On the 19th of May, at his house in Plymouth, New Hampshire, with all the lovely sights and sounds of that sweet spring-time which he so dearly loved, the spirit of America's greatest prose-writer faded almost imperceptibly into eternity. Little known to the great European public, and indeed more especially endeared to the scholar and the dreamer than to the general reader by his genial humour and refined taste, he had never striven to become popular, and therefore the announcement of his comparatively early death created but little excitement, save among the reverent circle of which we have before spoken. So retiring and modest, indeed, were his habits, that to many of his countrymen, in that land where the privacy of a public man is almost invariably sacrificed to the discourteous curiosity of his admirers, Hawthorne was known but by his books, and a very few of the most refined and most intellectual men of the day, such as Longfellow and Wendell Holmes, were admitted to the rare delight of his friendship; but to these few he was well known, and with their appreciation he was content.

Kindly and gentle as a little child was the nature of him who has left us. Somewhat too much absorbed in his own abundant, delicate fancyings, and seeking habitually, in commune with his own beautiful and finer nature, a refuge from the rough contact and jarring turmoil of the busy world, he yet did not neglect his more obvious duties. An ever kind and attentive relative and friend, his name will be held in reverence, no less for these humble qualities than for his undying productions. His countrymen have reason to be peculiarly proud of him, for in him America has produced the most exquisite prose-poet and the most originally fanciful romancist of the age.

In no country of the Old or New World can we instance any author whose name is worthy to be placed beside that of Hawthorne on that peculiar path which was first irradiated by the morning blush of his fancy. Many have attempted to follow him; but they are, in almost every case, nearly forgotten; whilst the exquisite dream-scenery, which Hawthorne reveals to us, illumined by his own subtle phantasy, tinged with his heart-searching pathos, or fitfully softened into cool shadow by the opal-hued mistveil of his half-mystic but all-refined humour, still stands in ever fresh beauty, to charm all true lovers of art. And we may safely prophesy that it will be many ages before its subtle influence will fail, alternately to gladden and sadden the hearts of future readers. But though specially marked out as a possession of the "Mayflower" land by the peculiar sombre visitings of Puritan sadness that every now and then obscure us with a deep shadow, and the glimmering sun-motes of his dreamy fancy, he is even more generally loved and appreciated in England than in his native country. This may, we think, be partially attributed to the under-current of pathetic melancholy that runs through his gayest and most sparkling effusions, and the ever-present, subdued tone of longing aspiration

that seems to mark his beautiful nature, as inwardly mourning over and shrinking from the hard, stern realities of an essentially selfish and unchivalrous age. It is like the stream of dusky water, unreached by the rays of the sun, which is sometimes to be seen, in spring, flowing along the bed of a brook, whose upper surface radiates a thousand iridescent colours, in joyous answer to the kisses of the sun, whose ripples sparkle along in careless merriment, when a sudden change comes over it; a sombre flush seems, by some appreciable magic, to sweep over the prismatic play of the current; the under-stream for the nonce gets the upper hand: though the happy glitter is still visible, it is clouded by some half-sombre, half-translucent change, which sends a not ungrateful thrill of indefinable sadness to the heart. Though this may rob a mind, acutely alive to natural influences, of some of the buoyant rapture consequent on the delicious advent of spring, yet it has an effect on a sensitive intellect, that more than repays the momentary glooming of the land

scape.

It is this, and a thousand other natural phenomena of the same kind, that suggest to the poetic temperament more sublime and delicate conceptions by far than the most smiling aspect of summer, or the most gorgeously tinted landscape of autumn.

We Englishmen, belonging to the most material period of the most material country in the world,* are, perhaps, in our heart of hearts, a more romantic people than any that inhabit the known globe. Not in our acts do we show it, for they are, almost invariably, whether in public or private life, dictated by the most rigid considerations of realistic expediency; but we still, even the most conventional of us, love to cherish, in some dark corner of our souls, an inward hankering, scarcely even self-confessed, toward the most Utopian and fanciful of ideals, and almost always, though openly disclaiming it, feel a secret, indefinable sympathy with the mind of such a man as Nathaniel Hawthorne. His child-like simplicity, his freshness of thought, untainted by worldliness, and his half-sad, halfhopeful longings, strike upon us as a muchneeded and delightful relief from the grim positivism of conventional life.

