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 a tribute in passing to the author of _Walden_.
Whatever question there may be of his talent, there can be none, I
think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was
eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was
worse than provincial--he was parochial; it is only at his best that he
is readable. But at his best he has an extreme natural charm, and he
must always be mentioned after those Americans--Emerson, Hawthorne,
Longfellow, Lowell, Motley--who have written originally. He was