to me. But, when he felt he was dying, herself. I've been able to put her to a he'd told the woman that I was his father, very good school, and she is getting on and sent her out to see if she could find nicely. She plays the piano very prettily alme. Rosie was too young to tell me any-ready, and I play with her on the old fiddle; thing; she didn't even know anything and that goes on getting better every year about her mother. I may have almost run it lives. It's a pity we don't copy after fidagainst him many a time. It's easy for dles as we get old. In the winter evenings people who have got their eyes to lose each other like that in London. The first winter I had my little pet, we were hard pushed. I had the rheumatism, and could neither work nor play. We should both have been obliged to go into the work-house, if it hadn't been for my good friend the organist. He found us out, after a bit, and took a great fancy to Rosie. Everybody does. There isn't a feature in her face like her grandmother's; and yet, when I run my hand over it, it plays just the same tune in another key. So my good friend helped us himself, and got others to help us; and, when I could go about again, he encouraged me to improve myself on the organ, and let me play for him on weekdays and Sundays, too, sometimes - to give me nerve. And then, when there was a vacancy in the City, he spoke for me, and I was fortunate enough to please on my trial Sunday, and got the place. If God should spare me now to see my little Rosie settled well, I should be as happy as this earth can make me. He may be pleased to do it, for I'm hale and hearty yet; and then, perhaps, I shall be grumbling at having to give her up. She's all I've got, you know, to stand for wife and son, alive; and then she's such a darling

--

Rosie and I sit by the fire when she's done her lessons, and she reads so prettily, and talks so prettily, and plays so prettily, and is so fond of me, that it is like a little heaven below to a lonely old man; and, in the summer evenings, we walk about these parts where I used to go about fiddling when I was a boy. She says that she should have liked to go about with me then, as she does now. Sometimes we've a service in the middle of the week, and then we go into the City together; but, mostly, Saturday is the only week-day we go in. Rosie likes having the church all to ourselves and the organ. On Sundays we start directly after breakfast. We take dinner and tea at the pew-opener's. She is a very decent woman, and has got a neat little room looking into the churchyard. It's quieter on a Sunday even than we are here. And then we walk home in the evening, and have supper and a tune and prayers, and go to bed as happy as if she was Princess Royal and I was her father. When I'm playing out the congregation after evening service, I often think that, through God's goodness, my life is getting played out somehow the same way. I'm going home to rest, with music to soothe me before I fall asleep."

M. SISMONDI, in his "Literature of the South of Europe," has given a version of one of the neatest of-shall we say fables or enigmas?— of Yriarte; and it contains so much of good sense and of good counsel for editors, and literary men in general, that we venture to give Roscoe's version of it here in extenso-premising only that the speaker is a dancing bear who, in the exercise of his profession, happens to be laughed at by a monkey and praised by a pig. Bruin's remark is as follows:

"When the sly monkey call'd me dunce,

I entertained a slight misgiving;
But, Pig, thy praise has proved at once
That dancing will not earn my living.

"Then let each candidate for fame

Rely upon this wholesome rule,

Your work is bad if wise men blame,

But worse if lauded by a fool." de Yriarte, who holds a very high position in The author of this jeu d'esprit, Don Thomas Spanish literature, though little known in England, was a native of the Isle of Teneriffe, and died in 1791, at the age of little more than forty. In early life he became a place-man and a writer for the Spanish Government. He also published some comedies, and a volume of poems called "La Musica.' He fell foul of the Inquisition, or rather the Inquisition fell foul of him, but he managed to escape its censures, or at all events its punishments. His name is best known by his "Fabulus Litterarias,' " which have been translated into French, German, and Portuguese; he also made Spanish versions of Horace's "Art of Poetry," and of the four first books of Virgil's "Æneid."

Gentleman's Magazine.

From The London Review. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S PRIVATE

DIARY.*

convey more of various modes of truth than I could have grasped by a direct effort."

8

"There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare,

That you hardly at first see the strength that is

there;

A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet.
So earnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet,
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet,

