most adamantine, there he lets his fine slender jet of humorplay like a lambent fire, until the dark mass crumbles, and the choragosof the tragedy begins his mournful yet hopeful chant among the ruins. This may be verified in the "Seven Gables, " "Blithedale, " and "TheMarble Faun"; not in "The Scarlet Letter, " for that does not presentHawthorne's genius in its widest action. In one place he speaks of "thetragic power of laughter, "--a discrimination which involves the wholedeep originality of his mind. It is not irrelevant here to remark thatat the most affecting portions of the play "Rip Van Winkle, " themajority of the audience always laugh; this, though irritating to athoughtful listener, is really an involuntary tribute to the marvellouswisdom and perfection with which Jefferson mingles pathos and humor. Again Hawthorne: "Human destinies look _ominous_ without someperceptible intermixture of the sable or the gray. " And, elsewhere:"There is _something more awful in happiness than in sorrow_, thelatter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substanceand texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well trembleat it. " These thoughts could never have occurred to Irving with the sameintensity. Now, from all this we gather inference as to the deep sourcesof Hawthorne's humor. I sometimes think that Thalia was the daughter, and not the sister, of Melpomene. As to actual exhibition of humor, Hawthorne's is made a diffusive medium to temper the rays of tragedywith, and never appears in such unmixed form as that of Irving. So thateven though we must confess a smaller mental calibre in the latter, wemay gladly grant him a superiority in his special mood of fun. An excellent English critic, Leslie Stephen, lately wrote: "Poe is akind of Hawthorne and _delirium tremens_. " This announcement, however, betrays a singular misapprehension. When Hawthorne's talesfirst appeared, they were almost invariably taken to bear an intimateand direct relation to the author's own moods; while Poe's were supposedto be daring flights of pure imagination, or ingenious attempts to provetheories held by the writer, but were not charged directly to his ownexperience. Time has shown that the converse was the case. The psychicalconditions described by Hawthorne had only the remotest connection withany mood of his own; they were mainly translations, into the language ofgenius, of certain impressions and observations drawn from the worldaround him. After his death, the Note-Books caused a general rustle ofsurprise, revealing as they did the simple, wholesome nature of thisstrange imaginer; yet though he there speaks--surely without prejudice, because without the least knowledge that the world would ever hearhim--of "the objectivity" of his fictions, critics have not yet whollylearned how far apart from himself these creations were. The observationof some mental habit in men, or law of intercourse between human beings, would strongly present itself to him; and in order to get a conciseembodiment, his genius planned some powerful situation to illustrate itwith; or, at another time it might be that a strange incident, like thatof Mr. Moody, suggesting "The Minister's Black Veil, " or a singularphysiological fact like that on which "The Bosom Serpent" is based, would call out his imagination to run a race with reality and outstripit in touching the goal of truth. But, the conception once formed, thewhole fictitious fabric would become entirely removed from_himself_, except so far as it touched him very incidentally; andthis expulsion of the idea from himself, so that it acquires a life andmovement of its own, and can be contemplated by the artist from theoutside, is the very distinction between deeply creative and merelyinventive genius. Poe's was of the latter sort. He possessed a wild, arbitrary imagination, that sometimes leaped frantically high; but hisimpressiveness is always that of a nightmare, always completely morbid. What we know of Poe's life leads inevitably to the conclusion that thisquality, if it did not spring from disease, was at least largely owingto it. For a time, it was the fashion to make a moral question of Poe'sunfortunate obliquities; but a more humane tendency reduces it to ascientific problem. Poe suffered great disaster at the hands of hisunjust biographer; yet he was a worse enemy to himself than any one elsecould be. The fine enamel of his genius is all corroded by the deadlyacid of his passions. The imperfections of his temperament have piercedhis poetry and prose, shattered their structure, and blurred theirbeauty. Only four or five of his poems--"The Raven, " "Ligeia, " theearlier of the two addressed "To Helen, " and the sonnet to hiswife--escape being flawed by some fit of haste, some ungovernable errorof taste, some hopeless, unaccountable break in their beauty. Incriticism, Poe initiated a fearless and agile movement; he had an acuteinstinct in questions of literary form, amounting to a passion, as allhis instincts and perceptions did; he had also the knack of findingclever reasons, good or bad, for all his opinions. These things areessential to a critic's equipment, and it was good service in Poe toexemplify them. Yet here, too, the undermining processes of histhoroughly unsound mind subverted the better qualities, vitiated hisjudgments with incredible jealousies and conflicting impulses, andwithered the most that he wrote in this direction into something verylike rubbish. We have seen, for example, how his attempt todispassionately examine Hawthorne resulted. Sooner or later, too, he ranhis own pen full against his rigid criteria for others. It is suggestiveto find that the holder of such exacting doctrine about beauty, the manalso of whom pre-eminently it may be said, as Baudelaire wrote of him, "Chance and the incomprehensible were his two great enemies, " should socompletely fail to reach even the unmoral perfection which he assignedas the highest attainable. Professing himself the special apostle of thebeautiful in art, he nevertheless forces upon us continually the mostloathsome hideousness and the most debasing and unbeautiful horror. Thispassionate, unhelmed, errant search for beauty was in fact not so much anormal and intelligent desire, as an attempt to escape from interiordiscord; and it was the discord which found expression, accordingly, instead of the sense of beauty, --except (as has been said) in fragments. Whatever the cause, his brain had a rift of ruin in it, from the start, and though his delicate touch often stole a new grace from classicantiquity, it was the frangibility, the quick decay, the fall of alllovely and noble things, that excited and engaged him. "I have imbibedthe shadows of fallen columns, " he says in one of his tales, "at Balbec, and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin. "Always beauty and grace are with him most poetic in their overthrow, andit is the shadow of ruined grandeur that he receives, instead of thestill living light so fair upon them, or the green growth clingingaround them. Hawthorne, too, wandered much amid human ruin, but it wasnot with delight in the mere fact of decay; rather with grieving overit, and the hope to learn how much of life was still left in the wreck, and how future structures might be made stronger by studying the sourcesof failure. One of the least thoughtful remarks which I have heardtouching Hawthorne was this, that his books could not live because theydealt with the "sick side" of human nature. As if great poets everrefrained from dealing with it! The tenure of fame depends on whetherthe writer has himself become infected with sickness. With Hawthornethis is most certainly not the case, for the morbid phases which hestudied were entirely outside of himself. Poe, on the other hand, pictured his own half-maniacal moods and diseased fancies. There isabsolutely no study of character in his stories, no dramaticseparateness of being. He looks only for fixed and inert humanquantities, with which he may juggle at will. He did not possessinsight; and the analytic quality of which he was so proud was merely asort of mathematical ingenuity of calculation, in which, however, he wasextraordinarily keen. As a mere potency, dissociated from qualities, Poemust be rated almost highest among American poets, and high amongprosaists; no one else offers so much pungency, such impetuous andfrightful energy crowded into such small compartments. Yet it would bedifficult to find a poetic fury less allied to sane human life than thatwhich informs his tales. It is not the _representation_ ofsemi-insanity that he gives: he himself is its _representative_. Instead of commanding it, and bringing it into some sort of healthyrelation with us, he is swayed and carried away by it. His geniusflourished upon him like a destructive flame, and the ashes that itleft, are like a deadly powdered poison. Clifford Pyncheon in the "SevenGables" is Poe himself, deprived of the ability to act: in both arefound the same consummate fastidiousness, the same abnormal egotism. Andit is worth attention that when Clifford is aroused to sudden action byJudge Pyncheon's death, the coruscating play of his intellect is almostprecisely that brilliant but defective kind of ratiocination which Poeso delights to display. It is crazy wildness, with a surface appearanceof accurate and refined logic. In this fact, that Hawthorne--the calm, ardent, healthy master of imagination--is able to create the disorderedtype that Poe _is_, we shall find by how much the former is greaterthan the latter. 

