The slightness of the definite fact, or of the reminiscence vouchsafed by those who knew him, is continually impressed upon us in reviewing this career. Considered in its main outline, how very plain and unambitious is the history! A sea-captain's son, born in Salem; living obscurely; sent up to the rude clearing where a new village was founding in Maine; induced, against his preference, to go to college; writing timid stories and essays, which the world had no suspicion that it needed, and prompted to this by an impulse of which the origin is inexplicable; next, the author coming into notice, but under eclipse now and then from disappearance behind a public office; finally, the acknowledged romancer of indefinitely great endowment--the head of his order in America--sent abroad to an important post, where he is recognized and warmly greeted by every one who can discern clearly: such is the general course of the narrative. Afterwards, the now eminent man comes back to his native land, labors a little longer in comparative obscurity, suffers unmerited obloquy for his fidelity to a personal friend, while perfectly loyal to his government; then dies, and is mourned not alone by those devoted companions who felt him to be the one great fact to them in present human nature, but also by famous scholars and poets, and by a multitude of strangers, who gather around his bier with a stricken sense of loss ineffable. It is very simple; it is very democratic--the unnoticed American boy in humble circumstances becoming the centre of a circle of fame which is still extending its radius. Very simple it is, and yet inexplicable. But if we cannot tell precisely how the mind came into being, nor what were the fostering influences that most cogently aided its growth, we can, at least, pay our reverence to the overruling Power that brings genius to the flowering-point under circumstances seemingly the most unpropitious. In 1863--the last year of his life--Hawthorne wrote to Mr. Stoddard, who had sent him a copy of his poem, "The King's Bell." "I sincerely thank you," he said, "for your beautiful poem, which I have read with a great deal of pleasure. It is such as the public had a right to expect from what you gave us in years gone by; only I wish the idea had not been so sad. I think Felix might have rung the bell once in his lifetime, and again at the moment of death. Yet you may be right. I have been a happy man, and yet I do not remember any one moment of such happy conspiring circumstances that I could have rung a joy-bell for it."