ment from childhood through youth to maturity
was coeval with the time of his literary activities. The first vivid
impression I received from books came from his stories for
children, _Grandfather's Chair_, _Famous Old People_, and _The
Liberty Tree_; when somewhat older I read _The Rill from the Town
Pump_ and _Little Annie's Ramble_, still later came the weird
creations in which Hawthorne's expanding genius manifested
itself, such as _The Minister's Black Veil_, _Rappaccini's
Daughter_, and _The Celestial Railroad_. And not less in young
manhood I was awed and absorbed in the great works of his maturity,
_The Scarlet Letter_, _The Blithedale Romance_, _The House
of the Seven Gables_, and the _Marble Faun._ Meat and drink as
they were to me in my youth and first entrance into life, I naturally
feel that the author of these books was in mind profoundly powerful.
In point of genius among our Americans I should set no man before him.
He was not a moral inspirer nor a leader, he gave to no one directly
any spiritual uplift, nor did he help one directly to strength in
fighting the battles of life. He was a peerless artist portraying
marvellously the secret things of the human soul, his concrete
pictures taken from the old Puritan society, from the New England of
his day and from the passionate Italian life. He portrays but he draws
no lesson any more than Shakespeare, his books are pictures of the
souls of men, of the sweet and wholesome things and also the weakness,
the sin and the morbid defect. These having been revealed the reader
is left to his own inferences. It is fully made plain that he was
a soft-hearted man, at any rate in his earlier time. The stories
he wrote at the outset for children are often full of sweetness and
sympathy. But as he went on with his work these qualities are less
apparent, the spirit of the artist more and more prevailing, until he
paints with relentless realism even what is hideous, not approving or
condemning; it is part of life and must be set down. Many have thought
it strange that Hawthorne apparently had no patriotism. In our Civil
War he stood quite indifferent, a marked contrast with the men among
whom he lived and who like him have literary eminence. These passages
stand in his diary and letters. "February 14, 1862, Frank Pierce came
here to-night.... He is bigoted as to the Union and sees nothing
but ruin without it. Whereas I should not much regret an ultimate
separation." "At pre