A recent writer has raised distinctly the medical question as to Poe. Hecalls him "the mad man of letters _par excellence_, " and by aningenious investigation seems to establish it as probable that Poe wasthe victim of a form of epilepsy. But in demonstrating this, he attemptsto make it part of a theory that all men of genius are more or lessgiven over to this same "veiled epilepsy. " And here he goes beyond thenecessities of the case, and takes up an untenable position. There is amorbid and shattering susceptibility connected with some genius; butthat tremulous, constantly readjusted sensitiveness which indicates theperfect equilibrium of health in other minds must not be confounded withit. Such is the condition of the highest genius alone; of men likeShakespere and Hawthorne, who, however dissimilar their temperaments, grasp the two spheres of mind and character, the sane and the insane, and hold them perfectly reconciled by their gentle yet unsparinginsight. A case like Poe's, where actual mental decay exists in soadvanced a stage and gives to his productions a sharper and moredazzling effect than would have been theirs without it, is probably moreunique, but it is certainly less admirable, less original in the truesense, than an instance of healthier endowment like Hawthorne. On theside of art, it is impossible to bring Poe into any competition withHawthorne: although we have ranked him high in poetry and prose, regarded simply as a dynamic substance, it must be confessed that hisprose has nothing which can be called style, nor even a manner likeIrving's very agreeable one. His feeling for form manifests itself invarious ways, yet he constantly violates proportion for the sake ofgetting off one of his pseudo-philosophical disquisitions; and, notwithstanding many successful hits in expression, and a specious butmisleading assumption of fervid accuracy in phraseology, his language isloose, promiscuous, and altogether tiresome. 

Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have one marked literary condition in common:each shows a double side. With Poe the antithesis is between poetry andcriticism; Irving, having been brought up by Fiction as a foster-mother, is eventually turned over to his rightful guardian, History; andHawthorne rests his hand from ideal design, in elaborating quietpictures of reality. In each case there is more or less seemingirreconcilement between the two phases found in combination; but theopposition is rather more distinct in Hawthorne, and the grasp withwhich it is controlled by him is stronger than that of either Poe orIrving, --again a result pronouncing him the master. 

There is still another issue on which comparison must be made. Thequestion of nationality will for some time to come be an interesting onein any discussion of American authors. The American character is sorelative, that it is only by a long series of contrasts, a careful studyof the registering-plate of literature, that we shall come to the pointof defining it. American quality in literature is not like Greek, German, French, English quality: those are each unified, and theircomponent elements stoutly enough welded together to make what may becalled a positive impression; but _our_ distinctions are relative. The nearest and most important means that we have for measuring them isthat of comparison with England; and anything strikingly original inAmerican genius is found to be permanent in proportion as it maintains acertain relation to English literature, not quite easy to define. It isnot one of hostility, for the best American minds thus far have had thesincerest kindliness toward the mother country; it involves, however, the claiming of separate standards of judgment. The primary division, both in the case of the New England Pilgrims and in that of ourRevolutionary patriots, was based on clearer perceptions of certaintruths on the part of the cisatlantic English; and this claiming ofseparate standards in literature is a continuation of that historicattitude. We are making a perpetual minority report on the rest of theworld, sure that in time our voice will be an authoritative one. Theattitude being a relative and not very positively predicable one, asingular integrity of judgment is required in sustaining it. Of this Poeexhibits nothing. It was a part of the ingrained rebellion in him, thathe revolted against the moneyed mediocracy of this country, --a positionin which he deserves much sympathy, --and perhaps this underlies his wantof deep literary identification with the national character in general. But more probably his genius was a detonating agent which could havebeen convulsed into its meet activity anywhere, and had nothing to dowith a soil. It is significant that he was taken up by a group of men inParis, headed by Baudelaire and assisted by Théophile Gautier, as a sortof private demigod of art; and I believe he stands in high esteem withthe Rossetti-Morris family of English poets. Irving, on the other hand, comes directly upon the ground of difference between the American andthe English genius, but it is with the colors of a neutral. Irving'sposition was peculiar. He went to Europe young, and ripened his geniusunder other suns than those that imbrowned the hills of his nativeHudson. He had won success enough through "Salmagundi" and"Knickerbocker's History" to give him the importance of an accreditedliterary ambassador from the Republic, in treating with a foreignaudience; and he really did us excellent service abroad. This alonesecures him an important place in our literary history. Particularlywise and dignified is the tone of his short chapter called "EnglishWriters on America"; and this sentence from it might long have served inour days of fairer fame as a popular motto: "We have but to live on, andevery day we live a whole volume of refutation. " His friendship withScott, also, was a delightful addition to the amenities of literature, and shall remain a goodly and refreshing memory to us always. Yet whathe accomplished in this way for American literature at large, Irvingcompensated for with some loss of his own dignity. It cannot be deniedthat the success of "The Sketch-Book" led to an overdoing of his part in"Bracebridge Hall. " "Salmagundi" was the first step in the path ofpalpable imitation of Addison's "Spectator"; in "The Sketch-Book, "though taking some charming departures, the writer made a more refinedattempt to produce the same order of effects so perfectly attained bythe suave Queen Anne master; and in "Bracebridge Hall" the recollectionof the Sir Roger de Coverley papers becomes positively annoying. It isnot that the style of Addison is precisely reproduced, of course, butthe general resemblance in manner is as close as it could well have beenwithout direct and conscious copying, the memory of Addisonian methodsis too apparent. Irving's real genius, which occasionally in his otherwritings emits delicious flashes, does not often assert itself in thiswork; and though he has the knack of using the dry point of Addison'shumor, he doesn't achieve what etchers call "the burr" that ought toresult from its use. Addison, too, stings his lines in with trueaquafortis precision, and Irving's sketches are to his as pen-and-inkdrawing to the real etching. But it was not only this lack of literaryindependence that belittled Irving's dignity. He had become so wellsatisfied with his post of mediator between the writers of the twonations, that it became paramount with him to preserve the good-will hehad won in England, and this appears in the cautious and _almost_obsequious mien of "Bracebridge. " One may trace it also, with amusedpain, in his correspondence with Paulding, --honest, pathetic Paulding, arabid miso-Briton who burned to write something truly American, andcouldn't; whom Drake laughingly hails as

 "The bard of the backwoods, The poet of cabbages, log-huts, and gin. "

Irving was vexedly concerned at the violent outbreaks of his oldcoadjutor, directed against the British; yet, though they were foolish, they showed real pluck. But if we need other proof of the attitude whichIrving was distinctly recognized to have taken up, we may turn to a pageon which "The Edinburgh Review, " unusually amiable toward him at first, thus vented its tyrannical displeasure at his excessive complaisance:"He gasped for British popularity [it said]: he came, and found it. Hewas received, caressed, applauded, made giddy: natural politeness owedhim some return, for he imitated, admired, deferred to us. .. . It wasplain he thought of nothing else, and was ready to sacrifice everythingto obtain a smile or a look of approbation. " In a less savage fashionwe, too, may admit the not very pleasant truth here enunciated with suchunjust extremeness. An interval of nearly forty years lies between thedate of the "Sketch-Book" and "Bracebridge" and that of "Our Old Home";the difference in tone fully corresponds to the lapse of time. 

In the use of native material, of course, Irving was a pioneer, alongwith Cooper, and was in this quite different from Poe, who had noaptitude in that way. "Knickerbocker's History of New York" is toofarcical to take a high position on this score, though it undoubtedlyhad a beneficial effect in stirring up pride and interest in localantiquities; but "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" werevaluable acquisitions so far as they went. Would that they had beenwrought out with a more masterly touch; and would that Irving hadpenetrated further in this direction! But, though these Hudson legendswill long keep his fame renewed, it will perhaps be chiefly as ahistorian that he will be prized. His pleasant compilation on Goldsmith, his "Mahomet, " "Columbus, " and "Conquest of Granada, " though not tooprofound, fill an enviable niche in popular esteem; and his mellow andstately narrative of Washington's life is a work of enduring excellence. But these lie outside of our present discussion. Nor need we compare hisachievements in native fiction with Hawthorne's, after the review wehave been making of the latter's relation to New England. 

Poe and Irving and Hawthorne have all met with acceptance in othercountries, and their works have been translated into several languages. Irving has exercised no perceptible influence on literature at home orabroad; Poe has entered more or less into the workings of a school inEngland and a group in France. Hawthorne's position on the Continent hasperhaps not been so much one of conquest as of receiving an abstractadmiration; but he has taken much stronger hold of the Anglo-Saxon mindthan either of the others, and it is probable that his share ininspiring noble literature in America will--as it has already begun toshow itself an important one--become vastly greater in future. It isimpossible, as we have seen, to fix an absolute ratio between thesewriters. Irving has a more human quality than Poe, but Poe is beyonddispute the more original of the two. Each, again, has something whichHawthorne does not possess. But, if we must attempt at all to reduce sointricate a problem to exact terms, the mutual position of the three maybe stated in the equation, Poe _plus_ Irving _plus_ an unknownquantity equals Hawthorne. 

