The writer concludes the article from which I have quoted, and which, in keen analysis and generous, literary judgment, is rarely equalled by any of Hawthorne's reviewers, with these and like ill-considered words:-- "Wherever he turned his weary steps, there stood in his path the genius of the time, not beautiful, not romantic, to his eyes; not even grand--but stern enough and in grim earnest, demanding of him what he could not give,--the heart and voice of an American citizen in the hour of America's danger." The writer forgot, or, blinded by strong feeling, failed to perceive, that the silence which, with him as with hundreds of good and earnest men, would indeed have indicated a fatal lack of patriotic emotion, was in the case of Hawthorne only the inevitable shrinking of a rare and sensitive spirit from contact with the awful realities of conflict. When the "Artist of the Beautiful" descended from the serene atmosphere, where his lofty spiritual nature had its true home and highest sphere of action, and devoted his delicate gifts to the useful mysteries of watch-making, the result, while eminently satisfactory to his old employer and well-wisher, the jeweller, and doubtless of blessed effect on the poor artist's purse, was disastrous in loss to the world of thought, and in its influence on his better and real self. A writer of tenderer sympathies and nicer discrimination, takes a more kindly and a wiser view:-- "About the whole question of the war, Hawthorne's mind was, I think, always hovering between two views. He sympathized with it in principle; but its inevitable accessories--the bloodshed, the bustle, and above all, perhaps, the bunkum which accompanied it--were to him absolutely hateful.... To any one who knew the man, the mere fact that Hawthorne should have been able to make up his mind to the righteousness and expediency of the war at all, is evidence of the strength of that popular passion which drove the North and South into conflict." But it was not Hawthorne's silence that provoked to fiercest expression the safe zeal of certain literary loyalists. This last sketch from that pen, the secret of whose magic was never communicated, and which, precious in itself, is invaluable because the last, was published in the summer of 1862--less than two years before its author's death. Its title, "Chiefly about War Matters," suggests its character. It was, in fact, a series of pictures of scenes in and about Washington at this stage of the great contest. The present writer attempts nothing here like a review of this remarkable essay, entirely worthy as it was of its subject and its author's genius; it is simply my purpose to call the reader's attention to a production, which, more than anything else in Hawthorne's writings, has kindled the hostile criticism of shallow and uncongenial minds.