As on a sultry day we plunge into the cool greenness of a beautiful wood, whose masses of foliage absorb the sunlight, and, whilst neutralizing its glare, assume thereby a luminous beauty and a half-translucent depth of shadow that is infinitely more soothing and attractive than the brilliant splendour of the sun-gilded plain, Hawthorne's commingled fancy and pathos present to us an ever-welcome retreat where we may rub-off, for a little, the dust of

* Some may object to this that the Americans themselves best answer this description; but we think that any impartial person who has followed the shifting fortunes and consequences of the present Civil War can scarcely hold such an opinion,

master-hand, that we read it with even more than the old eagerness, and when we arrive at the break which can never be remedied, the void which can now never be bridged over, find fresh cause to lament the loss of the writer. It is the opening sketch of the declining age of an old New England apothecary, upon whose trembling limbs life has scarcely any hold, and for whom earth has no retaining link except the beloved presence of his little grandchild "Pansie." With one foot in the grave, and the blood in his veins frozen by the wintry breath of age, he has nothing in common with the new generation, and lives in a state of continual abstraction, from which only a child's voice can recall him. This latter, a little tottering creature of 3 years, a faint indication of a beautiful figure, is the revivifying influence of the old man's life, his perpetual revisiting of spring, the one only thing that remains to him here below to prevent his weary soul from passing away.

This preliminary outline is drawn with exquisite tenderness and delicacy of hand, and we can perceive in it the promise of a more perfect and beautiful work than any he had as yet given to the world. All Hawthorne's charming peculiarities are perceptible in it. His quaint conceits and half-humours, half-pathetic turns of thought, are as thickly strewn over these few pages as in many of his productions, and perhaps they are touched off with a more loving and delicate care. Some of the ideas are full of so tenderly lovely and mournful a fancy, that one cannot but think that approaching death must have given to his inward vision some clearer insight into sights and secrets beyond mortal ken. One passage, in which he describes the way in which the old man, on whom the greeting and business of the outside world fall with jarring and painful strangeness, is soothed and comforted by the innocent companionship of his tiny granddaughter, is of such unequalled beauty that we cannot resist the temptation of quoting it.

"Walking the streets seldom and reluctantly, he felt a dreary impulse to elude the people's observation, as if with a sense that he had gone irrevocably out of fashion, and broken his connecting links with the network of human life; or else it was that nightmare-feeling which we sometimes have in dreams, when we seem to find ourselves wandering through a crowded avenue, with the noonday sun upon us, in some wild extravagance of dress or nudity. He was conscious of estrangement from his townspeople, but did not always know how or wherefore, nor why he should be thus groping through the twilight mist in solitude. If they spoke loudly to him, with cheery voices, the greeting translated itself faintly and mournfully to his cars; if they shook him by the hand, it was as if a thick insensible glove absorbed the kindly pressure and the warmth. When little Pansie was the companion of his walk, her childish gaiety and freedom did not avail to bring him into closer relationship

great-grandpapa would suddenly take stronger hues of life. It was as if his faded figure had been coloured over anew, or at least, as he and Pansio moved along the street, as if a sunbeam had fallen across him, instead of the grey gloom of an instant before. His chilled sensibilities had probably been touched and quickened by the warm contiguity of his little companion through the medium of her hand, as it stirred within his own, or some inflection of her voice that set bis memory ringing and chiming with forgotten sounds. While that music lasted, the old man was alive and happy. And there were seasons, it might be, even happier than these, when Pansie had been kissed and put to bed, and Grandsiro Dolliver sat by his fireside, gazing in among the massive coals and above their glow into those Hence come angels or fiends into our twilight cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. musings, according as we may have peopled them in bygone years. Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire-gleam, stole an expression of repose and perfect trust that made him as beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits that were watching him beheld a calm surprise draw slowly over his features, and brighten into joy, though not so vividly as to break his evening quietude. gate of heaven had been kindly left ajar, that this All the night afterwards, he would be semi-conscious forlorn old creature might catch a glimpse within. of an intangible bliss diffused through the fitful lapses of an old man's slumber, and would awake at early dawn with a faint thrilling of the heartstrings, as if there had been music just now wandering over them."

The

And so abruptly finishes this last emanation of Hawthorne's poet-soul. Its very beauty strikes a painful chord within us, when we note the certain indications in these last few lines his hand traced, how surely his genius was advancing towards the greatest heights of inspiration, how he would have exalted and delighted the world with the ripened fruit of his maturer age, and think that the soul which gave vent to his poetic yearnings has fled, that we may never more look for another magical outpouring of artistic treasure from the hand that now lies cold in death.

