Chapter 19

See hisObservations in his Voiage into the South Sea(1622), republished by the Hakluyt Society.

HAWKS, FRANCIS LISTER(1798-1866), American clergyman, was born at Newbern, North Carolina, on the 10th of June 1798, and graduated at the university of his native state in 1815. After practising law with some distinction he entered the Episcopalian ministry in 1827 and proved a brilliant and impressive preacher, holding livings in New Haven, Philadelphia, New York and New Orleans, and declining several bishoprics. On his appointment as historiographer of his church in 1835, he went to England, and collected the abundant materials afterwards utilized in hisContributions to the Ecclesiastical History of U.S.A.(New York, 1836-1839). These two volumes dealt with Maryland and Virginia, while two later ones (1863-1864) were devoted to Connecticut. He was the first president of the university of Louisiana (now merged in Tulane). He died in New York on the 26th of September 1866.

HAWKSHAW, SIR JOHN(1811-1891), English engineer, was born in Yorkshire in 1811, and was educated at Leeds grammar school. Before he was twenty-one he had been engaged for six or seven years in railway engineering and the construction of roads in his native county, and in the year of his majority he obtained an appointment as engineer to the Bolivar Mining Association in Venezuela. But the climate there was more than his health could stand, and in 1834 he was obliged to return to England. He soon obtained employment under Jesse Hartley at the Liverpool docks, and subsequently was made engineer in charge of the railway and navigation works of the Manchester, Bury and Bolton Canal Company. In 1845 he became chief engineer to the Manchester & Leeds railway, and in 1847 to its successor, the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway, for which he constructed a large number of branch lines. In 1850 he removed to London and began to practise as a consulting engineer, at first alone, but subsequently in partnership with Harrison Hayter. In that capacity his work was of an extremely varied nature, embracing almost every branch of engineering. He retained his connexion with the Lancashire & Yorkshire Company until his retirement from professional work in 1888, and was consulted on all the important engineering points that affected it in that long period. In London he was responsible for the Charing Cross and Cannon Street railways, together with the two bridges which carried them over the Thames; he was engineer of the East London railway, which passes under the Thames through Sir M. I. Brunel’s well-known tunnel; and jointly with Sir J. Wolfe Barry he constructed the section of the Underground railway which completed the “inner circle” between the Aldgate and Mansion House stations. In addition, many railway works claimed his attention in all parts of the world—Germany, Russia, India, Mauritius, &c. One noteworthy point in his railway practice was his advocacy, in opposition to Robert Stephenson, of steeper gradients than had previously been thought desirable or possible, and so far back as 1838 he expressed decided disapproval of the maintenance of the broad gauge on the Great Western, because of the troubles he foresaw it would lead to in connexion with future railway extension, and because he objected in general to breaks of gauge in the lines of a country. The construction of canals was another branch of engineering in which he was actively engaged. In 1862 he became engineer of the Amsterdam ship-canal, and in the succeeding year he may fairly be said to have been the saviour of the Suez Canal. About that time the scheme was in very bad odour, and the khedive determined to get the opinion of an English engineer as to its practicability, having made up his mind to stop the works if that opinion was unfavourable. Hawkshaw was chosen to make the inquiry, and it was because his report was entirely favourable that M. de Lesseps was able to say at the opening ceremony that to him he owed the canal. As a member of the International Congress which considered the construction of an interoceanic canal across central America, he thought best of the Nicaraguan route, and privately he regarded the Panama scheme as impracticable at a reasonable cost, although publicly he expressed no opinion on the matter and left the Congress without voting. Sir John Hawkshaw also had a wide experience in constructing harbours (e.g.Holyhead) and docks (e.g.Penarth, the Albert Dock at Hull, and the south dock of the East and West India Docks in London), in river-engineering, in drainage and sewerage,in water-supply, &c. He was engineer, with Sir James Brunlees, of the original Channel Tunnel Company from 1872, but many years previously he had investigated forhimselfthe question of a tunnel under the Strait of Dover from an engineering point of view, and had come to a belief in its feasibility, so far as that could be determined from borings and surveys. Subsequently, however, he became convinced that the tunnel would not be to the advantage of Great Britain, and thereafter would have nothing to do with the project. He was also engineer of the Severn Tunnel, which, from its magnitude and the difficulties encountered in its construction, must rank as one of the most notable engineering undertakings of the 19th century. He died in London on the 2nd of June 1891.

