African Journals of Horatio Bridge, an officer of the navy, who had been at college with him; and in the following year he published in two volumes a collection of his later writings, under the title of J/osses from an Old Manse.
After a residence of nearly four years at Concord, Hawthorne returned to Salem, having been appointed surveyor of the custom-house of that port by a new Demo- cratic administration. He filled the duties of this position until the incoming of the Whig administration again led to his retirement. He seems to have written little during his official term, but, as he had leisure enough and to spare, he read much, and pondered over subjects for future stories. His next work, The Scarlet Letter, which was begun after his removal from the custom-house, was published in 1850. If there had been any doubt of his genius before, it was settled for ever by this powerful romance.
Shortly after the publication of Zhe Scarlet Letter Hawthorne removed from Salem to Lenox, Berkshire, Mass., where he wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and Zhe Wonder-Book (1851). From Lenox he removed to West. Newton, near Boston, Mass., where he wrote Zhe Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Snow Image and other Twice-told Tales (1852). In thespring of 1852 he removed back to Concord, where he purchased an old house which he culled The Wayside, and where he wrote a Life of Franklin Pierce (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853). Mr Pierce was the Democratic candidate for the presidency, and it was only at his urgent solicitation that Hawthorne con- sented to become his biographer. He declared that he would accept no office in case he were elected, lest it might compromise him; but his friends gave him such weighty reasons for reconsidering his decision that he accepted the consulate at Liverpool, which was understood to be one of the best gifts at the disposal of the president.
Hawthorne departed for Europe in the summer of 1853, and returned to the United States in the summer of 1860. Of the seven years which he passed in Europe five were spent in attending to the duties of his consulate at Liver- pool, and in little journeys to Scotland, the Lakes, and elsewhere, and the remaining two in France and Italy. They were quiet and uneventful, coloured by observation and reflexion, as his note-books show, but productive of only one elaborate work, Zhe Marble Faun, which he sketched out during his residence in Italy, and rewrote and prepared for the press at Leamington, England, whence it was despatched to America and published in 1860.
Hawthorne took up his abode at The Wayside, not much richer than when he left it, and sat down at his desk once more with a heavy heart. He was surrounded by the throes of a great civil war, and the political party with which he had always acted was under a cloud. His friend ex-President Pierce was stigmatized as a traitor, and when Hawthorne dedicated his next book to him—a volume of English impressions entitled Our Old Home (1863)—it was at the risk of his own popularity. His pen was soon to be laid aside for ever ; for, with the exception of the unfinished story of Septimius Felton, which was published after his death by his daughter Una (1872), and the fragment of The Dolliver Romance, the beginning of which was published in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1864, he wrote no more. His health gradually declined ; his hair grew white as snow, and the once stalwart figure that in early manhood flashed along the airy cliffs and glittering sands sauntered idly on the little hill behind his house. In the beginning of April 1864 he made a short southern tour with his publisher Mr. William D, Ticknor, and was benefited by the change of scene until he reached Philadelphia, where he was shocked by the sudden death of Mr Ticknor. He returned to The Wayside, and after a short season of rest joined his friend ex-President Pierce. He died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, on May 19, 1864, and five days later was buried at Sleepy Hollow, a beautiful cemetery at Concord, where he used to walk under the pines when he was living at the Old Manse, and where his ashes moulder under a simple stone, inscribed with the single word “ Hawthorne.”
The writings of Hawthorne are marked by subtle imagina- tion, curious power of analysis, and exquisite purity of diction. He studied exceptional developments of character, and was fond of exploring secret crypts of emotion. His shorter stories are remarkable for originality and suggestive- ness, and his larger ones are as absolute creations as //am- let or Undine. Lacking the accomplishment of verse, he was in the highest sense a poet. His work is pervaded by a manly personality, and by an almost feminine delicacy and gentleness. He inherited the gravity of his Puritan ancestors without their superstition, and learned in his solitary meditations a knowledge of the night-side of life which would have filled them with suspicion. A profound anatomist of the heart, he was singularly free from morbid- ness, and in his darkest speculations concerning evil was robustly right-minded. He worshipped conscience with his intellectual as well as his moral nature; it is supreme in all he wrote. Besides these mental traits, he possessed the literary quality of style—a grace, a charm, a perfection of language which no other American writer ever possessed in the same degree, and which places him among the great masters of English prose.
HAXTHAUSEN, August Franz Ludwig Maria von (1792–1867), baron of Haxthausen-Abbenburg, was born on his father’s estate near Paderborn in Westphalia, February 3, 1792. Educated at first at home, he proceeded in 1811 to the school of mining at Klausthalin the Harz, and after serving in the Hanoverian army in 1813-15, entered the university of Gottingen. On finishing lis course there in 1818, he occupied himself with the management of his estates, and the study of the laud laws and the legal rights of the peasantry. The result of his studies appeared in 1829 in Die Agrarverfassung und thre Conflicte, a work which attracted much attention, and procured for him an official commission to investigate and report upon the land laws of the Prussian provinces with a view to a new code. After nine years spent in laborious collation, he published in 1839 an exhaustive treatise, Die ldndliche Verfassung in den Provinzen Ost- und West-Preussen. In 1843-44, at the request of the emperor Nicholas, he undertook a similar labour for Russia. The fruits of lis investigations in that country are contained in Studien diber die inneren Zustinde, das Volksleben, und insbesondere die liéndlichen Einrichtungen Russlands (3 vols. 1847-52), in Die Kriegs- macht Russlands (1852), and in Die lindliche Verfassung Russlands (1866). In 1836 he received the honorary title of privy state-councillor, and afterwards of hereditary chamberlain of the principality of Paderborn. In 1847-48 he sat as a member of the combined diet at Berlin, and afterwards of the first Prussian chamber. After travelling through a large part of Europe, Baron Haxthausen retired to his estate. He died at Hanover, January 1, 1867.
Besides the foregoing works, Haxthausen was the author of The Algerian Slave, a novel; and Transcaucasia, Sketches of the Nations and Races between the Black Sea and the Caspian, in English, 1854, German, 1856; in 1864 he edited Das Constitutionelle Princip, a collection of political writings by various authors.
