self-centred characters like Horace Greeley, are no longer possible.
Everywhere, in the college, in the market, and in society, war is waged
upon originality and independence of character. It is the same in
politics as in literature. Our novelist critic said of the rage for
Christmas cards, some years since, "The truth is that art must obey the
popular will or cease to be." There was not much art certainly in
Christmas cards; but nothing could express better the truculent spirit
of the age.

Most husbands are fortunate if their honeymoon lasts a month, but
Hawthorne's lasted two years. It would seem as if during that space not
a cloud came across his sky. He gathered flowers for his wife--water
lilies, which he must have sought for in a boat, fringed gentians and
the queenly "Lilium Canadensis"--and then felt that the most beautiful
of them were unequal to the loveliness of her nature. After the first
months, few visitors came to see them. "George Prescott," he says,
"sometimes enters our paradise to bring us the products of the soil, but
for weeks the snow in our avenue has been untrodden by any other guest."
Mrs. Hawthorne's letters at this period are exceedingly interesting, for
nowhere in her husband's writings, or in those of others, do we come so
close to this rare and remarkable man. The following description of his
character seems to have been a genuine case of thought transferrence, so
much is it like his own writing in grace and purity of expression:

"He loves power as little as any mortal I ever knew; and it is never a
question of private will between us, but of absolute right. His
conscience is too fine and high to permit him to be arbitrary. His will
is strong, but not to govern others. He is so simple, so transparent, so
just, so tender, so magnanimous, that my highest instinct could only
correspond to his will. I never knew such delicacy of nature."