Truly the present age is a fatal one to genius. Those who own a higher intellect and a nobler mission than the general mass of mankind, who celestial beauty, seem unwilling now to linger are destined to give us some vague inkling of amongst us, and seek in their early prime a nobler refuge than is to be found upon earth, and where their poetic dreams will meet with a surer realization.

In former ages our great classic authors, in poetry and prose, lived mostly to a good old age, and were permitted to expand into imperishable works, for our benefit, the clearer and nobler thoughts of their autumn age; but now very few great lights in literature and art remain to us beyond their earliest manhood.

of the Immortals has taken wing, and departed to that unknown place "where only," in the words of the most beautiful epitaph in the language, "his own harmony can be excelled." Nathaniel Hawthorne has been taken away; but it may be some consolation to those who

weep for him, to know that his death was as easy as ever was vouchsafed to mortal, and that the gentle current of his life passed away into the unseachable ocean of eternity, in the painless insensibility of a swoon. CHARLES KENDAL.

She wrestled in the darkness with her grief-
That Mother wild. The night came down in tears;
And in the heavens God's worlds had lit their fires
To guide the aching spirits darkling here

To brighter homes. The bitter winds moaned by;
And round and round her surged the Sea of Life,
And smiting with its waves the Mother's heart:
For never more to her its voice should come
With the old throb of music, nor its face
Glow with the light of Love. Her soul went out,
Like the ark-dove, across its troubled waste
Long years ago, and had not found a place
Whereon to rest its weary wings, nor would,
Till God should put His hand forth and take in
The restless flutterer. Her Rose of Life
Had withered in the blast of Death, and drooped
And shrunk away till never more again
The Sun of joy should reach it at its core.
Earth's glory had departed from her sight,
As when upon a June day Sun and Moon
Form an Eclipse, and all is sudden night.
Her Life went crying in the dark; for she
Could not forget the splendour she had known-
The angel-dove that fluttered to her lap,
Cooing to her the lessons taught in heaven,
And lifting up the Mother's lowly heart
Above all thought; and sunning into flower
The seeds that lay forgotten in the dark,
'Till all ablow they caught the trembling dews,
And sent their fragrance streaming up on high.
What radiance sat upon the hills and woods
When God dropped down that little life for her,
Like manna in her wilderness of pain!
The rivers laughed their sweetest laugh for her.
The purple clouds of eve and morn were waves
That floated from the far unknown her joy,
Freighted with such a store of Heaven, as made
Her rich above all kingdoms and all things.
Upon Life's topmost branch she built her nest,
And lined it with warm thoughts and gentle deeds,
And spread her wings and sang her song of Hope.
But there be Spirits lent us here awhile,
That come like glints of sunshine, and light up
Our Night a moment, and then straightway die
Upon the edge of Heaven they scarce have left;
Leaving a trail of glory, to point out

The way they went-the way for us to follow.
So she was all too bright-that Mother's Bird-
For this December world of ours-too pure.

Her blood froze up within her violet veins,
In spite of the great sun of curls that shone
Upon her blessed head. One golden morn
The Mother's lap was empty: the young life
Had floated back upon the purple clouds
Towards the far Unknown. The Mother saw
A ray of light shoot upwards to the sky,
And bowed her head, and cried, "God's will be
done."

She wrestled in the darkness with her grief,
That Mother wild; and from her heart went up
Through the long night this sad and bitter wail :-

"O, my jewel, gone down in Death's fathomless

sea!

O, my blossom, so young and tender,
That left me to bloom in the garden of God,
In the flush of life's crowning splendour.

I can picture the arms that encircle thee now,
O my own, and the hearts that love thee
In the chambers of glory so far away,
In the Mystery high above me!

"And I wake and I weep to the wondering stars, And I cry in my bitter sorrow,

My Beautiful, lean out of Heaven, and smile
In the dawn of a golden morrow.
Lean out till I feel thee aglow in my heart,
And my spirit leaps up to meet thee,
Like the blood to thy virgin lily cheek

When the love-kiss of Christ doth greet thee!

