the war of the Revolution, lives in the
village of Concord, on the Boston road, at the base of a woody hill
which rises abruptly behind his house, and of which the level summit
supplies him with a promenade continually mentioned in the course of
the tale. Hawthorne used to exercise himself upon this picturesque
eminence, and, as he conceived the brooding Septimius to have done
before him, to betake himself thither when he found the limits of his
dwelling too narrow. But he had an advantage which his imaginary hero
lacked; he erected a tower as an adjunct to the house, and it was a
jocular tradition among his neighbours, in allusion to his attributive
tendency to evade rather than hasten the coming guest, that he used to
ascend this structure and scan the road for provocations to retreat.

In so far, however, as Hawthorne suffered the penalties of celebrity
at the hands of intrusive fellow-citizens, he was soon to escape from
this honourable incommodity. On the 4th of March, 1853, his old
college-mate and intimate friend, Franklin Pierce, was installed as
President of the United States. He had been the candidate of the
Democratic party, and all good Democrats, accordingly, in conformity
to the beautiful and rational system under which the affairs of the
great Republic were carried on, begun to open their windows to the
golden sunshine of Presidential patronage. When General Pierce was put
forward by the Democrats, Hawthorne felt a perfectly loyal and natural
desire that his good friend should be exalted to so brilliant a
position, and he did what was in him to further the good cause, by
writing a little book about its hero. His _Life of Franklin Pierce_
belongs to that class of literature which is known as the "campaign
biography," and which consists of an attempt, more or less successful,
to persuade the many-headed monster of universal suffrage that the
gentleman on whose behalf it is addressed is a paragon of wisdom and
virtue. Of Hawthorne's little book there is nothing particular to
say, save that it is in very good taste, that he is a very fairly
ingenious advocate, and that if he claimed for the future President
qualities which rather faded in the bright light of a high office,
this defect of proportion was essential to his undertaking. He dwelt
chiefly upon General Pierce's exploits in the war with Mexico (before
that, his record, as they say in America, had been mainly that of a
successful country lawyer), and