The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

as it is, it gives a distinct impression of refinement and good taste. Alone, I believe, among the Concord houses of former times, it is set back far enough from the country-road t

a magnificent curve, with broad meadows and rugged hills, leading up to the pale-blue outline of Mount Wachusett on the western horizon. The Musketequid or Concord River has not been praised too highly. Its clear, gently flowing current, margined by bulrushes and grassy banks, produces an effect of mental peacefulness, very diffe

r grandchildren; and there were among them pieces of a dark-bluish porphyry which she said was not to be found in Massachusetts, but must have been brought from northern New England. There was no reason why they should not have been. The Indians could go from Concord in their canoes to the White Mountains or

ll opposite his house and

and peaceful meadows, which, I think, are among the most satisfying objects in natural scenery. The heart reposes on them with a feeling that few things else can give, because almost a

er, when the river overflows its banks and they become a broad sheet of ice extending for

cond story, where he wrote and pondered until dinner-time. It appears also that he sometimes assisted in washing the dishes-like a helpful mate. After dinner he usually walked to the post-office and to a reading-room in the centre of the town, where he looked over the Boston Post for half an hour. Later in the afternoon, he went rowing or fishing on the river, but his wife does not seem to have

other, afterwards known as Simmons's Landing, where there was a row of tall elms a short distance below the bridge. It is probable that Hawthorne frequented the latter place, as being more remote from human habitations. He did not take to his gun again, alth

once; and John Keyes, also a liberal-minded man, introduced Hawthorne at the reading-club. Margaret Fuller came and left a book for Hawthorne to read, which may have annoyed him more than anything she could have said. Elizabeth Hoar, a woman of exalted character, to whose judgment Emerson sometimes applied for a criticism of his verses, also came sometimes; but the Old Manse was nearly a mile away from Emerson's house, and also from what might be called the "court en

things, than the Old Manse. Mysterious sounds were heard in it repeatedly, especially in the nighttime, when the change o

or, we heard a thumping and pounding as of somebody at work in my study. Nay, if I mistake not (for I was half asleep), there was a s

if the shade of Doctor Ripley had appeared to him in a dissolving light, like the R?ntgen rays, Hawthorne

at we should desire to know how such people appear-their expression, their tone of voice, their general behavior; but Hawthorne did not care for this. At the time of which we write, Doctor Samuel G. Howe, the hero of Greek independence and the mental liberator of Laura Bridgman, was a more famous man than Emerson or Longfellow. He came to Concord with his brilliant wife, and they called at the Old Manse, where Mrs. Hawthorne received them very cordially, but they saw nothing of her husband, except a dark figure gliding thr

the briefest manner. Neither has Hawthorne much to say of Emerson; but Thoreau and Ellery Channing evidently attracted his attention, for he refers to them repeatedly in his diary, and he has left the one life-like portrait of Thoreau-better than a photograph-that now exists. He surveys them both in r

manner in which we should imagine Hawthorne to have skated; but all others were a foil to her husband in the eyes of his wife. {Footnote: "Memories of Hawthorne," 52.} He was evidently a fine skater, gliding over the ice in long sweeping curves. Emerson was also a dignified skater, but with a shorter stroke, and stopping

an expression on his face like a distant thunder-cloud, saying little, and not only listening to but watching the others. Curtis noticed a certain external and internal resemblance in him to Webster, who was at times a thunderous-looking

much that it is a relief to him to meet a man like Hawthorne, on whom his ow

rence from a general type and also from other men of genius. No t

awthorne was simply impenetrable. Emerson was cordial and moderately sympathetic. Hawthorne was reserved, but his sympathies were as profound as the human soul itself. To study human nature as Hawthorne and Shakespeare did, and to make models of their acquaintances for works of fiction,

ches from Concor

uires merely an observing eye is a superficial delusion. Observation is worth little without reflection, and everything depends on the manner in which the observer deals with his facts. Emerson looked at life in order to penetrate it; Hawthorne, in ord

