Often these obstacles are viewless to
others, and the combat is unsuspected; the site of many a Penuel remains
untraced; but none the less these are the pivots on which entire
personal histories turn. Hawthorne's comparatively passive endurance was
of infinitely greater worth than any active irruption into the outer
world would have been. It is obvious that we owe to the innumerable
devious wanderings and obscure sufferings of his mind, under the
influences just reviewed, something of his sure and subtle touch in
feeling out the details of morbid moods; for though his mind remained
perfectly healthy, it had acquired acute sympathy with all hidden
tragedies of heart and brain.
But another and larger purpose was not less well served by this
probation. The ability of American life to produce a genius in some
sense exactly responding to its most distinctive qualities had yet to be
demonstrated; and this could only be done by some one who would stake
life and success on the issue, for it needed that a soul and brain of
the highest endowment should be set apart solely for the experiment,
even to the ruin of it if required, before the truth could be
ascertained. Hawthorne, the slowly produced and complex result of a line
of New-Englanders who carried American history in their very limbs,
seemed providentially offered for the trial. It was well that
temperament and circumstance drew him into a charmed circle of reserve
from the first; well, also, that he was further matured at a simple and
rural college pervaded by a homely American tone; still more fortunate
was it that nothing called him away to connect him with European
culture, on graduating.
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