XIII. 

THE LOSS AND THE GAIN. 

The suddenness with which Hawthorne faded away and died, when at thezenith of his fame, is no less strange and sad and visionary now than itwas a poignant anguish then. He returned from Europe somewhatlingeringly, as we have seen, knowing too well the difference betweenthe regions he was quitting and the thinner, sharper, and more wastingatmosphere of a country where every one who has anything to give isconstantly drawn upon from every side, and has less resource forintellectual replenishment than in other lands. His seven years inEngland and Italy had, on the whole, been a period of high prosperity, of warm and gratifying recognition, of varied and delightful literaryencounter, in addition to the pleasure of sojourning among so many newand suggestive scenes. And when he found himself once more on the oldground, with the old struggle for subsistence staring him steadily inthe face again, it is not difficult to conceive how a certain degree ofdepression would follow. Just as this reaction had set in, the breakingout of civil war threw upon Hawthorne, before he had time to bracehimself for the shock, an immense burden of sorrowing sympathy. Theconflict of feelings which it excited on the public side has beensketched; and that alone should have been enough to make the years ofstrife a time of continuous gloom and anxiety to him; but it would belosing sight of a very large element in his distress, not to add that hemourned over the multitude of private griefs which were the harvest ofbattle as acutely as if they had all been his own losses. His intenseimagination burned them too deeply into his heart. How can we call thisweakness, which involved such strength of manly tenderness and sympathy?"Hawthorne's life was shortened by the war, " Mr. Lowell says. Expressingthis view once, to a friend, who had served long in the Union army, Iwas met with entire understanding. He told me that his own father, astanch Unionist, though not in military service, was as certainlybrought to his death by the war as any of the thousands who fell inbattle. In how wide and touchingly humane a sense may one apply toHawthorne Marvell's line on Cromwell's death, --

 "To Love and Grief the fatal writ was signed!"

His decline was gradual, and semi-conscious, as if from the first heforesaw that he could not outlive these trials. In April, 1862, hevisited Washington, and wrote the article "Chiefly about War Matters"already alluded to. He has left this glimpse of himself at that time:--

"I stay here only while Leutze finishes a portrait, which I think willbe the best ever painted of the same unworthy subject. One charm it mustneeds have, --an aspect of immortal jollity and well-to-do-ness; forLeutze, when the sitting begins, gives me a first-rate cigar, and whenhe sees me getting tired, he brings out a bottle of splendid champagne;and we quaffed and smoked yesterday, in a blessed state of mutualgood-will, for three hours and a half, during which the picture made areally miraculous progress. Leutze is the best of fellows. "

The trip was taken to benefit his health, which had already begun togive way; and though he wrote thus cheerily, he was by no means well. Inanother published note there is this postscript:--

"My hair really is not so white as this photograph, which I enclose, makes me. The sun seems to take an infernal pleasure in making mevenerable, --as if I were as old as himself. "

He had already, as we know, begun to meditate upon "The DolliverRomance, " trudging to and fro upon his hill-top, which was called, athome, "the mount of vision. " But before proceeding with that, he beganthe series of essays composing "Our Old Home, " not yet feeling strongenough for the more trying exertion of fiction. But the preparation ofthese, charming as they are, brought no exhilaration to his mind. "I am delighted, " he writes to his publisher, "at what you tell meabout the kind appreciation of my articles, for I feel rather gloomyabout them myself. .. . I cannot come to Boston to spend more than a day, just at present. It would suit me better to come for a visit when thespring of next year is a little advanced, and if you renew yourhospitable proposition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it;though I have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects mesomewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to step out of hisshell. "

His whole tone with regard to "Our Old Home" seems to have been one offatigue and discouragement. He had, besides, to deal with the harassingquestion of the dedication to Franklin Pierce, which he solved in thismanly and admirable letter to his publisher:--

"I thank you for your note of the 15th instant, and have delayed myreply thus long in order to ponder deeply on your advice, smoke cigarsover it, and see what it might be possible for me to do towards takingit. I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraweither the dedication or the dedicatory letter. My long and intimatepersonal relations with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, especially as regards this book, which would have had no existencewithout his kindness; and if he is so exceedingly unpopular that hisname is enough to sink the volume, there is so much the more need thatan old friend should stand by him. I cannot, merely on account ofpecuniary profit or literary reputation, go back from what I havedeliberately felt and thought it right to do; and if I were to tear outthe dedication, I should never look at the volume again without remorseand shame. As for the literary public, it must accept my book preciselyas I think fit to give it, or let it alone. "

By this time, the energy requisite for carrying on the Romance had sunkstill lower, so that he wrote:--

"I can't tell you when to expect an instalment of the Romance, if ever. There is something preternatural in my reluctance to begin. I linger atthe threshold, and have a perception of very disagreeable phantasms tobe encountered if I enter. I wish God had given me the faculty ofwriting a sunshiny book. "

And, a little later:--

"I don't see much probability of my having the first chapter of theRomance ready so soon as you want it. There are two or three chaptersready to be written, but I am not yet robust enough to begin, and I feelas if I should never carry it through. "

His inability to work has been illustrated in the numerous bulletins ofthis period published by Mr. Fields: they show him at times despondent, as in the extracts above, then again in a state of semi-resolution. Atanother time there is mixed presentiment and humor in his report. 

"I am not quite up to writing yet, but shall make an effort as soon as Isee any hope of success. You ought to be thankful that (like most otherbroken-down authors) I do not pester you with decrepit pages, and insistupon your accepting them as full of the old spirit and vigor. Thattrouble, perhaps, still awaits you, after I shall have reached a furtherstage of decay. Seriously, my mind has, for the present, lost its temperand its fine edge, and I have an instinct that I had better kept quiet. Perhaps I shall have a new spirit of vigor, if I wait quietly for it;perhaps not. "

But over all these last notes there hangs a melancholy shadow that makesthe flickering humor even sadder than the awesome conviction that he hasdone with writing. How singular the mingled mood of that last letter, inwhich he grimly jests upon the breaking-down of his literary faculty!Here he announces, finally: "I hardly know what to say to the publicabout this abortive Romance, though I know pretty well what the casewill be. I shall never finish it. " Yet the cause was not so much theloss of literary power, as the physical exhaustion that had already wornhim away beyond recovery. He longed for England; and possibly if hecould have gone thither, the voyage, the milder climate, and the senseof rest that he would have felt there, might have restored him. He hadfriends in this country, however, who made attempts to break up thedisastrous condition into which he had so unexpectedly come. In May of1863, when "Our Old Home" was printing, he received from his friend Mr. Lowell this most charming invitation to come to Cambridge:--

MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--I hope you have not forgotten that during"anniversary week" you were to make me a little anniversary by a visit?I have been looking forward to it _ever_ so long. My plan is thatyou come on Friday, so as to attend the election-meeting of our club, and then stay over Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, which is the lastday of my holidays. How will that do? I am glad to hear your book isgoing through the press, and you will be nearer your proof-sheets here. I have pencils of all colors for correcting in all moods of mind, --redfor sanguine moments when one thinks there is some use in writing atall, blue for a modest depression, and black for times when one issatisfied there is no longer an intelligent public nor one reader oftaste left in the world. You shall have a room to yourself, nearly ashigh and quite as easy of access as your tower, and I pledge myself thatmy crows, cat-birds, orioles, chimbley-swallows, and squirrels shallpresent you with the freedom of their city in a hollow walnut, so soonas you arrive. 

Now will you write and say when you are to be expected? I assure you Ihave looked forward to your coming as one of my chiefest springpleasures, ranking it with the advent of the birds. 

Always cordially yours, J. R. LOWELL. 

