The review of Mr. Hawthorne’s book in the last
Harbinger is delicately appreciative.
The introductory chapter is one of the softest, clearest
pictures I know in literature. His feeling is
so deep, and so unexaggerated, that it is a profoundly
subtle interpreter of life to him, and the pensiveness
which throws such a mellow sombreness upon his imagination
is only the pensiveness which is the shadow of extreme
beauty. There is no companion superior to him
in genial sympathy with human feeling. He seems
to me no less a successful man than Mr. Emerson, although
at the opposite end of the village.
For a week or two, if you write, continue to address
me at Concord, and believe me, in constant unitary
feeling,
Your friend,
G.W.C.
CONCORD, July 14th, ’46, Sunday night.
My dear Friend,—I have just returned from
Almira’s, who sends her love, and will be very
happy to see you. I have written Mr. Hawthorne
to go to Monadnock with me this week, but I suppose
his duties will prevent. If I go I shall probably
return before Sunday, as that is John Brown’s
working day, and we shall stay with him.
The night was glorious as I came from Almira’s.
The late summer twilight held the stars at bay; and
in the meadows the fire-flies were flitting everywhere.
Suddenly in the north, directly before me, began the
flashings of the aurora—piles of splendor,
a celestial colonnade to the invisible palace.
It is a fitting close for a day so soft and beautiful.
We took a long sauntering walk this morning and found
the mountain laurel, which is very rare here.
I have been busy all my afternoons reading Roman history.
Niebuhr and Arnold are fine historians. They
are such wise, sincere men and scholars. I sit
at the western door of the barn, looking across a meadow
and rye-field to a group of pines beyond. My
eye fixes upon some point in the landscape which constantly
grows more beautiful, winning my eyes from the rest,
until they gradually slide along, finding each as pleasant
until the whole has a separate and individual beauty
like a fall whose expressions you know intimately.
It is a “Summer of Summers,” as Lizzie
Curzon writes me, and I am glad that my last hours
in my own country will be so consecrated by beauty
in my memory.
Burrill goes again to the Hudson to see Mr. Downing
on Thursday. He will remain a week, I suppose,
and go again to New York in August, when I sail.
Let me have my answer in person, for so short and
poor a letter does not deserve the exclusive attention
of writing.
Remember me kindly to all at Brook Farm, to Wm. Channing
particularly, if he is there.
Your friend ever,
G.W.C.
CONCORD, July 13th, 1846.
My dear Friend,—It is a miserable piece
of business to say my farewell to this blank sheet
and send it to you, instead of having you say good-bye
to my blank face. But, unless you can come to
Ida’s on Wednesday or Thursday, it must be so.
A sudden trip to Saratoga has deranged my plans.