HAWKSLEY, THOMAS(1807-1893), English engineer, was born on the 12th of July 1807, at Arnold, near Nottingham. He was at Nottingham grammar school till the age of fifteen, but was indebted to his private studies for his knowledge of mathematics, chemistry and geology. In 1822 he was articled to an architect in Nottingham, subsequently becoming a partner in the firm, which also undertook engineering work; and in 1852 he removed to London, where he continued in active practice till he was well past eighty. His work was chiefly concerned with water and gas supply and with main-drainage. Of waterworks he used to say that he had constructed 150, and a long list might be drawn up of important towns that owe their water to his skill, including Liverpool, Sheffield, Leicester, Leeds, Derby, Darlington, Oxford, Cambridge and Northampton in England, and Stockholm, Altona and Bridgetown (Barbados) in other countries. To his native town of Nottingham he was water engineer for fifty years, and the system he designed for it was noteworthy from the fact that the principle of constant supply was adopted for the first time. The gas-works at Nottingham, and at many other towns for which he provided water supplies were also constructed by him. He designed main-drainage systems for Birmingham, Worcester and Windsor among other places, and in 1857 he was called in, together with G. P. Bidder and Sir J. Bazalgette, to report on the best solution of the vexed question of a main-drainage scheme for London. In 1872 he was president of the Institution of Civil Engineers—an office in which his son Charles followed him in 1901. He died in London on the 23rd of September 1893.

HAWKSMOOR, NICHOLAS(1661-1736), English architect, of Nottinghamshire birth, became a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren at the age of eighteen, and his name is intimately associated with those of Wren and Sir J. Vanbrugh in the English architecture of his time. Through Wren’s influence he obtained various official posts, as deputy-surveyor at Chelsea hospital, clerk of the works and deputy-surveyor at Greenwich hospital, clerk of the works at Whitehall, St James’s and Westminster, and he succeeded Wren as surveyor-general of Westminster Abbey. He took part in much of the work done by Wren and Vanbrugh, and it is difficult often to assign among them the credit for the designs of various features. Hawksmoor appears, however, to have been responsible for the early Gothic designs of the two towers of All Souls’ (Oxford) north quadrangle, and the library and other features at Queen’s College (Oxford). At the close of Queen Anne’s reign he had a principal part in the scheme for building fifty new churches in London, and himself designed five or six of them, including St Mary Woolnoth (1716-1719) and St George’s, Bloomsbury (1720-1730). A number of his drawings have been preserved. He died in London on the 25th of March 1736.

HAWKWOOD, SIR JOHN(d. 1394), an English adventurer who attained great wealth and renown as a condottiere in the Italian wars of the 14th century. His name is variously spelt as Haccoude, Aucud, Aguto, &c., by contemporaries. It is said that he was the son of a tanner of Hedingham Sibil in Essex, and was apprenticed in London, whence he went, in the English army, to France under Edward III. and the Black Prince. It is said also that he obtained the favour of the Black Prince, and received knighthood from King Edward III., but though it is certain that he was of knightly rank, there is no evidence as to the time or place at which he won it. On the peace of Bretigny in 1360, he collected a band of men-at-arms, and moved southward to Italy, where we find the White Company, as his men were called, assisting the marquis of Monferrato against Milan in 1362-63, and the Pisans against Florence in 1364. After several campaigns in various parts of central Italy, Hawkwood in 1368 entered the service of Bernabò Visconti. In 1369 he fought for Perugia against the pope, and in 1370 for the Visconti against Pisa, Florence and other enemies. In 1372 he defeated the marquis of Monferrato, but soon afterwards, resenting the interference of a council of war with his plans, Hawkwood resigned his command, and the White Company passed into the papal service, in which he fought against the Visconti in 1373-1375. In 1375 the Florentines entered into an agreement with him, by which they were to pay him and his companion 130,000 gold florins in three months on condition that he undertook no engagement against them; and in the same year the priors of the arts and the gonfalonier decided to give him a pension of 1200 florins per annum for as long as he should remain in Italy. In 1377, under the orders of the cardinal Robert of Geneva, legate of Bologna, he massacred the inhabitants of Cesena, but in May of the same year, disliking the executioner’s work put upon him by the legate, he joined the anti-papal league, and married, at Milan, Donnina, an illegitimate daughter of Bernabò Visconti. In 1378 and 1379 Hawkwood was constantly in the field; he quarrelled with Bernabò in 1378, and entered the service of Florence, receiving, as in 1375, 130,000 gold florins. He rendered good service to the republic up to 1382, when for a time he was one of the English ambassadors at the papal court. He engaged in a brief campaign in Naples in 1383, fought for the marquis of Padua against Verona in 1386, and in 1388 made an unsuccessful effort against Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who had murdered Bernabò. In 1390 the Florentines took up the war against Gian Galeazzo in earnest, and appointed Hawkwood commander-in-chief. His campaign against the Milanese army in the Veronese and the Bergamask was reckoned a triumph of generalship, and in 1392 Florence exacted a satisfactory peace from Gian Galeazzo. His latter years were spent in a villa in the neighbourhood of Florence. On his death in 1394 the republic gave him a public funeral of great magnificence, and decreed the erection of a marble monument in the cathedral. This, however, was never executed; but Paolo Uccelli painted his portrait in terre-verte on the inner façade of the building, where it still remains, though damaged by removal from the plaster to canvas. Richard II. of England, probably at the instigation of Hawkwood’s sons, who returned to their native country, requested the Florentines to let him remove the good knight’s bones, and the Florentine government signified its consent.