"Emerson the mystic, stretching his hand out of cloud-land in vain search for something real;" but he likes Emerson's ingenuous way of interrogating people, "as if every man had something to give him." However, he makes no attempt

ed little for anything that had not a practical value. He read Shakespeare and Goethe, not so much for the poetry as for the "fine thoughts" he found in them. George Bradford stated more than once that Emerson showed little interest in the pictorial art; and after walking through the sculpture-gallery of the Vatic

erson's fashion to an artistic extreme. "Whilst he suffered at being seen where he was, he consoled himself with the delicious thought of the inconceivable number of places where he wa

ociety and So

of absolute statements ofttimes led him into strange contradictions, and the injustice which results from judging our fellow-mortals by an inflexible standard was the fina

if the life were going out of him; and in Chopin and Correggio at least we feel that they could not have been what they were without it. Napoleon, whose nerves were like steel wires, suffered nevertheless from

ord, could not have been favorable to his mental ease and comfort. How could a man in a happily married condition feel anything but repugnan

ace where Hawthorne was accustomed to bathe. The cause of her suicide has never been adequately explained, but as she was a transcendentalist, or considered herself so, there were those who believed that in some occult way that was the occasion of it. However, as one of

found the corpse, and Hawthorne's account in his diary of its recovery is a terribly accurate description,-softened down and poetized in the rewritten statemen

J. Hawthorn

comments he set down on the dolorous e

her maiden corpse would have looked eighteen hours afterwards, and how coarse men would strive with hand

ag

want of sympathy-a severe penalty for having cultivated and r

wrong in supposing that if Miss Hunt had foreseen the exact consequences of her fatal act she would not have committed it. Hawthorne's remark that her death was a consequence of having refined and cultivated herself beyond the reach of her relatives, seems a rather hard judgment. The latter often happens in Am

er up t

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and so

also temp

for the

stian c

umn of 1843. When cool weather arrived, want and care c

les.' At the last accounts (now about a year since) the sales had not been enough to pay expenses; but it may be otherwise now-else I shall be force

on Athen?um, Au

e exceptions) could not. Even Webster preferred the grotesque art of Dickens to Hawthorne's "wells of English undefiled." Recently, one of the

heir lessons in the recitation-room. Now they go to row, and play foot-ball, and after they graduate, they leave the best portion of their lives behind them. Then if they have a talent for business they become absorbed in commercial affairs; or if not, they travel from one country to another, picking up a smat

so poor that they are not worth binding." The reason why American publishers do not bring out books in such good form as foreign publishers-is that there is no demand for a first-rate article. Thus

f Concord River, but his imagination did not prove equal to the occasion. Most of the stories in "Mosses" must have been composed at Concord, but "Mrs. Bull-Frog'" and "Monsieur du Miroir" must have been written previously, for he refers to them in a letter at Brook Farm. A few were published in the Democratic Review, and others may have been elsewhere; but the proceeds he derived from them woul

was an excellent one for a poet's daughter, and did not seem out of place in Arcadian Concord. Miss Una grew up into a graceful, fair and poetic young lady,-in all respects worthy of her name. She had an uncom

ent Hawthorne wrote a letter

h-for methinks the spirit can never be thoroughly gay and careless again, after this great event. We gain infinitely by the exchange; but we do give up something nevertheless.

a certain kind of indolence in him, a love of the dolce far niente, and an inclination to general inactivity which he may have inherited from his

hich was accepted but not yet published after many months. He also anticipates

servations, which he sent to Hawthorne with a rather diffident interrogation as to whether it might be worth publishing. Hawthorne was decidedly of the opinion that it ought to be published,-in which we cordially agree with him,-and w

g to reach the end. The slaveholders and the Democratic leaders desired Texas in order to perpetuate their control of the government, and it was precisely through this measure that they lost it,-as happens so often in human affairs. It was the gold discoveries in California that upset their calculations. California would not come into the Union as a slave state.

not rise above this; while Clay could be fairly compared on some points with Washington himself, and united with this a persuasive eloquence second only to Webst

he Republic. He only knew that his friends were victorious, and was happy in the expect