In spite of its unpleasant associations with spiders and blood-stains, “Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret” is one of the most interesting of Hawthorne’s works, containing much of his finest thought and most characteristic description. The portrait of the grouty old Doctor himself has a solidity of impast like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, and the grave-digger, who has survived from colonial times, carries us back involuntarily to the burial scene in “Hamlet.” Alcott, whose name is changed to Colcord, is not treated realistically, but rather idealized in such kindly sympathetic manner as might prevent all possibility of offence at the artistic theft of his personality. The plot, too, is a most ingenious one, turning and winding like a hare, and even diving out of sight for a time; but only to reappear again, as the school-master Colcord does, with a full and satisfactory explanation of its mysterious course. To judge from the appearance of the manuscript, this romance was written very rapidly, and there are places in the text which intimate this; but it vies in power with “The Scarlet Letter,” and why Hawthorne should have become dissatisfied with it,--why he should have failed to complete, revise, and publish it--can only be accounted for by the mental or nervous depression which was now fastening itself upon him. It is noticeable, however, that where the plot is transferred to English ground Hawthorne’s writing has much the same tone and quality that we find in “Our Old Home.” External appearances seem to impede his insight there; but this is additional proof of the authenticity of the work. [Footnote: There are many other evidences; such as, “after-dinner speeches on the necessity of friendly relations between England and the United States,” and “the whistling of the railway train, _two_ or _three_ times a day.”] Shortly after the battle of Bull Run Hawthorne went with his boy to recuperate at Beverly Farms, leaving his wife and daughters at the Wayside, and the letters which passed between these two divisions of the family, during his absence, give some very pretty glimpses of their idyllic summer life. Mrs. Hawthorne “cultivated her garden,” and gave drawing lessons to the neighbors’ children, while her husband, forty miles away, was fishing and bathing. The Beverly shore has not a stimulating climate, but is very attractive in summer to those who do not mind a few sultry nights from land breezes. It was near enough to Salem for Hawthorne to revive the reminiscences of his youth (which become more and more precious after the age of fifty), without obtruding himself on the gaze of his former townsmen or of the young lady “who wished she could poison him.” [Footnote: W. D. Howells’ Memoirs.] It is to be hoped that he saw something of his sister Elizabeth again, the last remnant of his mother’s household, who for some inscrutable reason had never visited him at Concord.