"I have smoked a cigar over your kind invitation, " wrote Hawthorne, inanswer, "and mean to come. There is a little bit of business weighingupon me (literary business of course, an article for the magazine andfor my volume, which I ought to have begun and finished long ago), but Ihope to smash it in a day or two, and will meet you at the club onSaturday. I shall have very great pleasure in the visit. "

But, at the last moment, he was obliged to give it up, being detained bya cold. And there seemed indeed a fatality which interfered with allattempts to thwart the coming evil. At the beginning of April, 1864, completely broken down, yet without apparent cause, he set out southwardwith Mr. William Ticknor. On arriving at Philadelphia he began toimprove; but Mr. Ticknor's sudden death overthrew the little he hadgained, and caused him to sink still more. It is not my purpose here todwell upon the sad and unbeautiful details of a last illness: thesethings would make but a harsh closing chord in the strain of meditationon Hawthorne's life which we have been following out, --a life sobeautiful and noble that to surround its ending with the remembrance ofmere mortal ailment has in it something of coarseness. But it wasneedful to show in what way this great spirit bowed beneath the weightof its own sympathy with a national woe. Even when Dr. Holmes saw him inBoston, though "his aspect, medically considered, was very unfavorable, "and though "he spoke as if his work were done, and he should write nomore, " still "there was no failing noticeable in his conversationalpowers. " "There was nothing in Mr. Hawthorne's aspect, " wrote Dr. Holmes, "that gave warning of so sudden an end as that which startled usall. " He passed on into the shadow as if of his own will; feeling thathis country lay in ruins, that the human lot carried with it more hateand horror and sorrow than he could longer bear to look at;welcoming--except as those dear to him were concerned--the prospect ofthat death which he alone knew to be so near. It was on the 19th of May, 1864, that the news came from Plymouth, in New Hampshire, --whither hehad gone with Ex-President Pierce, --that Hawthorne was dead. Afterward, it was recalled with a kind of awe that through many years of his lifeHawthorne had been in the habit, when trying a pen or idly scribbling atany time, of writing the number sixty-four; as if the foreknowledge ofhis death, which he showed in the final days, had already begun tomanifest itself in this indirect way long before. Indeed, he had himselffelt that the number was connected with his life in some fatal way. Fivedays later he was carried to Sleepy Hollow, the beautiful cemetery wherehe had been wont to walk among the pines, where once when living at theManse he had lain upon the grass talking to Margaret Fuller, when Mr. Emerson came upon them, and smiled, and said the Muses were in the woodsthat day. 

A simple stone, with the single word "Hawthorne" cut upon it, was placedabove him. He had wished that there should be no monument. He likedWordsworth's grave at Grasmere, and had written, "It is pleasant tothink and know that he did not care for a stately monument. " Longfellowand Lowell and Holmes, Emerson and Louis Agassiz, and his friendsPierce, and Hillard, with Ellery Channing, and other famous men, assembled on that peaceful morning to take their places in the funeraltrain. Some who had not known him in life came long distances to seehim, now, and ever afterward bore about with them the memory of hisaspect, strong and beautiful, in his last repose. The orchards wereblossoming; the roadside-banks were blue with violets, and the lilies ofthe valley, which were Hawthorne's favorites among the flowers, had comeforth in quiet companies, to look their last on his face, so white andquiet too. So, while the batteries that had murdered him roared sullenlyin the distant South, the rites of burial were fulfilled over the deadpoet. Like a clear voice beside the grave, as we look back and listen, Longfellow's simple, penetrating chant returns upon the ear. 

In vain to sum up, here, the loss unspeakable suffered in Hawthorne'sdeath; and no less vain the attempt to fix in a few words theincalculable gain his life has left with us. When one remembers thepower that was unexhausted in him still, one is ready to impeach coldTime and Fate for their treason to the fair prospect that lay before usall, in the continuance of his career. We look upon these few greatworks, that may be numbered on the fingers of a hand, and wonder whatgood end was served by the silent shutting of those rich pages that hadjust begun to open. We remember the tardy recognition that kept thefountain of his spirit so long half concealed, and the necessities thatforced him to give ten of his best years to the sterile industry ofofficial duties. But there are great compensations. Without the youthfulperiod of hopes deferred, Hawthorne, as we have seen, would not havebeen the unique force, the high, untrammelled thinker that be becamethrough that fortunate isolation; wanting the uncongenial contact of histerms at Boston and Salem and Liverpool, it may be that he could nothave developed his genius with such balance of strength as it now shows;and, finally, without the return to his native land, the national fibrein him would have missed its crowning grace of conscientiousness. Hemight in that case have written more books, but the very loss of these, implying as it does his pure love of country, is an acquisition muchmore positively valuable. 

There is a fitness, too, in the abrupt breaking off of his activity, inso far as it gives emphasis to that incompleteness of any verbalstatement of truth, which he was continually insisting upon with hisreaders. 

Hawthorne, it is true, expanded so constantly, that however many workshe might have produced, it seems unlikely that any one of them wouldhave failed to record some large movement in his growth; and thereforeit is perhaps to be regretted that his life could not have been made tosolely serve his genius, so that we might have had the whole sweep ofhis imagination clearly exposed. As it is, he has not given us a largevariety of characters; and Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam bear a certaingeneral likeness one to another. Phoebe, however, is quite at theopposite pole of womanhood; Hilda is as unlike any of them as it is easyto conceive of her being; and Priscilla, again, is a feminine nature ofunique calibre, as weird but not so warm as Goethe's Mignon, and at thesame time a distinctly American type, in her nervous yet captivatingfragility. In Priscilla and Phoebe are embodied two widely opposedclasses of New England women. The male characters, with the exception ofDonatello and Hollingsworth, are not so remarkable as the feminine ones:Coverdale and Kenyon come very close together, both being artistic andboth reflectors for the persons that surround them; and Dimmesdale is tosome extent the same character, --with the artistic escape closed uponhis passions, so that they turn within and ravage his heart, --arrestedand altered by Puritan influences. Chillingworth is perhaps too devilisha shape of revenge to be discussed as a human individual. Septimius, again, is distinct; and the characterization of Westervelt, in"Blithedale, " slight as it is, is very stimulating. Perhaps, after all, what leads us to pronounce upon the whole fictitious company a strictureof homogeneity is the fact that the author, though presenting us eachtime with a set of persons sufficiently separate from his previous ones, does not emphasize their differences with the same amount of externaldescription that we habitually depend upon from a novelist. Thesimilarity is more in the author's mode of presentation than in thecreations themselves. 

This monotone in which all the personages of his dramas share is nearlyrelated with some special distinctions of his genius. He is sofastidious in his desire for perfection, that he can scarcely permit hisactors to speak loosely or ungrammatically: though retaining theiressential individuality, they are endowed with the author's owndelightful power of expression. This outward phasis of his workseparates it at once from that of the simple novelist, and leads us toconsider the special applicability to it of the term "romance. " He hadnot the realistic tendency, as we usually understand that, but hepossessed the power to create a new species of fiction. For the kind ofromance that he has left us differs from all compositions previously socalled. It is not romance in the sense of D'Urfé's or Scudéri's; it isvery far from coming within the scope of Fielding's "romances"; and itis entirely unconnected with the tales of the German Romantic school. Itis not the romance of sentiment; nor that of incident, adventure, andcharacter viewed under a worldly coloring: it has not the mystic andmelodramatic bent belonging to Tieck and Novalis and Fouqué. There aretwo things which radically isolate it from all these. The first is itsquality of revived belief. Hawthorne, as has been urged already, is agreat believer, a man who has faith; his belief goes out toward what ismost beautiful, and this he finds only in moral truth. With him, poetryand moral insight are sacredly and indivisibly wedded, and their progenyis perfect beauty. This unsparingly conscientious pursuit of the highesttruth, this metaphysical instinct, found in conjunction with a variedand tender appreciation of all forms of human or other life, is whatmakes him so decidedly the representative of a wholly new order ofnovelists. Belief, however, is, not what he has usually been creditedwith, so much as incredulity. But the appearance of doubt issuperficial, and arises from his fondness for illuminating finebut only half-perceptible traces of truth with the torch ofsuperstition. Speaking of the supernatural, he says in his Englishjournal: "It is remarkable that Scott should have felt interested insuch subjects, being such a worldly and earthly man as he was; but then, indeed, almost all forms of popular superstition do clothe the etherealwith earthly attributes, and so make it grossly perceptible. " Thisobservation has a still greater value when applied to Hawthorne himself. And out of this questioning belief and transmutation of superstitioninto truth--for such is more exactly his method--proceeds also thatquality of value and rarity and awe-enriched significance, with which heirradiates real life until it is sublimed to a delicate cloud-image ofthe eternal verities. 

