His impressions of President Lincoln seemed colored with a trace of prejudice, which, however unjust and unfortunate it may appear to us now, was really only the inevitable consequence of the wide intellectual gulf that yawned between those two men, both of positive character, and with tastes and sympathies the most radically opposite. But despite this unavoidable repulsion, Hawthorne's keen, resistless insight did not fail to penetrate the wonderful purity and simplicity of Lincoln's character. In a final word he does him ample justice:-- "He is evidently a man of keen faculties, and, what is still more to the purpose, of powerful character. "As to his integrity, the people have that intuition of it which is never deceived. Before he actually entered upon his great office, and for a considerable time afterwards, there is no reason to suppose that he adequately estimated the gigantic task about to be imposed upon him, or, at least, had any distinct idea how it was to be managed; and I presume there may have been more than one veteran politician to propose to himself to take the power out of President Lincoln's hands into his own, leaving our honest friend only the public responsibility for the good or ill success of the career. The extremely imperfect development of his statesmanly qualities at that period may have justified such designs. But the President is teachable by events, and has now spent a year in a very arduous course of education; he has a flexible mind, capable of much expansion, and convertible towards far loftier studies and activities than those of his early life; and if he came to Washington a backwoods humorist, he has already transformed himself into as good a statesman (to speak modestly) as his prime minister."