The extracts cover the space between 1835 THIS collection (arranged in chronolog- and 1853; they include the Brook-Farm ical order, of course, but unfortunately episode, and (though that is not mentioned wanting an index) of passages from the di- in the preface) what will please those who ary or note-book of the late Nathaniel Haw-recollect that beautiful piece of quiet humour, thorne will gratify a considerable amount the Introduction to The Scarlet Letter of what is, in our opinion, quite legitimate - namely, Hawthorne's custom-house excuriosity. That Hawthorne's private life periences. They include, we are told, “a should have been really private was, of time when the author had to struggle with course, well; and that so shy and so quietly difficulties before he became famous by the proud a man should, in his writings, give publication of The Scarlet Letter';" but the world no hint of his private affairs was we find no trace in any part of the work of to be expected; but, in consequence chiefly what most literary men would understand of the very peculiar character of the writ- by the word " struggle.' And a "strugings of the author of "The Scarlet Letter," gle," in that sense, might well have damserious students of his books were, from aged the tender bloom of a genius like time to time, tormented by accesses of cu-Hawthorne's never so well described by riosity about the man himself. Was he any prose pen as by Lowell's most admiramarried or single? Was he, if married, ble verse: happily married? Had he children? and, if so, what kind of beings were they? The elaborate finish of his writings was proof sufficient that he was not poor, in the strong sense of the word; and their purity was proof that their author had never had other than a pure and living soul; but their incessant, though timid and ostensibly only artistic touches of sacred scepticism (as though the man habitually lived in some sphere in which shadows were perpetually interfering with his vision of substances) compelled the reader to wonder what sort of life his had been from the first. How came perfect innocence to know so much, and to make such strange speculations? Of his manner of workmanship no literary workman could for a moment doubt- -it is obviously an elaborating manner, in which a cell-idea is developed into a manycoloured, many-membered, though simple whole; and this the Note-books superabundantly confirm. As to the early life of Hawthorne, they say nothing, because they contain no retrospect. An extract given The volume appears to have been edited by (in the preface) from "Our Old Home" Mrs. Hawthorne; at least, that is the readshows, in a striking light, his own conscious-ing we give to the occasional foot-notes ness of what we pointed out in a former ar- signed "S. H." ticle upon his writings - namely, a want of direct speculative power:

"These and other sketches, with which, in a somewhat rougher form than I have given them here, my journal was copiously filled, were intended for the side scenes and backgrounds and

exterior adornment of a work of fiction, of which

the plan had imperfectly developed itself in my mind, and into which I ambitiously proposed to

Passages from the American Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Author of " Transformation," "Our Old Home," &c. Two vols. London: Smith, Elder, & Co.

Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood,

Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe,
With a single anemone trembly and rathe;
His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek,
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek,—
He's a John Bunyan Fouqué, a puritan Tieck;
When Nature was shaping him, clay was not
granted

For making so full-sized a man as she wanted,
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman pre-
pared,

And she could not have hit a more excellent
plan

For making him fully and perfectly man."

pages

To begin with, then, Hawthorne was married. He appears to have had very intelligent children-all, or some of them, full of poetic instinct,. On one of these said, "When I have grown up, I mean to it is recorded that a little son of his be two men"- intending to say that he handful of autumn-red maple-leaves, he would be very strong. Again, taking up a cried, "Papa, here is a handful of fire!” And there are other touches of the same kind. Later on in the notes he makes a remark which only a happy husband could

have made, that a lighthouse was a fit place for a couple to spend their honeymoon or their first year in. We infer that the house in which he dwelt when first married was the Old Manse, the neighbourhood of which he has made so dear to some of us, and, in any case, here is a picture, in his own words, of his earlier wedded days:

an instance, merely, suppose a woman sues her "To show the effect of gratified revenge. As lover for breach of promise, and gets the money "It is usually supposed that the cares of life by instalments, through a long series of years. come with matrimony; but I seem to have cast At last, when the miserable victim were utterly off all care, and live on with as much easy trust trodden down, the triumpher would have bein Providence as Adam could possibly have felt come a very devil of evil passions-they havbefore he had learned that there was a world being overgrown his whole nature; so that a far yond Faradise. My chief anxiety consists in greater evil would have come upon himself than watching the prosperity of my vegetables, in ob- on his victim." serving how they are affected by the rain or sunshine, in lamenting the blight of one squash and rejoicing at the luxurious growth of another. It is as if the original relation between man and nature were restored in my case, and as if I were to look exclusively to her for the support of my Eve and myself to trust to her for food and clothing, and all things needful, with the full assurance that she would not fail me."

....

"Even out of the midst of happiness I have sometimes sighed and groaned; for I love the sunshine, and the green woods, and the sparkling blue water; and it seems as if the picture of our inward bliss should be set in a beautiful frame of outward nature. As to the daily course of our life, I have written with pretty commendable diligence, averaging from two to four hours a day; and the result is seen in various magazines. I might have written more, if it had seemed worth while; but I was content to earn only so much gold as might suffice for our immediate wants, having prospect of official station and emolument which would do away with the necessity of writing for bread. Those prospects have not yet had their fulfilment ; and we are well content to wait, because an office would inevitably remove us from our present happy home-at least from an outward home; for there is an inner one that will accompany us wherever we go. Meantime, the magazine people do not pay their debts! so that we taste some of the inconveniences of poverty. It is an annoyance, not a trouble.

t;

"Every day I trudge through snow and slosh to the village, look into the post-office, and spend an hour at the reading-room; and then return home, generally without having spoken a word to a human being.... In the way of exercise I saw and split wood, and physically I

never was in a better condition than now.