If these things are limitations, they are also foundations of a vastoriginality. Every greatness must have an outline. So that, although heis removed from the list of novelists proper, although his spiritualinspiration scares away a large class of sympathies, and although hisstrictly New England atmosphere seems to chill and restrain his dramaticfervor, sometimes to his disadvantage, these facts, on the other hand, are so many trenches dug around him, fortifying his fair eminence. Isolation and a certain degree of limitation, in some such sense asthis, belong peculiarly to American originality. But Hawthorne is theembodiment of the youth of this country; and though he will doubtlessfurnish inspiration to a long line of poets and novelists, it must behoped that they, likewise, will stand for other phases of itsdevelopment, to be illustrated in other ways. No tribute to Hawthorne isless in accord with the biddings of his genius than that which wouldmerely make a school of followers. 

It is too early to say what position Hawthorne will take in theliterature of the world; but as his influence gains the ascendant inAmerica, by prompting new and _un_-Hawthornesque originalities, itis likely also that it will be made manifest in England, according tosome unspecifiable ratio. Not that any period is to be distinctlycolored by the peculiar dye in which his own pages are dipped; but therenewed tradition of a highly organized yet simple style, and still morethe masculine tenderness and delicacy of thought and the fine adjustmentof aesthetic and ethical obligations, the omnipresent truthfulness whichhe carries with him, may be expected to become a constituent part ofvery many minds widely opposed among themselves. I believe there is nofictionist who penetrates so far into individual consciences asHawthorne; that many persons will be found who derive a profoundlyreligious aid from his unobtrusive but commanding sympathy. In the sameway, his sway over the literary mind is destined to be one of nosecondary degree. "Deeds are the offspring of words, " says Heine;"Goethe's pretty words are childless. " Not so with Hawthorne's. Hawthorne's repose is the acme of motion; and though turning on an axisof conservatism, the radicalism of his mind is irresistible; he is oneof the most powerful because most unsuspected revolutionists of theworld. Therefore, not only is he an incalculable factor in privatecharacter, but in addition his unnoticed leverage for the thought of theage is prodigious. These great abilities, subsisting with a temper somodest and unaffected, and never unhumanized by the abstract enthusiasmfor art, place him on a plane between Shakespere and Goethe. With theuniversality of the first only just budding within his mind, he has notso clear a response to all the varying tones of lusty human life, andthe individuality in his utterance amounts, at particular instants, toconstraint. With less erudition than Goethe, but also less of thefreezing pride of art, he is infinitely more humane, sympathetic, holy. His creations are statuesquely moulded like Goethe's, but they have thesame quick music of heart-throbs that Shakespere's have. Hawthorne is atthe same moment ancient and modern, plastic and picturesque. Anothergeneration will see more of him than we do; different interpreters willreveal other sides. As a powerful blow suddenly descending may leave thesurface it touches unmarked, and stamp its impress on the substancebeneath, so his presence will more distinctly appear among those fartherremoved from him than we. A single mind may concentrate your vision uponhim in a particular way; but the covers of any book must perforce shutout something of the whole, as the trees in a vista narrow thelandscape. 

Look well at these leaves I lay before you; but having read them throwthe volume away, and contemplate the man himself. 

APPENDIX I. 

In May, 1870, an article was published in the "Portland Transcript, "giving some of the facts connected with Hawthorne's sojourn in Maine, asa boy. This called out a letter from Alexandria, Va. , signed "W. S. , "and purporting to come from a person who had lived at Raymond, inboyhood, and had been a companion of Hawthorne's. He gave some littlereminiscences of that time, recalling the fact that Hawthorne had readhim some poetry founded on the Tarbox disaster, alreadymentioned. [Footnote: See _ante_, p. 89. ] Himself he described ashaving gone to sea at twenty, and having been a wanderer ever since. In. Speaking of the date of the poetry, "We could not have been more thanten years old, " he said. This, of course, is a mistake, the accidenthaving happened in 1819, when Hawthorne was fourteen. And it istolerably certain that he did not even visit Raymond until he wastwelve. 

The letter called out some reminiscences from Mr. Robinson Cook, ofBolster's Mills, in Maine, who had also known Hawthorne as a boy; somepoetry on the Tarbox tragedy was also found, and printed, whichafterward proved to have been written by another person; and one or twoother letters were published, not especially relevant to Hawthorne, butconcerning the Tarbox affair. After this, "W. S. " wrote again fromAlexandria (November 23, 1870), revealing the fact that he had come intopossession, several years before, of the manuscript book from which heafterward sent extracts. The book, he explained, was found by a mannamed Small, who had assisted in moving a lot of furniture, among it a"large mahogany bookcase" full of old books, from the old Manning House. This was several years before the civil war, and "W. S. " met Small inthe army, in Virginia. He reported that the book--"originally a boundblank one not ruled, " and "gnawed by mice or eaten by moths on theedges"--contained about two hundred and fifty pages, and was writtenthroughout, "the first part in a boyish hand though legibly, and showingin its progress a marked improvement in penmanship. " The passagesreprinted in the present volume were sent by him, over the signature "W. Sims, " to the "Transcript, " and published at different dates (February11, 1871; April 22, 1871). Their appearance called out variouscommunications, all tending to establish their genuineness; but, beyondthe identification of localities and persons, and the approximateestablishing of dates, no decisive proof was forthcoming. Sims himself, however, was recalled by former residents near Raymond; and there seemedat least much inferential proof in favor of the notes. A long silenceensued upon the printing of the second portion; and at the end of 1871it was made known that Sims had died at Pensacola, Florida. The thirdand last supposed extract from Hawthorne's note-book was sent fromVirginia again, in 1873 (published June 21 of that year), by a personprofessing to have charge of Sims's papers. This person was written toby the editors of the "Transcript, " but no reply has ever been received. A relative of Hawthorne in Salem also wrote to the Pensacola journal inwhich Sims's death was announced, making inquiry as to its knowledge ofhim and as to the source of the mortuary notice. No reply was everreceived from this quarter, either. Sims, it is said, had been in thesecret service under Colonel Baker, of dreaded fame in war-days; and itmay be that, having enemies, he feared the notoriety to which hiscontributions to journalism might expose him, and decided to die, --atleast so far as printer's ink could kill him. All these circumstancesare unfortunate, because they make the solution of doubts concerning theearly notes quite impossible, for the present. 

The fabrication of the journal by a person possessed of some literaryskill and familiar with the localities mentioned, at dates so long agoas 1816 to 1819, might not be an impossible feat, but it is an extremelyimprobable one. It is not likely that an ordinary impostor would hitupon the sort of incident selected for mention in these extracts. Evenif he drew upon circumstances of his own boyhood, transferring them toHawthorne's, he must possess a singularly clear memory, to recallmatters of this sort; and to invent them would require a niceimaginative faculty. One of the first passages, touching the "son of oldMrs. Shane" and the "son of the Widow Hawthorne, " is of a sort toentirely evade the mind of an impostor. The whole method of observation, too, seems very characteristic. If the portion descriptive of a raft andof the manners of the lumbermen be compared with certain memoranda inthe "American Note-Books" (July 13 and 15, 1837), derived from somewhatsimilar scenes, a general resemblance in the way of seizingcharacteristics will be observed. Of course, if the early notes arefabrications, it may be that the author of them drew carefully afterpassages of the maturer journal, and this among others. But theresemblance is crossed by a greater youthfulness in the early notes, itseems to me, which it would be hard to produce artificially. The cooland collected style of the early journal is not improbable in a boy likeHawthorne, who had read many books and lived much in the companionshipof older persons. Indeed, it is very much like the style of "TheSpectator" of 1820. A noticeable coincidence is, that the pedler, Dominicus Jordan, should be mentioned in both the journal and "TheSpectator. " The circumstance that the dates should all have been said tobe missing from the manuscript book is suspicious. Yet the last extracthas the month and year appended, August, 1819. What is more importantis, that the date of the initial inscription is given as 1816; and atthe time when this was announced it had not been ascertained even byHawthorne's own family and relatives that he had been at Raymond soearly. But since the publications in the "Transcript, " some letters havecome to light of which I have made use; and one of these, bearing dateJuly 21, 1818, to which I have alluded in another connection, speaks ofRaymond from actual recollection. "Does the Pond look the same as when Iwas there? It is almost as pleasant at Nahant as at Raymond. I thoughtthere was no place that I should say so much of. " The furnisher of thenotes, if he was disingenuous, might indeed have remembered thatHawthorne was in Maine about 1816; he may also have relied on astatement in the "Transcript's" editorial, to the effect that Hawthornewas taken to Raymond in 1814. In that editorial, it is also observed:"Hawthorne was then a lad of ten years. " I have already said that Simsrefers to the period of the verses on the Tarboxes as being a time whenhe and Hawthorne were "not more than ten years old. " This, at first, would seem to suggest that he was relying still further upon theeditorial. But if he had been taking the editorial statement as a basisfor fabrication, it is not likely that he would have failed to ascertainexactly the date of the freezing of Mr. And Mrs. Tarbox, which was 1819. The careless way in which he alludes to this may have been theinadvertence of an impostor trying to make his account agree with onealready published; but it is more likely that the sender of the notesdid not remember the precise year in which the accident occurred, andwas confused by the statement of the "Transcript. " An impostor must havetaken more pains, one would think. It must also be noticed that "theWidow _Haw_thorne" is spoken of in the notes. Sims, however, in hispreliminary letter, refers to the fact that "the universal pronunciationof the name in Raymond was Hathorn, --the first syllable exactly as theword 'hearth' was pronounced at that time"; and the explanation of thespelling in the notes doubtless is that Sims, or whoever transcribed thepassage, changed it as being out of keeping with the now historic formof the name. It is possible that further changes were also made by thetranscriber; and a theory which has some color is, that the object inkeeping the original manuscript out of the way may have been, to make itavailable for expansions and embellishments, using the actual record asa nucleus. 

