ius and respect your character, the enclosed sum of money, which I send you with my warmest wishes for your health and happiness. I know the sensitive edge of your temperament; but do not speak or think of obligation. It is only paying, in a very imperfect measure, the debt we owe you for what you have done for American Literature. Could you know the readiness with which every one to whom I applied contributed to this little offering, and could you have heard the warm expressions with which some accompanied their gift, you would have felt that the bread had cast upon the waters had indeed come back

you

to you.

Let no shadow of despondency, my dear friend, steal over you. Your friends do not and will not forget you. You shall be protected against " eating cares," which, I take it, mean cares lest we should not have enough to eat.

My check, you perceive, is made payable to your order. You must therefore endorse it. I presume that you can get it cashed at some of the Salem banks. With my affectionate remembrances to your wife, Ever faithfully yours,

GEO. S. HILLARD.

-And here is another note, not less agreeable and characteristic, from the poet Whittier:

N. HAWTHORNE, ESQ.

:

AMESBURY, Feb. 22, 1850.

DEAR FRIEND, I have just learned with regret and surprise that no remittance has been sent thee

for thy admirable story in the "Era." Dr. B. wrote me, in receipt of it months ago, that he had directed his agent in Boston to pay thee.

The pecuniary affairs of the "Era" are in the hands of Dr. B.; but I was unwilling to leave the matter unadjusted, and hasten to forward the amount. It is, I feel, an inadequate compensation.

I am glad to hear of thy forthcoming book. It is spoken of highly by the publishers. God bless and prosper thee!

Truly thy friend,

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

The Salem period closes with this foreglimpse, in a letter from Mrs. Hawthorne, of a visit from Miss Bremer, who was at that time in America:

"I heard of a charming prospect about seeing Miss Bremer, from Lydia Chase.

feel honored by a visit from her.

I am sure I should

She will not mind

a ragged carpet, a nursery parlor, and all the inevitable inconveniences of our present ménage. I am sure the children would be drawn to her. Lydia said she was to dine with her, and come and make us a call in the afternoon. We cannot give her a room, just now, to be comfortable in; but to have a call from her would be delightful."

CHAPTER VIII.

LENOX.

But

BIDDING good-by forever to literary obscurity and to Salem, Hawthorne now turned his face towards the mountains. The preceding nine months had told upon his health and spirits; and, had "The Scarlet Letter" not achieved so fair a success, he might have been long recovering his normal frame of mind. the broad murmur of popular applause, coming to his unaccustomed ears from all parts of his native country, and rolling in across the sea from academic England, gave him the spiritual refreshment born of the assurance that our fellow-creatures think well of the work we have striven to make good. Such assurance is essential, sooner or later, to soundness and serenity of mind. No man can attain secure repose and happiness who has never found that what moves and interests him has power over others likewise. Sooner or later he will begin to doubt either his own sanity or that of all the rest of the world.

But, for Hawthorne, "The Scarlet Letter" permanently disposed of this danger. It dealt with a subject of universal interest in such a way as to command universal sympathy From the time that it was pub

lished, Hawthorne became a sort of Mecca of pilgrims with Christian's burden upon their backs. Secret criminals of all kinds came to him for counsel and relief. The letters he received from spiritual invalids would have made a strange collection. Some of them he showed to his wife; but most of them he withheld even from her, and all of them he destroyed. Had such a pilgrimage occurred before he wrote his great Romance, one might have thought that he had availed himself therein of the material thus afforded him. But such practical knowledge of the hidden places of the human heart comes only to those who have proved their right to it by independent spiritual intuition. Greatness is the only magnet of the materials upon which greatness is based.

Although, therefore, Hawthorne was below his usual mark of vigor when he came to Lenox, there was an inner satisfaction at his heart which would surely make him well again. In fact, the two or three years which lay next before him comprised his period of greatest literary activity. During those years he produced five books, four of which, at least, were masterpieces in their several ways. His mental faculties never reached a higher state of efficiency than at this epoch, when he had just passed his fortyfirst year; though, on the other hand, his physical energies perhaps never fully recovered from the shock and strain of that last year of Salem. In after life he was more easily affected than before by external accidents and circumstances, such as weather, fatigue,

noise, climate; the boundless elasticity of youth was gone. He still, however, retained a solid basis of health and muscular strength up to the time of his daughter's nearly fatal illness in Rome, in 1858. His daughter recovered; but her illness proved fatal, in the end, to him. His countenance, like his mind, sent forth a mellower but graver light than that of youth; and there was a melancholy cadence in the tones of his voice, - the melancholy of a strong, composed, but no longer buoyant spirit.

"The Scarlet Letter" had been published by the firm of Ticknor & Co. Wiley and Putnam had failed some time before, and George Putnam (a relative of Mrs. Hawthorne) had made the best reparation in his power for the small sum owing to Hawthorne, by disposing of the stock and plates of such of his works as were in the firm's possession, to the above-named publishers. The book enjoyed the distinction of stimulating the thieving propensities of several English booksellers; and Henry Chorley, of the "Athenæum," was as much pleased with it as if he had manufactured its author himself. Hawthorne did not, at first, think so well of the book as of his subsequent ones; or rather, to use his own words, he did not think it a book natural for him to write. But there is reason to believe that, towards the end of his life, he modified this opinion. What the work lacked in breadth and variety, was more than compensated in other ways. As has been already intimated, it produced its effect even upon