any remarks upon "Blithedale" must be deferred to the next. West Newton, it may be remarked, was only used as a temporary dwelling-place while something better was being looked for; and it was upon Concord that Hawthorne finally fixed his hopes. He made inquiries of, among other persons, Ellery Channing, as to what prospect there was of getting a house there; and Ellery invited him to come and talk it over, as may be gathered from the following whimsical letters:

CONCORD, Dec. 13, 1851.

MY DEAR HAWTHORNE, I am glad you have shortened your longitude, and evacuated that devilish institution of Spitzbergen, - that ice-plant of Sedgwicks, etc. Good God! to live permanently in Iceland! I know nothing of West Newton, and do not wish to know any more; but it is further south than the other, a great advantage, and you can sell Old Boreas, lusty railer, etc.

I write to say that I have now a room at your command, where perhaps you might make yourself comfortable for a few days. Nobody at home but myself, and a prospect of strong waters. It is so damned near where you live that perhaps you would like to leave home,-always a devilish bore to me, at any rate. I have got a good cook, and some wood; and you can have whole days, as I never dine before five. There is only this, my dear fellow; and if you will come, please let me know instanter, as next week is the week I shall be ready for you.

Emerson is gone, and nobody here to bore you.

The skating is damned good.

N. B. Pipes and old tobac no end.

- Hawthorne replied that his literary employments and domestic affairs would not allow him to avail himself of Ellery's pipes and Mr. Emerson's absence; whereupon the eccentric poet entered into a more detailed discussion of the situation.

CONCORD, Friday, Dec. 17, 1851.

DEAR HAWTHORNE, Your letter, received tonight, got carried to hell before it got here, and the Prince of Darkness interpolated a polite refusal to my lively invitation. Now, by dint of swearing at the cook, damning the butcher, breaking all the temperance laws of the State, and exerting ourselves, I doubt not I might have passed a profitable week,

to me.

But as you are sweating Romances, and have got that execrable bore, a small family, it is all right. I am glad now you did not come. I was afraid you would be disappointed if you had.

For my own part, I would infinitely rather settle on the icy peak of Mt. Ararat than in this village. It is absolutely the worst spot in the world. There are so many things against it, that it would be useless to enumerate the first. Among others, day before yesterday, at six A. M., the thermometer was ten degrees below nothing. This is enough.

A good climate is a prime consideration to me. Think of the climate of Venice, of Fie-all, of Cuba, of Malaga, the last best. I have been within about six miles of the last city; behind it rise majestic Sierras, before it glitters and dreams the blue Mediterranean, and the thermometer stands at 75° the year round. O God! what a contrast to this d- -d place!

I have never lived in Alcott's place; but I judge the thermometer there goes as low as anywhere else in this country. Of course, that place you were at was colder.

How would it do to have a house at Este, or on the Gulf of Spezzia, as Shelley of drowned memory did? The rents are low, and living is cheap. Shelley made good weather, by the aid of Byron, Hunt, Trelawney, Williams, and others. I fancy it would not do to go alone among the peasantry; and you might retire from the Domzilla with a knife in your guts.

Mr. Lowell, whom I did not know, is somewhere in that ilk, and Mr. Story, etc. But they keep at Rome or Florence; and the climate of Rome, though mild, is aguish. So it is, absolutely, in Venice.

Self-exiled, etc., how would this seem? The American stamp is pretty strong on you, and could you feel at ease in European circumstances? I disliked Europe, alone, beyond description. You are such a domestic affair, you would feel snug with your family, etc.

What do you think of California? Good climate, but lots of blacklegs. I think a villa among the Euganean Hills would be as good as anything. But it requires a coal-hod of tin to make it work. Byron's income was about $20,000 a year. Affectionately yours,

W. E. C.

-As there was no immediate prospect of realizing the Gulf of Spezzia, or even California, Hawthorne finally decided to buy Mr. Alcott's house in Concord, together with the twenty acres or thereabouts of arable and wooded land belonging to it. But he wisely waited until June before entering on possession of it; for there are days in that month when the climate of Concord seems almost as Paradisiacal as that of Malaga or the Euganean Hills.

CHAPTER IX.

CONCORD.

WHEN Hawthorne went to Lenox, after Madame Hawthorne's death, the household in Mall Street was, of course, broken up; and his two sisters, Elizabeth and Louisa, were established, the latter with her relatives in Salem, the former in lodgings in a farmer's family on the sea-coast not far from Salem, where she lived, in perfect contentment, for more than thirty years, a life the solitude of which would have killed most women in as many days. Beyond the members of the farmer's family (who could be her associates only in the most literal sense) she very seldom saw or communicated with any one. She got up at noon every day, walked or read till two in the morning, and then all was darkness and silence till noon again. Her health was always perfect, both of mind and body; and she not only kept abreast of all that was going on in the great world, but was to the end of her life a keen and sagacious critic of American and European public men and politics. I mention this because, from the purely intellectual point of view, she bore a very striking resemblance to her brother; and this resemblance will be made to appear more fully in a subsequent portion of the present work.