them for their appearance here, because they were gone as soon as they had come, and we felt very hospitable. We wandered down to our sweet, sleepy river, and it was so silent all around us and so solitary, that we seemed the only persons living. We sat beneath our stately trees, and felt as if we were the rightful inheritors of the old abbey, which had descended to us from a long line. The treetops waved a majestic welcome, and rustled their thousand leaves like brooks over our heads. But the bloom and fragrance of nature had become secondary to us, though we were lovers of it. In my husband's face and eyes I saw a fairer world, of which the other was a faint copy." And again, a fortnight later: "I really believe I will finish my letter to-day, though I do not promise. The magician upstairs is very potent! In the afternoon and evening I sit in the study with him. It is the pleasantest niche in our temple. We watch the sun, together, descending in purple and gold, in every variety of magnificence, over the river. Lately, we go on the river, which is now frozen; my lord to skate, and I to run and slide, during the dolphin-death of day. I consider my husband a rare sight, gliding over the icy stream; for, wrapped in his cloak, he looks very graceful, - perpetually darting from me in long, sweeping curves, and returning again-again to shoot away. . . . Sometimes it is before breakfast that Mr. Hawthorne goes to skate upon the meadow. Yesterday, before he went out, he said it was very cloudy and gloomy, and he thought it would. storm. In half an hour, O, wonder! what a scene! Instead of black sky, the rising sun, not yet above the hill, had changed the firmament into a vast rose! On every side, east, west, north, and south, — every point blushed roses. I ran to the study, and the meadow sea also was a rose, the reflection of that above. And there was my husband, careering about, glorified by the light. Such is Paradise." It is not difficult, as one reads Hawthorne's sketch of his life in the Old Manse, and these and other complementary revelations by Mrs. Hawthorne, to interpret anew the fancy which lies in the sketch, "The New Adam and Eve,” with which the second volume opens. The world as it appeared to these phantom figures was scarcely farther from them than from the pair thus secluded in Concord; and the wondering talk of the new Adam and Eve reads in places like a fantastic report of what Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife confided to each other. Hawthorne himself, in his note-book, has recorded in more direct fashion the likeness between themselves and the first inhabitants of Paradise. The date is shortly after their establishing themselves. "There have been three or four callers, who preposterously think that the courtesies of the lower world are to be responded to by people whose home is in Paradise. . . We have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with portions of some delicate calf or lamb." "It is one of the drawbacks upon our Eden that it contains no water fit either to drink or to bathe in ;" and so on. The study, to which Mrs. Hawthorne refers, had, as the descriptive essay says, "three windows set with little, old-fashioned panes of glass, each with a crack across it." On the glass of one of the two western windows, which, in Hawthorne's phrase, “looked, or rather peeped, between the willow branches down into the orchard," are several informal inscriptions, written there with a diamond. Among them are the following: Man's accidents are God's purposes. Sophia A. Hawthorne 1843 Nath' Hawthorne This is his study And, lower down: 1843 Inscribed by my husband at In the gold light S. A. H. The Hawthornes lived very frugally in their New England paradise. Mrs. Hawthorne in her letters shows her husband, strong and lithe, busy about the most practical affairs of their daily life, chopping firewood and shovelling paths through the snow. "We have the luxury of our maid's absence," she writes about a year later than the last quoted letter, " and Apollo helped me by making the fire. I warmed rice for myself, and had the happiness of toasting his bread. He read aloud 'Love's Labour's Lost,' and said that play had no foundation in nature. To-day there have been bright gleams, but no steady sunshine. Apollo boiled some potatoes for breakfast. Imagine him with that magnificent head bent over a cooking-stove, and those star-eyes watching the pot boil! In consequence there never were such good potatoes before. For dinner we did not succeed in warming the potatoes effectually; but they were edible, and we had meat, cheese, and apples." The chief resource of periodical publication was The Democratic Review, whose editor was John L. O'Sullivan, a sanguine and companionable man, who had endeared himself to Hawthorne and was godfather to Una, the first child of this Adam and Eve, and born to them in the Old Manse. O'Sullivan had labored earnestly for the abolition of capital punishment, and later in life was Minister to Portugal, where we shall meet him in the Note to another volume. The Review had been started in Washington in Octo ber, 1837, and had, as its name indicated, a political color. Andrew Jackson, as its editor was proud to say, was the first subscriber they had. It had various vicissitudes and was removed to New York in 1840, where after a half year's death it was revived by the same editor and given a more literary character. But it was a struggling magazine, and could make but scanty returns to its contributors. Mrs. Hawthorne writes, under date of January 9, 1844: "The Democratic Review is so poor now that it can only offer twenty dollars for an article of what length soever, so that Mr. Hawthorne cannot well afford to give any but short stories to it; and it is, besides, sadly dilatory about payment. The last paper he sent to it was a real gift, as it was more than four pages; but he thought its character better suited to the grave Democrat than for the other publication. Why did not you send the last number? He is quite impatient for it. I also long to read again that terrific and true picture of a cold heart. [The Bosom Serpent.] I do not know what the present production is about, even; for I have made it a law to myself never to ask him a word concerning what he is writing, because I always disliked to speak of what I was painting. He often tells me; but sometimes the story remains hidden till he reads it aloud to me, before sending it away. I can I can comprehend the delicacy and |