foreshadowed the mercantile decline of the long-lived capital. Surely no
one can be less open to criticism for illustrating various phases of his
townsmen's character and exposing in this book, as elsewhere, though
always mildly, the gloomier traits of the founders, than this deep-eyed
and gentle man, whose forefathers notably possessed "all the Puritanic
traits, both good and evil," and who uses what is as much to the
disadvantage of his own blood as to that of others, with such absolute,
admirable impartiality.

[Illustration]




III.


BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE.

1804-1828.

With such antecedents behind him, and such associations awaiting him,
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, July 4, 1804.

His father, the captain of a trading-vessel, was one of three sons of
the privateersman Daniel, and was born in 1776; so that both father and
son, it happens, are associated by time of birth with the year and the
day that American independence has made honorable and immemorial. The
elder Nathaniel wore his surname in one of several fashions that his
predecessors had provided,--for they had some eight different ways of