He entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated from this institution in 1825. He had as classmates Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, who afterward became president of the United States. After his graduation Hawthorne returned to Salem, where he lived with his mother and sisters in almost absolute seclusion for fourteen years. During this period he wrote daily, and spent his nights in burning what he had written in the daytime. He was clerk of the Boston Custom House from 1839 to 1841, when the Whig party removed him for being ultra-partisan in behalf of the Democrats. At this time Hawthorne wrote: "As to the Salem people, I really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my treatment of them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, after permitting me to be deliberately lied down, not merely once, but at two separate attacks, and on two false indictments, without hardly a voice being raised in my behalf." He married Sophia Peabody, July 9, 1842. From 1842 until 1846 they lived in Concord in the house formerly occupied by Emerson. These were the happiest years of his life. In 1846 he returned to Salem as surveyor in the Salem Custom House. He retired from this office in 1850 and lived in Lenox, Massachusetts, for two years. In 1852 he settled in Concord. President Pierce appointed him consul at Liverpool in 1853, and he served in this position until 1857. After leaving Liverpool he travelled three years in England and on the continent. He returned to Concord in 1860. He died in the White Mountains, May 18, 1864. Although a silent man and a seeker of solitude during his life, few writers have ever experienced such wide publicity of their inmost lives as has Hawthorne since his death. The publication of his _Notes_ has opened his desk and work-shop to every one, and has revealed to us a magnanimous, sympathetic, and pure man, who realized his responsibilities as a writer and improved all his literary opportunities. BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES _History of American Literature_, Moses Coit Tyler. _Introduction to American Literature_, Henry S. Pancoast. _Studies in American Literature_, Charles Noble. _Introduction to American Literature_, Brander Matthews. "Gloom and Cheer in Hawthorne," _Critic_, 45: 28-36. "Hawthorne and his Circle," _Nation_, 77: 410-411. "Hawthorne as seen by his Publisher," _Critic_, 45: 51-55. "Hawthorne from an English Point of View." _Critic_, 45: 60-66. "Hawthorne's Last Years," _Critic_, 45: 67-71. "Life of Hawthorne," _Atlantic Monthly_, 90: 563-567, CRITICISMS