ed with romances, and once I remember he told me he had no
less than five stories, well thought out, any one of which he could
finish and publish whenever he chose to. There was one subject for a
work of imagination that seems to have haunted him for years, and he has
mentioned it twice in his journal. This was the subsequent life of the
young man whom Jesus, looking on, "loved," and whom he bade to sell all
that he had and give to the poor, and take up his cross and follow him.
"Something very deep and beautiful might be made out of this," Hawthorne
said, "for the young man went away sorrowful, and is not recorded to
have done what he was bidden to do."

One of the most difficult matters he had to manage while in England was
the publication of Miss Bacon's singular book on Shakespeare. The poor
lady, after he had agreed to see the work through the press, broke off
all correspondence with him in a storm of wrath, accusing him of
pusillanimity in not avowing full faith in her theory; so that, as he
told me, so far as her good-will was concerned, he had not gained much
by taking the responsibility of her book upon his shoulders. It was a
heavy weight for him to bear in more senses than one, for he paid out of
his own pocket the expenses of publication.

I find in his letters constant references to the kindness with which he
was treated in London. He spoke of Mrs. S.C. Hall as "one of the best
and warmest-hearted women in the world." Leigh Hunt, in his way, pleased
and satisfied him more than almost any man he had seen in England. "As
for other literary men," he says in one of his letters, "I doubt whether
London can muster so good a dinner-party as that which assembles every
month at the marble palace in School Street."

All sorts of adventures befell him during his stay in Europe, even to
that of having his house robbed, and his causing the thieves to be tried
and sentenced to transportation. In the summer-time he travelled about
the country in England and pitched his tent wherever fancy prompted. One
autumn afternoon in September he writes to me from Leamington:--

"I received your letter only this morning, at this cleanest and
prettiest of English towns, where we are going to spend a week or
two before taking our departure for Paris. We are acquainted with
Leamington already, having resided here two summers ago; and the
country round about is unadulterated England, rich in old castles,
manor-