f our departed host will never haunt it; for its aspect
has been as completely changed as the scenery of a theatre. Probably
the ghost gave one peep into it, uttered a groan, and vanished for
ever." This departed host was a certain Doctor Ripley, a venerable
scholar, who left behind him a reputation of learning and sanctity
which was reproduced in one of the ladies of his family, long the most
distinguished woman in the little Concord circle. Doctor Ripley's
predecessor had been, I believe, the last of the line of the Emerson
ministers--an old gentleman who, in the earlier years of his
pastorate, stood at the window of his study (the same in which
Hawthorne handled a more irresponsible quill) watching, with his hands
under his long coat-tails, the progress of Concord fight. It is not by
any means related, however, I should add, that he waited for the
conclusion to make up his mind which was the righteous cause.

Hawthorne had a little society (as much, we may infer, as he desired),
and it was excellent in quality. But the pages in the Note-Books which
relate to his life at the Manse, and the introduction to the _Mosses_,
make more of his relations with vegetable nature, and of his customary
contemplation of the incidents of wood-path and way-side, than of the
human elements of the scene; though these also are gracefully touched
upon. These pages treat largely of the pleasures of a kitchen-garden, of
the beauty of summer-squashes, and of the mysteries of apple-raising.
With the wholesome aroma of apples (as is indeed almost necessarily the
case in any realistic record of New England rural life) they are
especially pervaded; and with many other homely and domestic emanations;
all of which derive a sweetness from the medium of our author's
colloquial style. Hawthorne was silent with his lips; but he talked with
his pen. The tone of his writing is often that of charming
talk--ingenious, fanciful, slow-flowing, with all the lightness of
gossip, and none of its vulgarity. In the preface to the tales written
at the Manse he talks of many things and just touches upon some of the
members of his circle--especially upon that odd genius, his
fellow-villager, Henry Thoreau. I said a little way back that the New
England Transcendental movement had suffered in the estimation of the
world at large from not having (putting Emerson aside) produced any
superior talents. But any reference to it would be ungenerous which
should omit to pay