II. 

The theme referred to in Chapter III. Is given in full below. After theearlier portion of the present essay had been stereotyped, an article byProfessor G. T. Packard, on Bowdoin College, was published in"Scribner's Monthly, " which contains this mention of Hawthorne:--

"The author's college life was prophetic of the after years, when he sodwelt apart from the mass of men, and yet stirred so deeply the world'ssensibilities and delighted its fancy. His themes were written in thesustained, finished style that gives to his mature productions aninimitable charm. The late Professor Newman, his instructor in rhetoric, was so impressed with Hawthorne's powers as a writer, that he notinfrequently summoned the family circle to share in the enjoyment ofreading his compositions. The recollection is very distinct ofHawthorne's reluctant step and averted look, when he presented himselfat the Professor's study, and with girlish diffidence submitted acomposition which no man in his class could equal. .. . When the class wasgraduated, Hawthorne could not be persuaded to join them in having theirprofiles cut in paper, the only class picture of the time; nor did hetake part in the Commencement exercises. His classmates understood thathe intended to be a writer of romance, but none anticipated hisremarkable development and enduring fame. It seems strange that amonghis admirers no one has offered him a fitting tribute by founding theHawthorne Professorship of English Literature in the college where, under the tutelage of the accomplished and appreciative ProfessorNewman, he was stimulated to cultivate his native gift. "

DE PATRIS CONSCRIPTIS ROMANORUM. 

Senatum Romanorum jam primum institutum, simplicem siniul atquopraestantissimuni fuisse sentiant onmes. Imperium fint, quod populo aecavaritis nee luxuria vitiato optimum videretar. Lecti fuerunt senatores, non qui ambitiose potestatem eupiere, sesl qui senectute, qui sapientia, qui virtute bellica vel privata insigues, in republica plurimampollebant. Hominum consiliis virtute tam singulari praeditorum paruitpopulus libenter atque senatores at patres civilius venerati. Studiumillis paternum adhibuere. Nulla unquam respublica, quam turn Romana, necsanctior nec beatior t'uit; iis temporibus etenim solum in publicumcommodum principes administrabant; fidemque principibus populi habetant. Sed virtute prisca reipublierc perdita, inimicitus mutuis patresplebesque flagrare coeperunt, alienaque prosequi. Senatus in populumtyrannice saeviit, atque hostem se monstravit potiue quam custodemreipubliere. Concitatur vulgus studio libertatis repetendre, alque permulta secula patrum plebisque contentiones historia Romana memorat;patribus pristinam auctoriratem servare conatis, liccentiaque plebisomnia jura spernante. Hoc modo usque ad Panieum bellum, res se habebant. Tun pericula externa discordiam domesticam superabant, reipublicaequestudium priscam patribus sapientiam, priscam populis reverentiamredundit. Hae aetate omnibus virtutibus cnituit Roma. Senatus, jureomnium consensu facto, opes suas prope ad inopiam plebis aequavit;patriaeque solum amore gloria quaesita, pecunia niluii habita est. Sedquuam Carthaginem reformidavit non diutius Roma, rediit respublica advitia pristina. Patres luxuria solum populis praestiterunt, et vestigiaeorum populi secuti sunt. Senatus auctoritatem, ex illo ipso tempore, annus unusquisque diminuit, donce in aerate Angasti interitus nobiliumhumiliumque delectus omnino fere dignitatem conficerunt. Augustusequidem antiquam magnificentiam patribus reddidit, sed fulgor tantumliut sine fervore. Nunquam in republica senatoribus potestatesrecuperatae. Postremum species etiam amissa est. 

HATHORNE. 

THE ROMAN SENATE. 

Every one perceives that the Roman Senate, as it was originallyconstituted, was a no less simple than illustrious body. It was asovereignty which appeared most desirable to a populace vitiated neitherby avarice nor luxury. The senators were chosen, not from those who wereambitious of power, but those who wielded the largest influence in theRepublic through wisdom and warlike valor or private virtue. Thecitizens bowed willingly to the counsels of men endowed with suchsingular worth, and venerated the senators as fathers. The latterexercised a paternal care. No republic ever was holier or more blessedthan that of Rome at this time; for in those days the rulersadministered for the public convenience alone, and the people had faithin their rulers. But, the pristine virtue of the Republic lost, thefathers and the commonalty began to blaze forth with mutual hostilities, and to seek after the possessions of others. The Senate vented its wrathsavagely upon the people, and showed itself rather the enemy than theguardian of the Republic. The multitude was aroused by the desire ofrecovering liberty, and through a very long period Roman historyrecounts the contentions of the fathers and the commonalty; the fathersattempting to preserve their old authority, and the license of thecommons scorning every law. Affairs remained in this condition until thePunic War. Then foreign perils prevailed over domestic discord, and loveof the Republic restored to the fathers their early wisdom, to thepeople their reverence. At this period, Rome shone with every virtue. The Senate, through the rightfully obtained consent of all parties, nearly equalized its power with the powerlessness of the commonalty; andglory being sought solely through love of the fatherland, wealth wasregarded as of no account. But when Rome no longer dreaded Carthage, thecommonwealth returned to its former vices. The fathers were superior tothe populace only in luxury, and the populace followed in theirfootsteps. From that very time, every year diminished the authority ofthe Senate, until in the age of Augustus the death of the nobles and theselection of insignificant men almost wholly destroyed its dignity. Augustus, to be sure, restored to the fathers their ancientmagnificence, but, great as was the fire (so to speak), it was withoutreal heat. Never was the power of the senators recovered. At last eventhe appearance of it vanished. 

III. 

The lists of books referred to in Chapter IV. Were recorded by differenthands, or in different ways at various dates, so that they have not beenmade out quite satisfactorily. Some of the authors named below weretaken out a great many times, but the number of the volume is given inonly a few cases. It would seem, for example, that Voltaire's completeworks were examined by Hawthorne, if we judge by his frequentapplication for some part of them, and the considerable number ofvolumes actually mentioned. In this and in other cases, the same volumeis sometimes called for more than once. To make the matter clearer here, I have reduced the entries to a simple list of the authors read, withoutattempting to show how often a particular one was taken up. Few or noneof them were read consecutively, and the magazines placed together atthe end of my list were taken out at short intervals throughout thedifferent years. 

1830. 

