friends, in January, 1839, Hawthorne assumed the position of weigher and gauger in the Boston Custom-House. At first, the novelty of contact with the practical world interested him; but he soon found that his work, always monotonous, left him no time or strength for writing, and he was not sorry to lose his post when the Whigs came into power in 1841. For a few months, he tried life at Brook Farm, thinking that in this new community he should find a suitable way of combining manual and intellectual labour; but the work was too hard, and he had too little opportunity for writing. Accordingly in 1842 he left the Farm, married Miss Sophia A. Peabody, to whom he had been engaged for four years, and settled at the Old Manse, an idyllic retreat at Concord, Massachusetts. Meanwhile, he had published (1841) two volumes of historical tales for young people, “Grandfather’s Chair” and “Famous Old People”; and to these he now added a third series, “The Liberty Tree,” as well as a second series of “Twice-Told Tales” and a volume of “Biographical Stories for Children” (1842). Of these, none except the “Tales” rises much above the level of respectable writing to sell. In the next four years, Hawthorne wrote for periodicals some eighteen more tales, which, together with a number of earlier uncollected stories, he republished in 1846 as “Mosses from an Old Manse.” Hawthorne now returned to his native Salem as surveyor of customs (1846-9), and proved an able administrator of the office. Another period of literary barrenness ensued, but in 1847 he resumed his writing and produced a few tales. The idea of a longer romance had come to him, and after his dismissal from office in 1849 he found the leisure necessary for writing “The Scarlet Letter.” Once more, then, he exchanged the world of affairs for that realm of the imagination where he was so much more at home. Working resolutely amid sickness and poverty, he at length completed the splendid romance, the publication of which distinguishes the year 1850 in American letters as Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” and Wordsworth’s “Prelude” do in English poetry. Hawthorne had now entered upon a period of great productivity. In the next two years he published “The House of the Seven Gables” (1851), “A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys” (1851), “The Snow Image and Other Tales” (1851), “Tanglewood Tales,” (1852), “The Blithedale Romance” (1852), a tale based on his Brook Farm life, and a campaign “Life of Franklin Pierce,” his college friend, now a candidate for the Presidency. Promptly after his election, President Pierce made Hawthorne consul at Liverpool, an office which he held from July, 1853, until September, 1857. Though rich in experience and in fruitful observation, his life in England was outwardly quiet and uneventful. The years 1857-9 the Hawthornes spent in Italy, where they mingled somewhat more with the world than had been their wont. The fruit of the Italian life was “The Marble Faun”