He had now enough and to spare of the leisure which a deliberate writer finds indispensable. In a room overlooking the battlefield (the room in which Emerson had written _Nature_) Hawthorne penned many of the tales afterwards incorporated in _Mosses from an Old Manse_. The period of his residence at Concord will always seem to those who have studied its many charming records not undeserving the characterization of idyllic. It was brought to a close in 1845, when there seemed a likelihood (made a certainty the following year) of his becoming Surveyor of Customs for the Port of Salem. Hawthorne held this post until June, 1849. His removal gave him time for the working out of an idea that had possessed him for many months, and which took shape in the form of his great romance, _The Scarlet Letter_. From the spring of 1850 to the autumn of 1851 Hawthorne lived at Lenox in the Berkshire Hills, and there wrote _The House of the Seven Gables_. He then removed to West Newton, where, during the winter of 1851–52, he wrote _The Blithedale Romance_. In June, 1852, he took possession of a house in Concord, which he had bought of Alcott. He had but fairly settled himself in his new home (‘The Wayside’ he called it) when his friend Franklin Pierce, now President of the United States, made him consul at Liverpool. Hawthorne assumed his charge in July, 1853, and conducted its affairs with energy and skill until September, 1857. The period of his English residence was rich in experiences, of which social honors formed the least part. The quiet, brooding observer had no wish to be lionized and apparently discouraged the few well-meant advances that were made. He once saw Tennyson at the Arts’ Exhibition at Manchester, and rejoiced in him more than in all the other wonders of the place; but it was like Hawthorne to have been content merely to gaze at the laureate without presuming on his own achievements as ground for claiming acquaintance. After leaving Liverpool, Hawthorne spent two winters in Italy, where _The Marble Faun_ was conceived. The greater part of the actual writing was done in England, at Redcar on the North Sea. At this point it will be well to take note of Hawthorne’s principal writings subsequent to the publication of the second edition of the _Twice-Told Tales_. They are: _The Celestial Railroad_, 1843; _Mosses from an Old Manse_, 1846;[38] _The Scarlet Letter_, 1850; _The House of the Seven Gables_, 1851; _A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys_, 1852; _The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales_, 1852; _The Blithedale Romance_, 1852; _Life of Franklin Pierce_, 1852; _Tanglewood Tales_, 1853; _The Marble Faun, or the Romance of Monte Beni_, 1860;[39] _Our Old Home_, 1863.