Oeuvres de Voltaire. Mémoire de Litérature. Liancourt. Oeuvres de Rousseau. Mass. Historical Collections. Trial and Triumph of Faith. Oeuvres de Pascal. Varenius' Geography. Mickle's Lucian. Dictionnaire des Sciences. Pamela. (Vols. I. , II. )Life of Baxter. Tournefort's Voyage. Swift's Works. Hitt on Fruit-Trees. Bibliotheca Americana. Ames's Antiquities. Hamilton's Works. Gifford's Juvenal. Allen's Biographical Dictionary. Fénélon. Académie Royale des Inscriptions. Mather's Apology. Vertol's History of Sweden. Taylor's Sermons. Life of Luckington. L'an 2440. Montague's Letters. English Botany. (3 vols. )Gay's Poems. Inchbald's Theatre. Sowerby's English Botany. Crabbe's Borough. Crabbe's Bibliographical Dictionary. Collection of Voyages (Hakluyt's?). Lives of the Admirals. British Zoölogy. 

1831

Los Eruditos. Connoisseur. Camilla. Gifford's Persius. Bartram's Travels. Humphrey's Works. Voltaire. Pennant's British Zoology. Mandeville's Travels. Rehearsal Transposed. Gay's Poems. Pompey the Little. Shaw's General Zoology. Philip's Poems. Sowerby's English Botany. Racine. Corneille. Wilkinson's Memoirs and Atlas. History of the Shakers. The Confessional. Calamy's Life of Baxter. Académie Royale des Inscripts. Essais de Montaigne. (Vols. I. , II. , III. , IV. )Cadell's Journey through Italy and Carniola. Cobbet's Rule in France. Temple's Works. (Vols. I. , II. , III. )Asiatic Researches. Cochran's Tour in Siberia. Chardin's Travels. Brandt's History of the Reformation. Russell's Natural History. Aleppo. (Vol. I. )Answer to the Fable of the Bees. Hanway's Travels. Memoirs of C. J. Fox. Bayle's Critical Dictionary. (Vols. II. , V. , VI. )State Trials. (Vols. I. , II. , IV. , V. , VI. )Tales of a Traveller. Dictionnaire des Sciences. (Vol. XVII. )Bacon's Works. (Vol. II. )Gordon's Tacitus. Colquhoun on the Police. Cheyne on Health. Pope's Homer. (Vol I. )Letters: De Maintenon. (Vol. IX. )Reichard's Germany. Oeuvres de Rousseau. Notes on the West Indies by Prichard. Crishull's Travels in Turkey. 

1832-33. 

Clarendon's Tracts. History of England. Prose Works of Walter Scott. (Vols. III. , V. , VI. )Feltham's Resolves. Roscoe's Sovereigns. Histoire de l'Académie. South America. Savages of New Zealand. Stackhouse's History of the Bible. Dryden's Poems. Tucker's Light of Nature. History of South Carolina. Poinsett's Notes on Mexico. Brace's Travels. Browne's Jamaica. Collins's New South Wales. Broughton's Dictionary. Seminole War. Shaw's Zoology. Reverie. Gifford's Pitt. Curiosities of Literature. Massinger. Literary Recollections. Coleridge's Aids to Reflection. Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Paris and Fonblanque. Elia. Gardens and Menagerie. Medical Jurisprudence. History of Paris. Scott's Prose Works. Kittell's Specimens American Poetry. Lister's Journey. Annals of Salem. Library of Old English Prose Writers. Memoirs of Canning. Miscellaneous Works of Scott. Jefferson's Writings. History of Andover. Good's Book of Nature. History of Haverhill. Madden's Travels. (Vols. I. , II. )Riedesel's Memoirs. Boston Newspapers (1736, 1739, 1754, 1762, 1771, 1783). Drake's Mornings in Spring. Drake's Evenings in Autumn. Anecdotes of Bowyer. Gouverneur Morris. (Vols. I. , II. )Bryan Walton's Memoirs. Moses Mendelssohn. Collingwood. Felt's Annals. Strutt's Sports and Pastimes. Schiller. Mrs. Jameson. (2 vols. )Thatcher's Medical Biography. History of Plymouth. Crabbe's Universal Dictionary. Lewis's History of Lynn. A Year in Spain, by a Young American. (Vols. I. , II. )Croker's Boswell. Deane's History of Scituate. Diplomatic Correspondence. (Vols. I. , II. )Temple's Travels. (Vol. II. )Fuller's Holy State. Remarkables of Increase Mather. History of Portland. (Vols. I. , II. )Practical Tourist. Elements of Technology. Heber's Life, by Taylor. Ductor Substantium. Heber's Travels in India. (Vols. I. , II. )Byron's Works. Travels in Brazil and Buenos Ayres. History of Spain. Franklin's Works. Mental Cultivation. 

1835. 

Life of Gouverneur Morris. Hamilton's Progress of Society. Twiner's Sacred History. Encyclopaedia. Life of Arthur Lee. Life of Sir Humphry Davy. Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Prior's Poems. (Vol. I. )Jefferson's Writings. (Vols. I. , II. )Memoirs of the Tower of London. History of King's Chapel. Memoirs of Dr. Burney. Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I, II. , III. )Life of Livingstone. 

1836. 

Life of Hamilton. (Vol. I. )Debates in Parliament. (Vol. I. )Curiosities of Literature (Vol. I. )Combe on the Constitution of Man. Babbage on Economy of Machinery. Eulogies on Jefferson and Adams. Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I. , III. )Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design. (Vols. I. , II. )Mende's Guide to Observation of Nature. Cobbett's Cottage Economy. Douglas's Summary. (Vol. I. )Practical Tourist. (Vols. I. , II. )Dick on Improvement of Society. Bush's Life of Mohammed. Temple's Travels in Peru. (Vol. I. )Gay's Poems. Pliny's Natural History. Coleridge's Table-Talk. Letters from Constantinople. (Vols. I. , II. )Reynolds's Voyages. Adventures on Columbia River, by Ross Cox. Baine's History of Cotton Manufacture. History of Nantucket. Travels in South America. Müller's Universal History. Antar. A Bedoueen Romance. Lives of the Philosophers. (Vols. I. , II. )Description of Trades. Colman's Visit to England. Ludolph's History of Ethiopia. Griffin's Remains. McCree's Life of Knox. Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy. Voyage de la mer du Sud an Nord. Biographia Literaria. The Stranger in America. Raumer's England in 1835. Random Recollections of the House of Lords. The German Student. Sparks's American Biography. Brewster's Natural Magic. Prior's Life of Goldsmith. Sparks's Washington. Walter Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft. Scott's Life of Bonaparte. (3 vols. )

1837. 

Washington's Writings. Martineau's Miscellany. Wraxall's Memoirs. Bancroft's United States History. Rush, on the Human Voice. Drake's Indian Biography. Wordsworth's Poetical Works. Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Bayle's Historical Memoirs of Plymouth County. Life of Jefferson, by Tucker. Random Recollections of the House of Commons. Specimens of American Poetry. 

1838. 

Life of Jefferson. Brown's Novels. Parr's Works. Select Comedies. Froissart's Ancient Chronology. Byron's Works. Plutarch's Lives. London Encyclopedia of Architecture. Gentleman's Magazine. Monthly Magazine. Monthly Review. European Magazine. Christian Examiner. Edinburgh Magazine. Annual Register. Quarterly Review. Southern Review. Worcester's Magazine. North American Review. United States Service Journal. Court Magazine. Museum of Literature and Science. Westminster Review. London Monthly Magazine. Eclectic Review. Foreign Quarterly Review. Blackwood's Magazine. Metropolitan Magazine. New England Magazine. British Critic. American Encyclopaedia. Rees's Cyclopaedia. Gifford's Juvenal. 

INDEX. 

