of fiction, Emerson would have considered a sin; while the evolution of
sin and its effect on character was the principal study of Hawthorne's
life. One was an optimist, and the other what is sometimes unjustly
called a pessimist: that is, one who looks facts in the face and sees
people as they are. Hawthorne could not have felt quite comfortable in
the presence of a man who asked such searching questions as Emerson
frequently did, and Emerson could scarcely have found satisfaction in
conversing with one who never had any opinion to express.

A good many people claimed to have been Hawthorne's friends after his
death who were sufficiently afraid of him while he was alive. He does
not appear to have ever had but two very intimate friends, Franklin
Pierce and George S. Hillard, both remarkably amiable and sympathetic
men,--qualities to which they owed equally their successes and failures
in life. Ex-president Pierce used to come to Concord and carry Hawthorne
off to the White Mountains, the Isles of Shoals or Philadelphia, just as
two college-students will drop their books and go off somewhere to have
a good time. Once while Hawthorne was in Boston, Mr. Hillard tried to
persuade him to go to Cambridge and dine with Longfellow; but he would
not, and went home by the next train.

He was pro-slavery in politics, partly because his two friends were so,
and partly because he disliked the abolitionists. It is not necessary to
suppose that the pro-slavery people of the North in those days believed
that human slavery was morally right. It is doubtful if any one believed
that. A great many considered it, as Webster did, a serious evil but a
dangerous matter to interfere with (and so it proved); some were
influenced by mercenary motives; and the northern Democrats, misled by
the illogical doctrine of State Sovereignty, believed they had no right
to interfere with it. Mr. Hillard held the first of these positions, and