"Ah, Darling, I know thou art waiting for me, And watching in silent wonder,

And looking with joy in each happy face

That comes from the bleak world under, And yearning and longing with outstretched hands, And pausing to hark and listen

For the sound of my voice, while up in thine eyes The old thoughts rise and glisten.

"When the earth is green, and the lark's high

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife,' Paul, old friend."

"I beg your pardon, Hugh: I was not aware that my eyes suggested the necessity for a warning like that. I do not recognize property in beauty. It is a free gift from God to all who behold it, and I cannot be supposed to covet what I already enjoy. It is a feast of the soul to look in the face of your wife, for all the heavenly affections find utterance there."

"And yet you have seen far more beautiful women, Paul Dana. If, when you are near her, you look at her closely, you will perceive that she has scarcely feature which is not marred

by some imperfection."

"Very likely. The same holds true of these beautiful pleasure-grounds in which you justly take much pride. If their parts be separately viewed, many defects will be observed; but, taking the whole together, nothing seems lacking to complete their enchantment. And do you consider how much, nay, how all that we admire in the landscape is but the effect of light-the life which animates the whole? Who that stumbles about your little Eden here in the night-time can gain any idea whatsoever of its ravishing loveliness? It is the soul, man-it is the soul which makes beautiful. I care not how perfect in form a human face may be: if the light of a pure, loving, reverent spirit shine not through it, it is to me as the face of one dead. Do you," Paul continued, after a pause, in which she of whom they were speaking vanished from the terrace, and all seemed dark and cold up there, like the western sky when the evening star has fallen from it-" do you know, Hugh, since I came here I have wondered much, in a vague, altogether innocent way, whether it was by chance or from choice that you married a woman so infinitely superior to yourself. Men of your stamp, though they may reverence and well nigh worship the loftier types of womanhood, do not as a general thing choose a life-companion from among them."

"Still the same frank, out-spoken friend," Hugh exclained. "I tell you, Paul, I have not seen one since the old days who dared speak to me so plainly. But think now, my Pythias, is it not possible that you may hold an erroneous opinion concerning the sort of wife which a man of my stamp would choose if left to exercise his own free will in the matter? Consider him not thoroughly bad, but cherishing in his inmost heart a secret love for what is good, and true, and beautiful, though a love as yet not in sufficient active force to overrule the influences of evil at work against him, would he not naturally seek companionship with one in a degree above him,

thereby strengthening his affection for heavenly things, and at the same time cutting himself free in a measure from the rule of sordid spirits? Or, granting only that he has a fair understanding of the worth of truth and the beauty of goodness, without any real, abiding love for the same, would he not, froin purely selfish motives

because he has the wisdom to perceive the value of those qualities which he possesses notseek to unite them superficially to himself?"

"Not properly of his own free will,' Hugh, for his desires are towards evil, and his secret choice is evil; yet because his reason acknowledges the power of goodness, and because he loves power and covets to wield it, if not in himself then through another, therefore he might seek such a union. But I trust, my dear fellow, that you do not present this view of the matter with the idea that I will accept it as a solution of the mystery concerning your choice."

"I judged that in your own mind you had already arrived at some such solution," Hugh replied, with some slight show of wounded feeling; "for what you said regarding men of my class, that they reverence the loftier types of womanhood, but do not choose a companion from among them, is the same in effect as say ing that they have the sense to appreciate what is lovely and of good report,' but bearing in themselves no likeness thereto, feel towards such no drawings of love or sympathy whatsoever. But this I will affirm, Paul-think of me as you will-it was no cool, mental calculation of the worth of virtue that first led me to think of winning her who is now my wife; but I felt irresistibly drawn to her, and sought her simply and solely because of the exaltation of thought and feeling which I experienced in her presence.

When I came near her, evil dropped from me as a filthy garment, and those latent possibilities of good which dwell even in the worst types of humanity leaped for a moment into living realities, and, Hugh, the 'scape-grace,' the 'mad fellow,' the young reprobate,' could trace in himself the faint lineaments of a man made in the image and likeness of God. By this I know that even in those wild days I was not wholly evil, having not only an understanding of virtue, but also a sincere love for, and desire to possess it, not for its effects alone, but for its real, intrinsic worth. Has that love and strong desire wrought no fruits in me? Look in my face, Paul Dana. Do you see any traces of dissipation there, or do you discover much resemblance any way to the dissolute young fellow whom you used to lecture gravely and counsel wisely ten years ago?".

"You have changed greatly, Hugh. I marked