able. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 1804-1864 Nathaniel Hawthorne was born at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804, and came of a seafaring family. Owing to the death of his father, much of his boyhood was passed with an uncle among the woods and lakes of Maine, a circumstance that, no doubt, intensified his love of nature and of solitude. After graduating from Bowdoin College, where his classmates included Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, he settled in 1825 in Salem. Here he remained for twelve years, reading, writing and burning his manuscripts, and becoming, in his own familiar phrase, "the obscurest man of letters in America." In 1837 he published the first series of "Twice-Told Tales." Through the influence of Bancroft he received an appointment in the Boston Custom House in 1837. In 1841 Hawthorne became a member of the Brook Farm community, an experience which furnished material for his "Blithedale Romance,' published eleven years later. In 1843 he married Miss Peabody, and now began what proved a most happy wedded life in the "Old Manse' at Concord. Mosses from an Old Manse" came from the press in 1846, and the same year Hawthorne removed to Salem, where he held another government appointment for four years. In 1850" The Scarlet Letter" appeared, and made its author at once the most famous writer in America. An edition of five thousand copies was sold in ten days. "The House of the Seven Gables was published the following year, and "The Blithedale Romance" was brought out in 1852. 64 In 1853 Hawthorne was appointed consul at Liverpool by President Pierce. He served in this capacity with honor and distinction for four years, and after his resignation spent three years_in_study and travel in France, Italy, and England. The English, and the French and Italian notebooks, published after his death, contain the record of many delightful impressions received during his travels abroad. In 1860 Hawthorne published his last complete romance "The Marble Faun." He then returned to Concord, where, after a lingering illness, he passed away in 1864. After his death a number of fragments of his works were published, including three incomplete romances and the "Note Books." Hawthorne in many respects is entitled to the first rank in American literature. Although he called his books romances, they prove on closer study to be infinitely more. Few writers have described more accurately and studied more profoundly the influences of the moral and spiritual forces in human life. Considered as narratives of the outward incidents of human life, or as depicting the innermost workings of the human conscience, his tales are of rare excellence. In his shorter sketches written in the essay style, such as The Procession of Human Life," in which he treats the theme of the universal brotherhood of man, Hawthorne also shows the profound and philosophic bent of his intellect. His style is perhaps the most polished of all American prose writers. He revised and even burned his manuscripts repeatedly, satisfied only with the nearest approach to literary perfection that lay in his power. It is thus that his work in every field he attempted exhibits the highest degree of artistic excellence. L THE PROCESSION OF LIFE IFE figures itself to me as a festal or funeral procession. All of us have our places and are to move onward under the direction of the chief marshal. The grand difficulty results from the invariably mistaken principles on which the deputy marshals seek to arrange this immense concourse of people, so much more numerous than those that train their interminable length through streets and highways in times of political excitement. Their scheme is ancient far beyond the memory of man, or even the record of history, and has hitherto been very little modified by the innate sense of something wrong and the dim perception of better methods that have disquieted all the ages through which the procession has taken its march. Its members are classified by the merest external circumstances, and thus are more certain to be thrown out of their true positions than if no principle of arrangement were attempted. In one part of the procession we see men of landed estate or moneyed capital gravely keeping each other company for the preposterous reason that they chance to have a similar standing in the taxgatherer's book. Trades and professions march together with scarcely a more real bond of union. In this manner, it cannot be denied, people are disentangled from the mass and separated into various classes according to certain apparent relations; all have some artificial badge which the world, and themselves among the first, learn to consider as a genuine characteristic. Fixing our attention on such outside shows of similarity or difference, we lose sight of those realities by which nature, fortune, fate, or providence has constituted for every man a brotherhood, wherein it is one great office of human wisdom to classify him. When the mind has once accustomed itself to a proper arrangement of the procession of life or a true classification of society, even though merely speculative, there is thenceforth a satisfaction which pretty well suffices for itself, without the aid of any actual reformation in the order of march. |