636 HAWTHORNE in the rear of the house, from whose windows the clergyman of Concord watched the tight between his parishioners and the British troops on April 19, 1775. In the same room Emer- son, who once inhabited the manse, wrote " Nature." Mr. Hawthorne resided in Con- cord for three years, mingling little with the society of the village, and seeking solitude in the woodland walks around it, or in his boat on the beautiful Assabet, of which in his " Moss- es" he says: "A more lovely stream than this, for a mile above its junction with the Concord, has never flowed on earth nowhere, indeed, except to lave the interior regions of a poet's imagination." In 1846 Mr. Hawthorne was appointed surveyor of the port of Salem. He carried his family thither, and for the next three years he was the chief executive officer in the decayed old custom house, of which and its venerable inmates he gave a graphic and sa- tirical sketch in the introduction to " The Scar- let Letter " (Boston, 1850), a powerful romance of early New England life, which became at once exceedingly popular, and established for its author a high and wide-spread reputation. In 1849, the whigs having regained control of the national government, Mr. Hawthorne was again removed from office. Retiring to the hills of Berkshire, he settled in the town of Lenox, in a little red cottage on the shore of the lake called the Stockbridge Bowl. Here he wrote " The House of the Seven Gables " (Boston, 1851), a story the scene of which is laid in Salem in the earlier part of the present century. It was not less successful than " The Scarlet Letter," though its striking and som- bre effect is wrought out of homely and ap- parently commonplace materials, and its strain of horror is prolonged almost to tedious- ness. This was followed by " The Blithedale Romance" (Boston, 1852), in which, as he says in the preface to the book, he "has ven- tured to make free with his old and affection- ately remembered home at Brook Farm, as be- ing certainly the most romantic episode of his own life." The characters of the romance, he says, are entirely fictitious, though the scene of Brook Farm was in good keeping with the personages whom he desired to introduce. 44 The self-conceited philanthropist ; the high- spirited woman bruising herself against the narrow limitations of her sex ; the weakly maiden, whose tremulous nerves endow her with sibylline attributes; the minor poet, be- ginning life with strenuous aspirations, which die out with his youthful fervor; all these might have been looked for at Brook Farm, but, by some accident, never made their ap- pearance there." In 1852 Mr. Hawthorne re- turned to Concord, where he purchased a house and a few acres of land, intending to make it his permanent home. During the presidential canvass of 1852 he published a life of his col- lege friend Franklin Pierce, the democratic candidate. President Pierce in 1853 appoint- ed his biographer to one of the most lucrative posts in his gift, the consulate at Liverpool. Mr. Hawthorne held this office till 1857, when he resigned it, and for two years travelled with his family in France and Italy, residing for a good while in Rome and in Florence. He returned to Concord in the latter part of 1860, and lived here quietly until his health failed, and in the spring of 1864 he set out on a journey through New Hampshire with ex- President Pierce. He reached a hotel in the town of Plymouth, where he stopped for the night, and was found dead in his bed in the morning. Among his works not already men- tioned are : " True Stories from History and Biography" (Boston, 1851); "The Wonder Book for Girls and Boys " (1851) ; " The Snow- Image and other Twice-told Tales" (1852); and "Tanglewood Tales," a continuation of "The Wonder Book" (1853). Each of these is in 1 vol. 12mo. In 1845 he edited "The Journal of an African Cruiser" (New York), from the MSS. of a naval officer, Lieut. Hora- tio Bridge. His longest and perhaps his best work, "The Marble Faun," a romance of Italy, was published in Boston in 1860, and in the same year reprinted in London with the title " Transformation." His next work, " Our Old Home," a series of English sketches contrib- uted to the "Atlantic Monthly," was publish- ed in a volume in 1863. This was the last of his books that appeared during his life. After his death his wife edited from his diaries, which he kept with remarkable regularity, his "American Note Books" (1868), "English Note Books" (1870), and "French and Italian Note Books " (1872). In 1872 " Septimius Fel- ton, or the Elixir of Life," a psychological romance, the scene of which is laid in Concord in 1775, was found among his manuscripts and edited by his daughter Una. Some chapters of " The Dolliver Romance," an unfinished work, were published in the " Atlantic Month- ly " in 1864. A complete edition of his wri- tings was issued in Boston in 1873, in 21 vols. 16mo. Mr. Hillard of Boston, one of Haw- thorne's most intimate friends, says of him in an article in the "Atlantic Monthly " for 1870 : " He was a man as peculiar in character as he was unique in genius. In him opposite quali- ties met, and were happily and harmoniously blended ; and this was true of him physically as well as intellectually. He was tall and strongly built, with broad shoulders, deep chest, a massive head, black hair, and large, dark eyes. Wherever he was, he attracted attention by his imposing presence. He looked like a man who might have held the stroke oar in a university boat. And his genius, as all the world knows, was of masculine force and sweep. But, on the other hand, no man had more of the feminine element than he. He was feminine in his quick perceptions, his fine insight, his sensibility to beauty, his delicate reserve, his purity of feeling. No man comprehended woman more perfectly; none has painted woman with a more exquisite and
