Try Dante and Milton by their works, and then by their lives; they, too, are the same, in all the same; a pair of grand old fellows, inflexible and strong, yet stern and gloomy withal, great thunder-clouds in the heaven of song. Try the moderns, any of them, by the same rule, and it is the same with them; and will be the same with all men evermore. No man is more and otherwise than he has been and is. We write, we paint, we carve, we sing from our own hearts, be they deep or shallow, and from our hearts' experience and wisdom. From nothing else; from no trick, no hearsay, no second-hand report. Wo be to the man who trusts in any of these things! who builds on other than his own foundation; follows other than his own soul's light. He is chasing a Will-o'-the-Wisp, which will mock him, and lead him into all sorts of bogs and marshes; and is building upon unstable sand, which the rains will wash away: ing to delicate health, (which he made the most of for the purpose,) and partly because much of the time there were no schools within reach. When he was eight or nine years old, his mother, with her three children, took up her residence on the banks of the Sebago Lake, in Maine, where the family owned a large tract of land; and here Hawthorne ran quite wild, and would, we doubt not, have willingly run wild till this time, fishing all day long, or shooting with an old fowling-piece, but reading a good deal too, on the rainy days, especially in Shakspeare and the "Pilgrim's Progress," and any poetry or light books within his reach. Delightful days must those have been; for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine-tenths of it primeval woods. But by-and-by his good mother began to think it was necessary that her boy should do something else; so he was sent back to Salem, where a private instructor fitted him for college. He was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College, Maine, as were also Professor Longfellow and General Franklin Pierce. What progress he made in his studies we know not; judging from the scholarly air of his books, we should say no mean one. There was some talk, we have heard from his friends, of a good proficiency in languages, esLet us glance at what little we know pecially Latin, and a knack of writing of his life, and then at his books. "From his nest every rafter Will rot, and his eagle home Leave him naked to laughter, When leaves fall, and cold winds come." If what we have advanced be true, and it will be granted, we think, in most cases, it is especially and emphatically true in the case of Nathaniel Hawthorne. If ever author was revealed in his books, Hawthorne is the man. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in or about the year 1807, in the town of Salem, Massachusetts, in a house built by his grandfather, who was a maritime personage. The old household estate was in another part of the town, and had descended in the family ever since the settlement of the country; but this old man of the sea exchanged it for a lot of land situated near the wharves, and convenient to his business, where he built the house, (which is still standing,) and laid out a garden where the future author rolled on a grassplot under an apple-tree and picked abundant currants. This grandfather (about whom there is a ballad in Griswold's "Curiosities of American Literature") died long before young Hawthorne was born. One peculiarity of Hawthorne's boyhood was a grievous disinclination to go to school, and (Providence favoring him in this natural repugnance) he never did go half as much as other boys, partly ow English themes; but he himself, they say, insists upon it that he was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to brood over and nurse his own fancies than to dig into Greek roots, and be numbered among learned Thebans. If he did think so, we cannot help thinking he was not far from right. No learned Theban, no Greek roots, could have given him his present pure English style, and his subtile and profound knowledge of the heart. It was the fortune or misfortune, just as the reader pleases, of Hawthorne to have some slender means of supporting himself; and so, on leaving college, in 1825, instead of immediately studying a profession, he sat himself down to consider what pursuit in life he was best fit for. His mother had now returned, and taken up her abode in her deceased father's house, a tall, ugly, old, grayish building, (it is now the residence of half a dozen Irish families,) in which Hawthorne had a room; and year after year he kept on considering what he was fit for, and time and his destiny decided that he was to be the writer that he is. He had always a natural tendency (it appears to have been on the paternal side) toward seclusion, and this he now indulged to the utmost; so that, for months together, he scarcely held human intercourse outside of his own family, seldom going out except at twilight, or only to take the nearest way to the most convenient solitude, which was oftenest the seashore, the rocks and beaches in that vicinity being as fine as any in NewEngland. Once a year, or thereabouts, he used to make an excursion of a few weeks, in which he enjoyed as much of life as other people do in the whole year's round. Having spent so much of his youth and boyhood away from his native place, he had very few acquaintances in Salem, and during the nine or ten years that he spent there, in this solitary way, we doubt whether so much as twenty people in the town were aware of his existence. Meanwhile, strange as it may seem, he had lived a very tolerable life, always seemed cheerful, (was he indeed so with the weight of all that solitude on his