Of his children by Donnina Visconti, who appears to have been his second wife, the eldest daughter married Count Brezaglia of Porciglia, podestá of Ferrara, who succeeded him as Florentine commander-in-chief, and another a German condottiere named Conrad Prospergh. His son, John, returned to England and settled at Hedingham Sibil, where, it is supposed, Sir John Hawkwood was buried. The children of the first marriage were two sons and three daughters, and of the latter the youngest married John Shelley, an ancestor of the poet.

Authorities.—Muratori,Rerum Italicarum scriptores, and supplement by Tartinius and Manni;Archivio storico italiano; Temple-Leader and Marcotti,Giovanni Acuto(Florence, 1889; Eng. transl., Leader Scott, London, 1889); Nichol,Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, vol. vi.; J. G. Alger inRegister and Magazine of Biography, v. 1.; and article inDict. Nat. Biog.

HAWLEY, HENRY(c.1679-1759), British lieut.-general, entered the army, it is said, in 1694. He saw service in the War of Spanish Succession as a captain of Erle’s (the 19th) foot. After Almanza he returned to England, and a few years later had become lieut.-colonel of the 19th. With this regiment he served at Sheriffmuir in 1715, where he was wounded. After this for some years he served in the United Kingdom, obtaining promotion in the usual course, and in 1739 he arrived at the grade of major general. Four years later he accompanied George II.and Stair to Germany, and, as a general officer of cavalry under Sir John Cope, was present at Dettingen. Becoming lieut.-general somewhat later, he was second-in-command of the cavalry at Fontenoy, and on the 20th of December 1745 became commander-in-chief in Scotland. Less than a month later Hawley suffered a severe defeat at Falkirk at the hands of the Highland insurgents. This, however, did not cost him his command, for the duke of Cumberland, who was soon afterwards sent north, was captain-general. Under Cumberland’s orders Hawley led the cavalry in the campaign of Culloden, and at that battle his dragoons distinguished themselves by their ruthless butchery of the fugitive rebels. After the end of the “Forty-Five” he accompanied Cumberland to the Low Countries and led the allied cavalry at Lauffeld (Val). He ended his career as governor of Portsmouth and died at that place in 1759. James Wolfe, his brigade-major, wrote of General Hawley in no flattering terms. “The troops dread his severity, hate the man and hold his military knowledge in contempt,” he wrote. But, whether it be true or false that he was the natural son of George II., Hawley was always treated with the greatest favour by that king and by his son the duke of Cumberland.