Addison, JosephAllegory and symbolismAmbitious Guest, TheAmerica, Hawthorne's sentiment about returning toAmerican MagazineAmerican Note-Books, record of youth inAmerican nurture of Hawthorne's geniusAmerican quality in literatureAndrews, FerdinandApollyon, name of catArtist of the Beautiful, TheAtmosphere, Hawthorne's susceptibility toAutobiographies

Balzac's method of dealing with sinBancroft, GeorgeBaudelaireBay writers, nickname given by Church ReviewBeelzebub, Hawthorne's catBelief, Hawthorne'sBewick CompanyBiography, Hawthorne's feeling aboutBirth-mark, TheBlithedale Romance its relation to Brook Farm real incident applied in when written remarks onBloody FootstepBoston Custom-HouseBoston Token, TheBowdoin College passage from "Fanshawe" descriptive ofBridge, Horatio prognostic of, concerning HawthorneBrig Fair American, Ballad ofBrook Farm, origin of Hawthorne's aim in going to length of stay there trenchant remark upon, in BlithedaleBrown, BrockdenBuchanan, JamesBuds and Bird-VoicesBunyan, compared with Milton with HawthorneBurroughs, Rev. Dr. Charles, note from, to HawthorneBryant, William Cullen

Celestial Railroad, TheCharacters of HawthorneChippings with a ChiselChorley, H. F. Christmas Banquet, TheChurch Review attack of, on The Scarlet LetterCilley, JonathanClarendon's HistoryColeridge, S. T. Conception of Character, Hawthorne's method ofContact of life and deathContradictions of criticsCooper, J. FenimoreCooper Memorial letter of HawthorneCoverdale, Miles, origin of name character of, how related to HawthorneCurtis, George William letters from Hawthorne toCurwin MansionCushing, CalebCustom-House, prefatory chapter on the excitement over it in Salem

Democratic ReviewDevil in Manuscript, TheDickensDixey, William, name in Seven GablesDoctor Heidegger's ExperimentDolliver Romance, TheDrake, J. R. Dramatic quality in HawthorneDrowne's Wooden ImageD'Urfé

Early Notes, discovery of passages fromEarth's HolocaustEccentricity in SalemEdinburgh Review, stricture of, upon IrvingEmerson's English TraitsEndicott and The Red Cross passage from, bearing on Scarlet LetterEndicotts, anecdote ofEnglish Note-Books, characteristics ofEvangeline, origin of Hawthorne's review of

Fame, in what way desirableFancy's Show-BoxFaust"Fanshawe" abstract of passages fromFearing, Master, and HawthorneFielding, HenryFields, J. T. , mistake ofFine Art, Hawthorne's way of looking atFire worshipFirst Church of SalemFirst publication by HawthorneFoote, CalebFouquéFrench and Italian Note-BooksFroissart

Gautier, TheophileGoetheGodwin, WilliamGoldsmithGoodrich, S. G. Employs Hawthorne as editor difficulties withGrandfather's Chair publication ofGray Champion, The

Hathorne, Elizabeth C. Manning, mother of Nathaniel Hawthorne, piety of, her inconsolableness at loss of her husbandHathorne, John, judge in witchcraft trialsHathorne, Joseph, Benjamin, DanielHathorne, Nathaniel, father of Nathaniel, death of; Hawthorne's resemblance toHathorne, William; his persecution of Quakers; his willHaunted Mind, TheHAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, birth of changes spelling of name birthplace of; childhood of; lameness in boyhood; fondness for cats; scholarship of, at college; English compositions of; Latin theme of, (in full, Appendix); reading of; love of books; first printed article of; college associations of; literary struggles of; pecuniary difficulties of; Democratic sympathies of; his inability to distinguish tunes; social nature of; error as to long obscurity of; anecdotes of; value of these in general; his love of solitude; healthiness of; shyness; considerateness for others; personal appearance; G. W. Curtis's reminiscence of; his simplicity of habits; love of books; abstraction; moral enthusiasm of, characterized; unsuspiciousness of; introspection of, how exaggerated; distaste for society, how explainable; in what greater than Irving; ghostly atmosphere of; humor of; American quality of; effect of civil war upon; death of; his grave; burial; literary and intellectual influence ofHeine, HeinrichHelwyse, GervaseHillard, George S. Hoffman, Charles FennoHogg's TalesHolmes, Oliver Wendell; letter from, to HawthorneHoraceHouse of the Seven Gables, The; Hathorne history; composition of; originals for the house; survey ofHowells, W. D. , Hawthorne's remark to

Invisible struggles of geniusIrving, Washington; comparison with Hawthorne; humor of; attitude of, in England; his use of native material; his histories; style of

John Ingefield's ThanksgivingJohnson, SamuelJournal of an African CruiserJournal of a Solitary Man

Kingsley's Greek Fairy-Tales

Latin Theme of Hawthorne; in full, AppendixLawrence, Lieutenant, killed off MarbleheadLenox, removal toLetters of Hawthorne, in boyhood, from college; from Connecticut and New Hampshire; to Longfellow; to Bridge; to Curtis; to Motley; to LowellLeutzeLimitations of HawthorneLiverpool consulate; reduction in receipts of; unjust criticism of Hawthorne inLongfellow, Henry W. ; review of Twice-Told Tales; letter to HawthorneLoring, Dr. G. B. Lowell, James Russell; letter from

Maine, Hawthorne's sojourn in, in boyhoodManning, Elizabeth Clarke, Hawthorne's motherManning's FollyManning, RichardManning, RobertManning, SamuelManuscript sketch for SeptimiusMarble Faun, The; examination ofMarine outrages, Hawthorne's wishto redressMarvell, AndrewMaturity in Hawthorne, earliness ofMaule, ThomasMaypole of Merry Mount, TheMelville, Herman; private review of Seven Gables byMichael AngeloMilton compared with Bunyan and HawthorneMinister's Black Veil, TheMitford, Miss, Letter from, to HawthorneMosses from an Old Manse; first issue of; criticism ofMotley, John Lothrop, letter of, to HawthorneMozartMrs. Bullfrog

New England civilization; early characterNewman, ProfessorNomenclature of fictionNovalis

OberonObjectivity of HawthorneOld Apple-Dealer, TheOliver, B. L. Our Old Home

Packard, Professor G. T. ; AppendixPapers of an old Dartmoor prisonerPaulding, J. K. Peabody, Miss E. P. , acquaintance with HawthornePeabody, Miss SophiaPeter Parley's History, written by HawthornePierce, Franklin; Hawthorne's Life of; (sentiments in, touching slavery; resulting abuse of Hawthorne;) dedication of Our Old Home toPilgrim's Progress, Hawthorne's reading of; allusions to, in his worksPlatoPlymouth Colony enactment against adultery, foot-notePoe's criticism on Hawthorne;similarities of, to Hawthorne; effectiveness of; subjectivity of; doubtful sanity of; his ratiocination; foreign influence ofPope, AlexanderProcession of Life, TheProphetic Pictures, ThePseudonymes of Hawthorne (foot-note)Puritan imaginationPuritans, Hawthorne's view ofPyncheon, Clifford, how resembling PoePynchons, complaints of the, against Seven Gables

Rappaccini's DaughterRaymond, Maine, removal toRipley, GeorgeRoger Malvin's BurialRossetti-Morris schoolRousseau

Salem, as a native soil; Hawthorne's sentiment for; aspects of; origin of name; tradeSalem Custom-HouseSand, GeorgeSanity of highest genius

Scarlet Letter; origin of; publication of; Leutze's coincidence; passage compared with Bunyan; theme of revenge in; analysis of the romance; as a work of artScotland and New EnglandScott, Sir Walter; Hawthorne's estimate ofScudéri; Madeleine deSebago LakeSense of form in Hawthorne; in PoeSeptimius Felton; symbolism of; origin of"Seven Tales of my Native Land. "ShakespereShelley's Latin verses; The Cenci, compared with Marble FaunSights from a SteepleSims, William, finder of supposed Early Notes, AppendixSin, consciousness of, in Hawthorne; how conducive to originalitySlavery, Hawthorne's sentiments concerningSnow ImageSparhawk House, Kittery "Spectator, " The; extracts fromSpenserSt. John's, John Hathorne's attack onStory, JosephSumner, Charles, note of, to HawthorneSunday at HomeSupernatural, Hawthorne's use ofSurroundings of genius assist but do not produce it

Taine's Notes on EnglandTales of the Province HouseTanglewood TalesTerm-Bill at CollegeThackerayThomson, JamesThoreau's Legend of the WaysideTieckToll-Gatherer's DayTragedy of isolationTrue StonesTwice-Told Tales; temperament in style of; first collection of; second

Union of the States, Hawthorne's feeling aboutUnion StreetUpham's "Salem Witchcraft. "

Verses by Hawthorne, at collegeVirgilVirtuoso's CollectionVoltaire

Wayside, The, purchase ofWedding Knell, TheWeird, The, in Scotland and New EnglandWest Newton, removal toWhipple, Edwin, objection to remark of; Hawthorne's pleasure in reviews written byWhite, John, Rev. White Old Maid, TheWidowhood, sentiment of, expressed by HawthorneWinthiop, JohnWitchcraftWitch-ointmentWitch-pinsWonder-BookWorcester, Dr. J. E. 

Young Goodman Brown. Youth of Hawthorne, habits in; valuable formative results of