heart?) and enjoyed the very best of bodily health. He had read endlessly, all sorts of good and good-for-nothing books, and in the dearth of other employment, had early begun to scribble sketches and stories, most of which he burned. Some, however, got into the magazines and annuals; but being anonymous, or under different signatures, they did not soon have the effect of concentrating any attention upon the author. Still they did bring him into contact with certain individuals. Mr. S. G. Goodrich (a gentleman of many excellent qualities, although a publisher!) took a very kindly interest in him, and employed his pen for "The Token," an annual. Old copies of "The Token" may still be found in antique boudoirs, and on the dusty shelves of street book-stalls. It was the first and probably the best-it could not possibly be the worst-annual ever issued in this country, and numbered among its contributors many young writers who have since become famous. N. P. Willis was at one time its editor. It was a sort of hothouse, where native flowers were made to bloom like exotics. Had we, the writer hereof, lived in those days! From the press of Monroe & Co., Boston, in the year 1837, appeared "The Twice-told Tales," Mr. Hawthorne's first acknowledged volume. "The Twicetold Tales" was a collection of essays, allegories, and stories contributed to various magazines and periodicals. In 1842 was added a second volume. The success of "The Twice-told Tales" was a disgrace to public taste. The foreign novels of James and Bulwer, the home manufactures of Simms and Ingraham, and hosts of other standard writers created "sensations," and sold by whole editions, while the finest and purest tales ever written in America-the most spiritual creations of a beautiful geniusdropped from the press almost still-born ; or, to say the most, attracted a quite limited share, of attention. Something similar was the success of Poe's "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." And so it frequently happens with anything fine and peculiar. A new author-half the book-makers of all ages are as old as literature-has to force his way before the public, or has to have it forced for him; and then has to create the proper taste in the minds of his reluctant readers. But by-and-by all comes right, as it should, and has with Hawthorne. Within the last year or so, a new edition of the " Twicetold Tales" has been published by Ticknor & Co.; and they are now on the road to general and permanent popularity. Though not widely successful in their day and generation, the "Twice-told Tales" had the effect of making Hawthorne, known in his own immediate vicinity; insomuch that, however reluctantly, he was compelled to come out of his owl's nest, and lionize in a small way. Thus he was gradually drawn somewhat into the world, and became pretty much like other people. His long seclusion had not made him melancholy or misanthropic, nor wholly unfitted him for the bustle of life; and perhaps it was the kind of discipline which his idiosyncrasy demanded, and chance and his own instincts, operating together, had caused him to do what was fittest. In 1839, Mr. Bancroft, the historian, without solicitation, gave him a situation in the Boston Custom-house, which proved considerably lucrative, and of which Hawthorne discharged the duties like a man of this world. After two years he resigned and went to the Brook-Farm Community, at West Roxbury, where he continued he used to sail with Ellery Channing. one season, not much to his own satisfaction, according to all accounts. Of this period of his life he has written largely, though under the vail of fiction, in "The Blythedale Romance." The next year he was married, and went to live in the "Old Manse," at Concord, Mass. His manner of life here is charmingly described in the introduction to "The Mosses from an old Manse." The old manse had been from time immemorial the dwelling of the ministers of Concord; and Hawthorne was the first lay occupant who had ever profaned it. When he first saw it, pictures of old priests and divines were on the walls, volumes of black-letter divinity in its book-cases, and bushels of MS. sermons in chests, in the half-finished garret. The last dweller had penned nearly three thousand with his own hand! but when Hawthorne took possession a change came over the old mansion. The walls were made cheerful with a fresh coat of paint; and a little study which Emerson once occupied, and in which he wrote his Essay of "Nature," became Hawthorne's, and was hung with gold-tinted paper, lovely to behold, while the shadow of a willow, that swept against the overhanging eaves, attempered the cheery, western sunshine. In place of the grim prints, there was the sweet and lovely head of one of Raphael's Madonnas, and two pleasant little pictures of the Lake of Como, probably near the site of Claude Melnotte's palace. The only other decorations were a purple.vase of flowers, always fresh, and a bronze one, containing graceful gems. Here, in this little study, Hawthorne wrote the greater part, if not all, of the "Mosses," (which were successively published in the Democratic Review, then edited by his friend O'Sullivan,) and edited "The Journal of an African Cruiser." A lovelier stream than the Assabeth can hardly be found. Down to the water's edge grow majestic trees, whose pendant branches dip in the moveless waters, and drip on the white pond-lilies, and on the red cardinal flowers which illuminate the shrubbery at their feet. Grape-vines twine themselves around shrub and tree, and hang their clusters over the water within reach of the boatman's hand. Here hides the shy king-fisher, and here skims the wild-duck. The