Nathaniel Hawthorne

mprove the house and grounds, and set about the task; the well-known tower, in memory of the tower of Montaüto, was added for his study, and s

ld and familiar acquaintances. It was at home, however, that he spent his days, working in his study over his writing, and pacing the footpath on the hill-ridge back of his house, and from time to time going to the seaside at Beverly or in Maine with his son Julian for a companion. His health was not so firm as it had been. A change seems to have fallen on him with some suddenness on his return to America; for some years, ever since the hard winter of "The Scarlet Letter" at Salem, he had complained of fatig

s only vexation and disaster, with much meaninglessness, foolishness, uselessness, however he might try to look at it with Northern eyes. In nothing is his natural detachment from life so marked as in this incapacity to understand the national life in so supreme a crisis and under the impulse of so profound a passion. He stood aloof from it, unmoved in his superannuated conservatism, as abroad he had stood aloof from the English life wra

n feeling, and think it is about time for us to make a stand. If compelled to choose, I go for the North. At present we have no country-at least, none in the sense an Englishman has a country. I never conceived, in reality, what a

e out of office, late in the day as it is. However, I hav

thrill, and was with his friends a "war Democrat;" but his mind was f

ns to enlist as soon as he reaches the minimum age. But I trust we shall either be victorious or vanquished before that time. Meantime, though I approve the war as much as any man, I don't quite understand what we are fighting for, or what definite result can be expected. If we pummel the South ever so hard, they will love us none the better for it; and even if we subjugate them, our next step should be to cut them adrift. If we are fighting for the annihilation of slavery, to be sure it may be a wise object, and of

he same point of view, accepting in fact the t

unded difficulty as this of ours. For my part I don't hope, nor indeed wish, to see the Union restored as it was. Amputation seems to me much the better plan, and all we ought

so an absence of belief in the Union; but one feels that he is not deeply interested in the mat

and thinks there is nothing left for us but to fight it out, but I should be sorry to take his opinion implicitly as regards our chances in the future. He is bigo

ditor's mind, and Hawthorne, to ease the situation, added explanatory comments of his own as if from an editorial pen. The article shows conclusively how little Hawthorne had been affected, how completely he stood out of the national spirit, being as mere an observer of what was going on as at any time in his lif

s blood-stained fanatic has 'made the Gallows as venerable as the Cross!' Nobody was ever more justly hanged. He won his martyrdom fairly, and took it firmly. He himself, I am persuaded (such was his natural integrity), would have acknowledged that Virginia had a right to take the life which he had staked and lost; although it would have been better for her, i

ion in the author, and it is doubtless true, as has been said, that no other Northern man could have written such an article as this, so disengaged fro

398.] The contents of this volume have already been spoken of, and it need only be remarked here that some allowance may fairly be made for their tone and manner on the score of the depression of the time, arising from Hawthorne's increasing ill-health as well as from public confusion. The one memorable incident co

intimate personal relations with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, especially as regards this book, which would have had no existence without his kindness; and if he is so exceedingly unpopular that his name is enough to sink the volume, there is so much the more need that an old friend should stand by him. I cannot, merely

ne of his character, and the dedic

d to join it with another plan involving a different idea. The four states in which the romance exists are the results of his various efforts, but in none of them is it anything more than inchoate. The idea on the English side of the story sprang from the imprint of a bloody footstep at the foot of the great staircase at Smithell's Hall; on the American side it sprang from a tradition which Thoreau reported about the Concord house, to the effect that a man had lived there in the Revolution who sought the elixir of life. But neither of these two topics developed satisfactorily. The physical type which had served Hawthorne so well hitherto no longer responded to his art; neither the bloody footstep, nor the flower that grew upon the grave, which was after all only a fungus and not the real flower of life, had any story in them, either alone or together, and the figure of Sylph, who embodies allegorically this graveyard flower, has no power to win credence such as other, earlier, symbolic characters had won. The power of