HAWLEY, JOSEPH ROSWELL(1826-1905), American political leader, was born on the 31st of October at Stewartsville, Richmond county, North Carolina, where his father, a native of Connecticut, was pastor of a Baptist church. The father returned to Connecticut in 1837 and the son graduated at Hamilton College (Clinton, N.Y.) in 1847. He was admitted to the bar in 1850, and practised at Hartford, Conn., for six years. An ardent opponent of slavery, he became a Free Soiler, was a delegate to the National Convention which nominated John P. Hale for the presidency in 1852, and subsequently served as chairman of the State Committee, having at the same time editorial control of theCharter Oak, the party organ. In 1856 he took a leading part in organizing the Republican party in Connecticut, and in 1857 became editor of the HartfordEvening Press, a newly established Republican newspaper. He served in the Federal army throughout the Civil War, rising from the rank of captain (April 22, 1861) to that of brigadier-general of volunteers (Sept. 1864); took part in the Port Royal Expedition, in the capture of Fort Pulaski (April 1862), in the siege of Charleston and the capture of Fort Wagner (Sept. 1863), in the battle of Olustee (Feb. 20, 1864), in the siege operations about Petersburg, and in General W. T. Sherman’s campaign in the Carolinas; and in September 1865 received the brevet of major-general of volunteers. From April 1866 to April 1867 he was governor of Connecticut, and in 1867 he bought the HartfordCourant, with which he combined thePress, and which became under his editorship the most influential newspaper in Connecticut and one of the leading Republican papers in the country. He was the permanent chairman of the Republican National Convention in 1868, was a delegate to the conventions of 1872, 1876 and 1880, was a member of Congress from December 1872 until March 1875 and again in 1879-1881, and was a United States senator from 1881 until the 3rd of March 1905, being one of the Republican leaders both in the House and the Senate. From 1873 to 1876 he was president of the United States Centennial Commission, the great success of the Centennial Exhibition being largely due to him. He died at Washington, D.C., on the 17th of March 1905.

HAWORTH,an urban district in the Keighley parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 10 m. N.W. of Bradford, on a branch of the Midland railway. Pop. (1901), 7492. It is picturesquely situated on a steep slope, lying high, and surrounded by moorland. The Rev. Patrick Brontë (d. 1861) was incumbent here for forty-one years, and a memorial near the west window of St Michael’s church bears his name and the names of his gifted daughters upon it. The grave of Charlotte and Emily Brontë is also marked by a brass. In 1895 a museum was opened by the Brontë society. There is a large worsted industry.

HAWSER(in sense and form as if from “hawse,” which, from the 16th-century formhalse, is derived from Teutonichals, neck, of which there is a Scandinavian use in the sense of the forepart of a ship; the two words are not etymologically connected; “hawser” is from an O. Fr.haucier,hausser, to raise, tow, hoist, from the Late Lat.altiare, to lift,altus, high), a small cable or thick rope used at sea for the purposes of mooring or warping, in the case of large vessels made of steel. When a cable or tow line is made of three or more small ropes it is said to be “hawser-laid.” The “hawse” of a ship is that part of the bows where the “hawse-holes” are made. These are two holes cut in the bows of a vessel for the cables to pass through, having small cast-iron pipes, called “hawse-pipes,” fitted into them to prevent abrasion. In bad weather at sea these holes are plugged up with “hawse-plugs” to prevent the water entering. The phrase to enter the service by the “hawse-holes” is used of those who have risen from before the mast to commissioned rank in the navy. When the ship is at anchor the space between her head and the anchor is called “hawse,” as in the phrase “athwart the hawse.” The term also applies to the position of the ship’s anchors when moored; when they are laid out in a line at right angles to the wind it is said to be moored with an “open hawse”; when both cables are laid out straight to their anchors without crossing, it is a “clear hawse.”

HAWTHORN,a city of Bourke county, Victoria, Australia, 4½ m. by rail E. of and suburban to Melbourne. Pop. (1901), 21,339. It is the seat of the important Methodist Ladies’ College. The majority of the inhabitants are professional and business men engaged in Melbourne and their residences are numerous at Hawthorn.

HAWTHORN(O. Eng.haga-,hæg-, orhege-thorn,i.e.“hedge-thorn”), the common name forCrataegus, in botany, a genus of shrubs or small trees belonging to the natural order Rosaceae, native of the north temperate regions, especially America. It is represented in the British Isles by the hawthorn, white-thorn or may (Ger.HagedornandChristdorn; Fr.aubépine), C.Oxyacantha, a small, round-headed, much-branched tree, 10 to 20 ft. high, the branches often ending in single sharp spines. The leaves, which are deeply cut, are 1 to 2 in. long and very variable in shape. The flowers are sweet-scented, in flat-topped clusters, and ½ to ¾ in. in diameter, with five spreading white petals alternating with five persistent green sepals, a large number of stamens with pinkish-brown anthers, and one to three carpels sunk in the cup-shaped floral axis. The fruit, or haw, as in the apple, consists of the swollen floral axis, which is usually scarlet, and forms a fleshy envelope surrounding the hard stone.