This

is chiefly owing, doubtless, to a satisfied heart,

in aid of which comes the exercise above mentioned, and about a fair proportion of intellectual labour."

Here, then, the curiosity of the curious

is satisfied. But there remain other sources of interest in these notes. Of a very great number of those writings of Hawthorne

Here is the germ of that wonderful tale, "The Birth-Mark":

"A person to be in the possession of something as perfect as mortal man has a right to demand; he tries to make it better, and ruins it entirely."

On page 269 of the same volume we find the note "Pandora's box for a child's story: " and in another page, the sending to press of the " Tanglewood Tales" is noted. Here is the hint of the poisonbreath of the girl in "Rappaccini's Daugh

ter":

"A story there passeth of an Indian king that sent unto Alexander a fair woman, fed with aconite and other poisons, with this intent complexionally to destroy him.- Sir T. Browne.”

And on page 273 we have another hint towards the " Birth-Mark," though the close differs:

"A person to be the death of his beloved in trying to raise her to more than mortal perfection; yet this should be a comfort to him for having aimed so highly and holily.' Here is "Earth's Holocaust":

Procession of Life." But the examples of | black! There is the worn-out shoe-brush with the kind which we have noted are far too which this polished writer polished his boots! numerous to be all reproduced, and we There is-but I believe this will be pretty inust pass on to another point or two. Take much all, so here I close the catalogue.". one or two passages illustrating the peculiar oscillating balance (if the phrase may be pardoned) of Hawthorne's mind in moral

The picture of the kind of life he lived after his marriage, when Mrs. Hawthorne was away on a visit, is very delightful:

"I am afraid I shall be too busy washing my dishes to pay many visits. The washing of dishes does seem to me the most absurd and unsatisfactory business that I ever undertook. If, when once washed, they would remain clean for ever and ever (which they ought in all reason to do, considering how much trouble it is), there would be less occasion to grumble; but no sooner is it done, than it requires to be done again. On the whole, I have come to the resolution not to use more than one dish at each meal. However, I moralize deeply on this and other matters, and have discovered that all the trouble and afflietion in the world come from the necessity of cleansing away our earthly stains.

"I ate the last morsel of bread yesterday, and congratulate myself on being now reduced to the fag-end of necessity. Nothing worse can happen, according to ordinary modes of thinking, than to want bread; but, like most afflictions, it is more in prospect than reality. I found one cracker in the tureen, and exulted over it as if it had been so much gold. However, I have sent a petition to Mrs. Pstating my desti-. tute condition, and imploring her succour; and till it arrive, I shall keep myself alive on herrings and apples, together with part of a pint of

milk, which I share with Leo."

pudding. Lastly we will quote an entry which vividly connects Hawthorne with the Old Country:

"Here I am, in my old chamber, where I In a very short time some ladies of the produced those stupendous works of fiction neighbourhood bring him bread, and he is which have since impressed the universe with again well provisioned. There is a kind wonderment and awe! To this chamber, doubt- Mrs. P.," who even takes him a plumless, in all succeeding ages, pilgrims will come to pay their tribute of reverence; they will put off their shoes at the threshold for fear of deseerating the tattered old carpets! There,' they will exclaim, is the very bed in which he slumbered, and where he was visited by those ethe real visions which he afterwards fixed for ever in glowing words! There is the washstand at which this exalted personage cleansed himself from the stains of earth, and rendered his outward man a fitting exponent of the pure soul within! There, in its mahogany frame, is the dressing-glass, which often reflected that noble brow, those hyacinthine locks, that mouth bright with smiles or tremulous with feeling, that flashing or melting eye, that in short every item of the magnanimous face of this unexam

pled man! There is the pine table-there is the old flag-bottomed chair on which he sat, and at which he scribbled, during his agonies of inspiration! There is the old chest of drawers in which he kept what shirts a poor author may be supposed to have possessed! There is the closet in which was reposited his threadbare suit of

"Memorials of the family of Hawthorne in the church of the village of Dundry, Somersetshire, England. The church is ancient and small, and has a prodigiously high tower of more modern date, being erected in the time of Edward IV. It serves as a land-mark for an amazing extent of country."

The character of Hawthorne, though in part disclosed to us by these notes, is not at present a fair subject for public analysis; but, in private, attentive readers will find ample matter for study in connection with the morale of his books. The editor and the publishers of these notes have laid us all, and especially men of letters, under an obligation; and we very cordially commend them as constituting one of the most interesting books the year has seen.

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