It will be seen that he was not hopeful as to the restoration of the entire Union, adhered to his first view indeed, that the scission of a part would be preferable. In declining a cordial invitation from Bridge to come to Washington, in February, 1862, he gave renewed emphasis to this opinion. "I am not very well," he said, "being mentally and physically languid; but I suppose there is an even chance that the trip and change of scene might supply the energy which I lack." He announced that he had begun a new romance, and then turning to the questions of the day, remarked that he "should not much regret an ultimate separation," and that soon; adding that if a strong Union sentiment should not set in at the South, we ought to resolve ourselves into two nations at once. He was evidently growing despondent; a fact which may have been due in part to the physical and mental languor of which he told his friend. Misfortune had once more entered his household; for one of his children was suffering from a peculiarly distressing malady, which imposed a heavy strain upon his nerves and troubled his heart. More than this, he mourned over the multitude of private griefs which he saw or apprehended on every side--griefs resulting from the slaughter that was going on at the seat of war--as acutely as if they had been his own losses. He could not shut out, by any wall of patriotic fire, the terrible shapes of fierce passion and the pathetic apparitions of those whose lives had been blasted by the tragedies of the field. His health, we have already noticed, had begun to falter while he was still abroad. Neither was he free from pecuniary anxieties. He had laid up a modest accumulation from his earnings in the consulate; but the additions to his house, unambitious though they were, had cost a sum which was large in proportion to his resources; the expense of living was increased by the war, and his pen was for the time being not productive. His income from his books was always scanty. He was too scrupulous to be willing to draw upon the principal which had been invested for the future support of his family; and there were times when he was harassed by the need of money. All these causes conspired to reduce his strength; but the omnipresent misery of the war, and the destruction of the Union, which he believed to be inevitable, were perhaps the chief adverse factors in the case. "Hawthorne's life," Mr. Lowell has said to me, "was shortened by the war."