ng that "no rebel
artillery has played upon us with such overwhelming effect," he was
capable, with a fairness sufficiently amazing in any critic of those
days, of doing full justice to the general's indubitable ability and
patriotism. He closes his sketch of McClellan, by no means the least
valuable part of the article we are considering, with this decided
expression of opinion: "I shall not give up my faith in his soldiership
until he is defeated, nor in his courage and integrity even then."

An odd peculiarity of Hawthorne's mind was the incertitude--I use this
vile word in lack of a better at the moment--that seemed at times to
invest his reasoning powers with a sort of Indian summer haziness.

This idiosyncrasy had a striking exemplification when our travellers met
"a party of contrabands escaping out of the mysterious depths of
Secessia."

"They were unlike the specimens of their race whom we are
accustomed to see at the North, and, in my judgment, were far
more agreeable.

"So rudely were they attired,--as if their garb had grown upon
them spontaneously,--so picturesquely natural in manners, and
wearing such a crust of primeval simplicity (which is quite
polished away from the Northern black man), that they seemed a
kind of creature by themselves, not altogether human, but
perhaps quite as good, and akin to the fauns and rustic deities
of olden times. I wonder if I shall excite anybody's wrath by
saying this?

"It is no great matter at all events. I felt most kindly
towards the poor fugitives, but knew not precisely what to wish
in their behalf, nor in the least how to help them. For the
sake of the manhood which is latent in them, I would not have
turned them back; but I should have felt almost as reluctant on
their own account to hasten them forward to the strangers'
land; and I think my prevalent idea was that, whoever may be
benefited by the results of this war, it will not be the
present generation of negroes, the childhood of whose race has
now gone forever, and who must henceforth fight a hard battle
with the world on very unequal terms. On behalf of my own race,
I am glad, and can only hope that an inscrutable Providence
means good to both parties."

The whimsical feature in Hawthorne's character to which we have alluded,
is thus noticed by an intimate and valued friend of the gr