t robust enough to begin, and I feel as if I should never carry it through." And he writes again: "I am not quite up to writing yet, but shall make an effort as soon as I see any hope of success. You ought to be thankful that (like most other broken-down authors) I do not pester you with decrepit pages, and insist upon your accepting them a

agazine that he cannot furnish the promised romance, and he tries to touch t

ot finish it unless a great change comes over me; and if I make too great an effort to do so, it will be my death; not that I should care much for that, if I could fight the battle through and win it, thus ending a life of much smoulder and a scanty fire in a blaze of glory. But I should

great one, and he returned home excited and nervous. He failed rapidly, and his family and friends became anxious about him, though they did not anticipate the suddenness of the end. In the middle of May Frank Pierce proposed that they should go to the New Hampshire lakes and up the Pemigew

and Laconia, when H. said-among other things-'We have, neither of us, met a more reliable friend.' The conviction was impressed upon me, the day we left Boston, that the seat of the disease from which H. was suffering was in the brain or spine, or both; H. walked with difficulty, and the use of his hands was impaired. In fact, on the 17th I saw that he was becoming quite helpless, although he was ab

was left burning in my room-the door open-and I could see him without moving from my bed. I went, however, between one and two o'clock to his bedside, and supposed him to be in a profound slumber. His eyes were closed, his position and face perfectly natural. His face was towards my bed. I awoke again between three and four o'clock, and was surprised-as he

to which he belonged to lay down the pen. Emerson and others whose names have been frequent in this record now lie with him in that secluded spot, which is a place of long memory for our literature. His wife survived him a few y

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editorial difficulties; quarrels with Benjamin; his anonymity dispelled; Bridge guarantees publication of "Twice-Told Tales"; Goodrich's services to; reception of "Twice-Told Tales"; Pierce suggests South Sea Exploring Expedition; challenges a man to a duel; his solitude broken; meets Miss Sophia Peabody; is appointed weigher and gauger in Boston Custom House; bids farewell to Herbert Street; practical life wearies; his courtship; loses place in Boston Custom House; reasons for joining Brook Farm; life there; letter to Sophia Peabody; averse to literary society; barren years; marriage; Paradise in the Old Manse, Concord; Una's birth; straits for money; Bridge and Pierce assist; temperament and art analyzed; literary faculty; permanently influenced by Scott; prime qualities in his work; provincial note; primary element in genius; allegorizing temperament; vivid symbolism; his objectivity; a moralist; essentially an artist; capacity for idleness; his democracy; "obscurest man of letters in America,"; made surveyor of the port of Salem; his feeling for Salem; as a government official; literary revenge; gossip concerning; imagination languishes; Julian born; home happiness; dismissed from office; his resentment; his susceptibility; a

ksgiving; Journal of a Solitary Man; Lady Eleanore's Mantle; Liberty Tree, The, note; Lily's Quest, The; Little Annie's Ramble; Little Daffydowndilly; Main Street; Man of Adamant, The; Marble Faun, The; Maypole of Merry Mount, The; Minister's Black Veil, The; Monsieur du Miroir; Mosses from an Old Manse note; Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe; Mrs. Bullfrog; My Uncle Molineaux; My Wife's Novel, attributed to Hawthorne; Nature of Sleep; New Adam and Eve, The; New England Village, The; Ontario Steamboat, An; Niagara, My Visit to; Old Apple Dealer, The; Old Esther Dudley, first story to bear Hawthorne's name; Old French War, The; Old Manse, The; Old News; Old Ticonderoga; Old Tory, The; Our Old Home note; Papers of an Old Dartmoor Prisoner; Passages from a Relinquished Work; Pepperell, Sir William; Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure; "Peter Parley's" Universal History, note; Pierce, Franklin, Life of; Procession of Life, The; Prophetic Pictures, The; Province House Series; Provincial Tales; P.'s Correspondence; Rappaccini's Daughter; Rill from the Town Pump, A; Roger Malvin's Burial; Scarlet Letter, The; Septimius Felton; Seven Tales of my Native Land; Seven Vagabonds, The; Shaker Bridal, The; Sights fr

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