such as no one but you could have written. If they do not love you, it must be because they have no hearts to love with, - and even if this were the case, I should not despair of your planting the seeds of hearts in their bosoms. They will love you, all in good time, dearest; and we will be very happy. I am so at this moment. I see more to admire and love in you every day of my life, and shall see more and more as long as I live, else it will be because my own nature retrogrades, instead of advancing. But you will make me better and better, till I am worthy to be your husband.

Three evenings without a glimpse of you; and I know not whether I am to come at six or seven o'clock, or scarcely, indeed, whether I am to come at all. But, unless you order me to the contrary, I shall come at seven o'clock. I saw Mr. Emerson at the Athenæum yesterday, and he tells me that our garden, etc., make progress. Would that we were there!

YOURS.

SALEM, June 9, 1842.'

DEAREST, Scarcely had I arrived here, when our mother came out of her chamber, looking better and more cheerful than I have seen her this some time, and inquired about your health and well-being. Very kindly, too. Then was my heart much lightened; for I know that almost every agitating circumstance of her life had hitherto cost her a fit of sickness, and I knew not but it might be so now. Foolish me,

to doubt that my mother's love could be wise, like all other genuine love! And foolish again, to have doubted your instinct, whom, henceforth (if never before) I take for my unerring guide and counsellor in all matters of the heart and soul. Yet if, sometimes, I should perversely follow my own follies, do not you be discouraged. I shall always acknowledge your superior wisdom in the end. Now, I am happier than my naughtiness deserves. It seems that our mother had seen how things were, a long time ago; at first her heart was troubled, because she knew that much of outward as well as inward fitness was requisite to secure our peace; but, gradually and quietly, God has taught her that all is good, and so we shall have her fullest blessing and concurrence. My sisters, too, begin to sympathize as they ought; and all is well. God be praised! I thank Him on my knees, and pray Him to make me worthy of the happiness you bring me.

Time and space, and all other finite obstructions, are fast flitting away from between us. We can already measure the interval by days and hours. What happiness! and what awe is intermingled with itno fear nor doubt, but a holy awe, as when an immortal spirit is drawing near to the gates of Heaven. I cannot tell what I feel, but you know it all.

I shall be with you on Friday at seven o'clock. I have no more words, but a heart full of love.

YOUR OWN.

SALEM, June 20, 1842.

- You have not been out

TRUE AND HONORABLE, of my mind a moment since I saw you last, and never will you be, so long as we exist. Can you say as much? Dearest, do you know that there are but ten days more in this blessed month of June? And do you remember what is to happen within those ten days? Poor little Sophie! Now you begin to tremble and shrink back, and fear that you have acted too rashly in this matter. Now you say to yourself, “Oh that I could prevail upon this wretched person to allow me a month or two longer to make up my mind; for, after all, he is but an acquaintance of yesterday, and unwise am I to give up father, mother, and sisters for the sake of such a questionable stranger!" Ah, it is too late! Nothing can part us now; for God himself hath ordained that we shall be one. So nothing remains, but to reconcile yourself to your destiny. Year by year we shall grow closer to each other; and a thousand ages hence, we shall be only in the honeymoon of our marriage. But I cannot write to you. The time for that species of com

munion is past.

JUNE 30.

DEAREST, Your sister Mary told me that it was her opinion you and I should not be married for a week longer. I had hoped, as you know, for an earlier day; but I cannot help feeling that Mary is on the safe and reasonable side, and should you feel that this postponement is advisable, you will find

me patient beyond what you think me capable of I will even be happy, if you will only keep your heart and mind at peace. I will go to Concord tomorrow or next day, and see about our affairs there. P. S. I love you! I love you! I love you! P. S. 2. Do you love me at all?

-On the 9th of July, 1842, the marriage took place at the house of Dr. Peabody, No. 13 West Street, Boston. The ceremony was performed by Rev. James Freeman Clarke, who, by a singular chance, never afterwards met Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne until, on the 19th of May, 1864, he preached the funeral sermon, at Concord church, over Mr. Hawthorne's dead body. The spectators of the wedding were very few; but, such as they were, they looked on with loving and praying hearts. The imagination lingers over this scene, with its simplicity, its deep but happy emotion, its faith, its promise, and its courage. The future that lay before the married lovers had in it its full proportion of joy, of sorrow, of honor, and of loss; but there was, in the chapter of their life which had just closed, an ethereal bloom of loveliness which can come but once even to the pure in heart, and which to many comes not at all.

CHAPTER VI.

THE OLD MANSE.

IN the preceding chapters little space has been given to discussion of the merely literary aspect and details of Hawthorne's life. A good deal might have been said about his early successes and disappointments in this direction: how hard he worked for publishers who paid him only with promises; how the "Athenæum" and Mr. Longfellow praised him; how Poe criticised him; how the " Church Review attacked him; and more to the same effect, with the writer's meditations and comments thereupon. But such matters appertain less to the biographer than to the bibliographer. They give no solidity or form to our conception of the man. Hawthorne's works are published to the world, and any one may read them, and derive from them whatever literary or moral culture he may be susceptible of. But any attempt to make the works throw light upon their author is certain to miscarry, unless the student be previously impregnated with a very distinct and unmistakable conception of that author's human and natural (as distinct from his merely imaginative and artistic) personality. The books may add depth