pickerel leaps among the lilies, and the turtle suns itself on the rocks and roots of the trees. The Assabeth is as wild to-day as it was three hundred years ago, when the Indian paddled his canoe on its banks. In the woods, and on the sides of the hill which shelter the Assabeth; in the green fields and meadows, which nowhere in New-England are so beautiful as at Concord; in the orchard behind, and the slip of garden beside the old manse, gathering his fruits, and cultivating his summer and winter squashes; in his little study, poring over rare and pleasant books, communing with Emerson or Margaret Fuller, Longfellow or Lowell; happy in the bosom of his family-such were the scenes and such the life of Hawthorne in the old manse at Concord. In fairy-land there is no measurement of time; what wonder, then, that in so fairy-like a spot, three years hastened away with a noiseless flight? But this cannot last always. The owner of the old manse, seized with a spirit of renovation and improvement, sends down carpenters and masons, and other Goths, to disturb its sanctity, and even talks of a painter with his many colored pots. Hawthorne packs up his movables, "The world is all before him where to choose," and is transferred to Salem again, and into the Custom-house there. By-the-by, is it not somewhat odd that several fine poets have been in the same business? There were Chaucer and Burns and Wordsworth, and we know not how many more, all in the Custom-house, among the most unpoctic wights. One would rather expect to find them among those Custom-house This old manse was a famous place, just in sight of the battle-ground, a view of which it commanded; and when the battle was being fought, Hawthorne's immediate predecessor, the deceased minister, watched its progress from his window. In sight of the study-window lay, and still lies for the old manse is standing yet-haters, the smugglers. Concord River, in those days one of Haw- Again at Salem, his old birthplace, thorne's favorite haunts. Here, and up the lovely Assabeth, which flows into the Concord a little distance from the village, the man can see the grass on which the boy rolled, the old apple-tree under which he lay, and the bushes from which he picked the abundant currants. Does he dream now as when he sat, year in and year out, in his room up there in the attic? Does he walk the old paths in the woods, and by the solitary sea-shore? Perchance, but hardly; for he is now a man and a father, and, more than all, a surveyor in the Custom-house! Gladly would we copy, had we room, Hawthorne's own account of his life at Salem; for here (see the introduction to "The Scarlet Letter") he is his own biographer, as in "The Old Manse;" not so fully as in that instance, however, for there is but little interest in the life of a Custom-house surveyor, poet or dreamer though he be. Like many other of their benighted countrymen, his fellowofficials knew nothing of Hawthorne's literary fame. A prophet is not without honor save in his own country." To his own townsmen he was simply Mr. Hawthorne, or, it may be, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Esq.; but with anything beyond, with the author, they were hardly acquainted. And so it is with the world generally; authors are of no account with them: apart from the world's existence, to the world they are non-" existent; they are not known on 'Change; cannot get their notes of hand discounted, (that's no great wonder though, for St. Paul himself could not without a good indorser;) are not talked of in society with the last new opera, or the next new fashion. 66 his mind; this he finished in Salem, and shortly afterward left the city for Lenox. "The Scarlet Letter" was published in the spring of 1850. The good time had come at last. The author of "The Twicetold Tales" had written a book which was popular. The first edition of twenty-five hundred copies was all ordered before the day of publication, and another edition put immediately to press. Its success was complete. At home and abroad the newspapers and reviews were loud in its praise; and they have not done talking of it yet. Four years had elapsed since the publication of "The Mosses from an old Manse," and in that time, and slowly perhaps, for some years before, Hawthorne's fame had been steadily on the increase. Among his brethren of the quill he was well-known already; among purely literary people he had a fair reputation; but purely literary people never buy editions of books, and put money in each other's pockets. Money comes from the great mass of readers, who knew next to nothing of Hawthorne for so many years. He had no incitement to literary effort, in a reasonable prospect of reputation or profit-nothing but the pleasure itself of composition, an enjoyment not at all amiss in its way, and perhaps essential to the work in hand, but which in the long run will hardly keep the chill out of a writer's heart or the numbness out of his fingers. The success of "The Scarlet Letter". brought out a new edition of "The Twicetold Tales," and "True Stories from History and Biography," (a child's book,) and encouraged the author to write "The House of the Seven Gables," and "The Wonder Book," both of which last were "No longer seeking or caring," says Hawthorne, in the introduction to "The Scarlet Letter," "that my name should be blazoned abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think that it had now another kind of vogue. The Custom-house marker imprinted it with a stencil and black paint, on pepper bags and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of duti-written among the mountains of Lenox. able merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the import, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicles of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had never gone before, and, I hope, will never go again." Punctually and faithfully fulfilling his duties, he remained in this ungenial employment, until he was ejected by the Whigs, on the accession of General Taylor, on whose soul, and on all their souls, be blessings forever! Free again, he immediately set to work on " The Scarlet Letter," the idea of which was already in Hawthorne, if we may judge of him by his nomadic habits, seems not to be a person who attaches himself very strongly to any one locality; so last autumn he removed from Lenox, and took a house for the winter at West-Newton, where he wrote the "Blythedale Romance," which was published in July of the past year. A few months since, (probably in the hope of inducing himself to take root, by making the soil his own,) he bought a small house and estate at Concord, where he now resides. A pleasanter and more picturesque abode than his present residence, it has seldom been our lot to meet. It stands in a space of level pasturage about twenty feet from the road, the high road to Boston, along which, in the olden time, marched the British soldiers to Concord bridge. The yard in front of the cottage, once, perhaps, intended for a little garden, is grassy and green, with here and there a tall bush, and a spreading shrub, rose, or lilacs, we have forgotten which, and two or three mulberry-trees, studded with their strawberry-shaped fruit. The sun, if it enters the cottage, must enter through the trees and bushes, whose shadows must quiver on the floor and walls beyond. At the back of the cottage lies a little space of pasturage, then comes the declivity of a hill, upon which grows a young forest, mostly of locust-trees, with now and then a few young elms and oaks, and a few white pines, rooted amid an infinity of yellow needles. Two or three mounded embankments, the foundation of a range of terraces, never, we believe, fully completed, may be seen on the slope of the hill. Higher up, to the left of the cottage, hung like a nest on the hill side, in a picturesque opening of trees, are the remains of a decaying summer-house, made of the unbarked limbs of trees, like those framework chairs and sofas which sometimes ruralize the back piazzas of wealthy city mansions. Beyond rises the still-ascending hill, covered with trees, the whispering of whose leaves, low and indistinct, melts into the air and makes an audible silence around. From the side of the hill, but more especially from its summit, the view of the surrounding country is beautiful. Half hid in trees at its feet stands Mr. Hawthorne's cottage, and a rough blackboarded barn; over the road his garden and wheat field, eight acres of good arable land, with another summer-house thereon; and beyond, a wide extent of fields and plains rolling in grassy waves, over which flit clouds of sunlight and shadow, with here and there a country house, "Bosom'd high in tufted trees;" and in the distance, the line of forest which everywhere in the rural parts of America walls in the gazer's view. From the summit of the hill the scene has the appearance of a valley; though we stand on no great elevation, there seems a depth below us, and a breadth in the narrow landscape. We know of no spot in NewEngland which we would sooner chose for a life abode. Quiet, unobtrusive, and retired, has been the life of Hawthorne, and such are his books. Had his life been different, his books could not have well been what they are. They mirror the man, and could not have been written by any other man, nor by Hawthorne himself, had he been city born and bred, and had his life been passed in the dust and noise of cities, and in close contact with mankind, instead of communion with his own soul, and the manifold influences of nature. The freshness and stillness of nature breathe through his pages, and mingle like an odor with his there-expressed thoughts and feelings. Those years of seclusion and dreaming are all reproduced in his books, and in their quintessence only; he gives us the quintessence of everything; others give us processes with their results, he the results alone; in this respect he is like Tennyson. And he has another of Tennyson's fine peculiarities-that of seeing nature with the eyes of his mind. If he, or any of his characters passes through a landscape, the landscape is always in keeping with his or her idiosyncrasies, and in keeping with the essay or sketch in which it is introduced. There is an air of reserve about Hawthorne, even when most frank; as if he distrusted the propriety of frankness, or had felt, and was feeling, much which could not and should not be revealed. He reveals, we are apt to think, the characteristics of an ideal man, rather than his own; talks oftentimes of pleasant but irrelevant matters, to lead the mind from himself; shutting himself up the while in his own heart and soul, like a sensitive plant in the depths of a shady wood. There is a sort of unreality about his delineations of man and the world; or a reality very different from that of everyday life and thought. It is as if he surveyed both from a distance, calmly and coldly; or if warmly, with only a scientific warmth, such as an enthusiastic anatomist might experience in a rare case of dissection. His world is removed "Beyond the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call earth;" compared to which it is a vernal meadow, fresh with dew, or a sunny nook in the recess of an autumn-tinted forest, where the winds moan plaintively, and the leaves fall-a melancholy forest full of moldering |