_Julian Hawthorne._--Julian Hawthorne (born in 1846) inherited literary ability from his father, the romancer. As an infant he was delicate; at seven his health was good, but having been kept out of school he could neither read nor write. Entering Harvard in 1863, he became known as an all-around athlete. After leaving Harvard without graduating, he lived in Dresden for some years, then returned to America and became a hydrographic engineer in New York. In 1871 he began to win attention to his short stories, and since 1872 has devoted himself to literature and journalism, living successively in Dresden, London, and New York. “Bressant,” his first novel, published in _Appleton’s Journal_ in 1872, is somewhat crude and not without sensational elements, but holds the interest. Then came “Idolatry” (1874), which, though rewritten in whole or in part seven times, is now unknown, “Garth” (1877), a long story of New Hampshire, the chief part being a painter’s love-story, “Sebastian Strome” (1880), a study of the chastening of a selfish character, strongly reminding us of “Adam Bede,” “Dust” (1883), a story of extreme self-sacrifice, “Fortune’s Fool” (1884), “Archibald Malmaison” (1884), a novelette, and “Beatrix Randolph” (1884). In general his stories are not pleasant reading. Impossible characters are not infrequent and there is a tendency toward the choice of morbid subjects. Many descriptive passages, however, are superbly done, and the general impression one gets is that of power, but of power unrestrained, a strong imagination capable of greater things than Mr. Hawthorne has done. Yet the qualities characteristic of his best books, like “Archibald Malmaison,” are such as led the late Richard Henry Stoddard, a man by no means deficient in judgment, and familiar with the best in modern literature, to pronounce Mr. Hawthorne “clearly and easily the first of living romancers.” In recent years, Mr. Hawthorne has forsaken the paths of pure literature, with which he seems never to have been in love,[17] for those of journalism.