before, which places his boyhood and early youth in the first quarter of
the century. The lapse since then has been a long one in its effects;
almost portentously so. The alterations in manners, relations,
opportunities, have been great. Restless and rapid in their action,
these changes have multiplied the mystery of distance a hundred-fold
between us and that earlier time; so that there is really a considerable
space to be traversed before we can stand in thought where Hawthorne
then stood in fact. Goldsmith says, in that passage of the Life of
Parnell which Irving so aptly quotes in his biography of the writer: "A
poet while living is seldom an object sufficiently great to attract much
attention.... When his fame is increased by time, it is then too late to
investigate the peculiarities of his disposition; the dews of morning
are past, and we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridian
splendor." The bustle of American life certainly does away with "the
dews of morning" very promptly; and it is not quite a simple matter to
reproduce the first growth of a life which began almost with the
century. But there are resources for doing so. To begin with, we shall
view Salem as it is. Vigorous and thriving still, the place has
fortunately not drifted so far from its moorings of seventy years since
as to take us out of our bearings, in considering its present aspect.
Pace its quiet, thoroughfares awhile, and you will find them leading
softly and easily into the past.

You arrive in the ordinary way, by railroad, and at first the place
wears a disappointingly commonplace aspect. It does not seem
impressively venerable; hacks and horse-cars rattle and tinkle along the
streets, people go about their affairs in the usual way, without any due
understanding that they ought to be picturesque and should devote
themselves to falling into effective groups posed in vistas of historic
events. Is antiquity, then, afraid to assert itself, even here in this