tle quiet amusement from his delicious satire, although their
admiration of the reformers may remain unshaken. That the world has got
a little weary of the mutual admiration of the Boston coterie is an open
secret. We have had a trifle too much of it from the day of Fields, who
apparently invented Hawthorne, and would have put a patent upon him if
possible, down to the present era of worship of that real hero, Emerson
who, if he survives the laudations of his present army of admirers, may
well hope for immortality.

The wife of Hawthorne was so different a person from the noble army of
literary and artistic women who are so numerous to-day, but who in his
time had just begun to assert themselves, that, believing her to be the
perfect flower of womanhood, as he did, he could scarcely be expected to
appreciate the Zenobias of that or of the present time.

Mrs. Hawthorne's sister, Elizabeth Peabody, was one of the women of the
new era, and has spent her entire life in noble efforts to improve the
world into which she was born; and who shall say whether Mrs. Hawthorne
or Miss Peabody was the higher type of woman?

If we were obliged to compare Mrs. Hawthorne with the caricatures of the
strong-minded woman in which novelists so delight,--those "housekeepers
by the wrath of God,"--like Mrs. Jellaby and similar monstrosities, then
the answer would not be hard. We could all cry, Mrs. Hawthorne, now and
forever! But when we compare her to the strong-minded women like George
Eliot, perfect wives, perfect home-makers, perfectly sympathetic and
loyal comrades of their husbands, and lacking nothing of womanly
softness or tenderness with all their strength, then the answer is not
so simple. But doubtless the fact that God created both types may be
accepted as evidence that He saw uses for both, and that even the women
whom He made "fools to match the men" are not without their purpose in
the economy of the universe.

Such thoughts as the following in regard to her husband, written by Mrs.
Hawthorne after eight years of marriage, sound not unlike the
rhapsodies of George Eliot concerning Mr. Lewes:--

"He has perfect dominion over himself in every respect, so that to
do the highest, wisest, loveliest thing is not the least effort to
him, any more than it is for a baby to be innocent. It is his
spontaneous act, and a baby is not more unconscious of its
innocence. I never knew such loftiness so simply borne.