The common hawthorn is a native of Europe as far north as 60½° in Sweden, and of North Africa, western Asia and Siberia, and has been naturalized in North America and Australia. It thrives best in dry soils, and in height varies from 4 or 5 to 12, 15 or, in exceptional cases, as much as between 20 and 30 ft. It may be propagated from seed or from cuttings. The seeds must be from ripe fruit, and if fresh gathered should be freed from pulp by maceration in water. They germinate only in the second year after sowing; in the course of their first year the seedlings attain a height of 6 to 12 in. Hawthorn has been for many centuries a favourite park and hedge plant in Europe, and numerous varieties have been developed by cultivation; these differ in the form of the leaf, the white, pink or red, single or double flowers, and the yellow, orange or red fruit. In England the hawthorn, owing to its hardiness and closeness of growth, has been employed for enclosure of land since the Roman occupation, but for ordinary field hedges it is believed it was generally in use till about the end of the 17th century. James I. of Scotland, in hisQuair, ii. 14 (early 15th century), mentions the “hawthorn hedges knet” of Windsor Castle. The first hawthorn hedges in Scotland are said to have been planted by soldiers of Cromwell at Inch Buckling Brae in East Lothian and Finlarig in Perthshire. Annual pruning, to which the hawthorn is particularly amenable, is necessary if the hedge is to maintain its compactness and sturdiness. When the lower part shows a tendency to go bare the strong stems may be “plashed,”i.e.split, bent over and pegged to the ground so that new growths may start. The wood of the hawthorn is white in colour, witha yellowish tinge. Fresh cut it weighs 68 ℔ 12 oz. per cubic foot, and dry 57 ℔ 3 oz. It can seldom be obtained in large portions, and has the disadvantage of being apt to warp; its great hardness, however, renders it valuable for the manufacture of various articles, such as the cogs of mill-wheels, flails and mallets, and handles of hammers. Both green and dry it forms excellent fuel. The bark possesses tanning properties, and in Scotland in past times yielded with ferrous sulphate a black dye for wool. The leaves are eaten by cattle, and have been employed as a substitute for tea. Birds and deer feed upon the haws, which are used in the preparation of a fermented and highly intoxicating liquor. The hawthorn serves as a stock for grafting other trees. As an ornamental feature in landscapes, it is worthy of notice; and the pleasing shelter it affords and the beauty of its blossoms have frequently been alluded to by poets. The custom of employing the flowering branches for decorative purposes on the 1st of May is of very early origin; but since the alteration in the calendar the tree has rarely been in full bloom in England before the second week of that month. In the Scottish Highlands the flowers may be seen as late as the middle of June. The hawthorn has been regarded as the emblem of hope, and its branches are stated to have been carried by the ancient Greeks in wedding processions, and to have been used by them to deck the altar of Hymen. The supposition that the tree was the source of Christ’s crown of thorns gave rise doubtless to the tradition current among the French peasantry that it utters groans and cries on Good Friday, and probably also to the old popular superstition in Great Britain and Ireland that ill-luck attended the uprooting of hawthorns. Branches of the Glastonbury thorn,C. Oxyacantha, var.praecox, which flowers both in December and in spring, were formerly highly valued in England, on account of the legend that the tree was originally the staff of Joseph of Arimathea.

The number of species in the genus is from fifty to seventy, according to the view taken as to whether or not some of the forms, especially of those occurring in the United States, represent distinct species.C. coccinea, a native of Canada and the eastern United States, with bright scarlet fruits, was introduced into English gardens towards the end of the 17th century.C. Crus-Galli, with a somewhat similar distribution and introduced about the same time, is a very decorative species with showy, bright red fruit, often remaining on the branches till spring, and leaves assuming a brilliant scarlet and orange in the autumn; numerous varieties are in cultivation.C. Pyracantha, known in gardens as pyracantha, is evergreen and has white flowers, appearing in May, and fine scarlet fruits of the size of a pea which remain on the tree nearly all the winter. It is a native of south Europe and was introduced into Britain early in the 17th century.

HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL(1804-1864), American writer, son of Nathaniel Hathorne (1776-1808), was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 4th of July 1804. The head of the American branch of the family, William Hathorne of Wilton, Wiltshire, England, emigrated with Winthrop and his company, and arrived at Salem Bay, Mass., on the 12th of June 1630. He had grants of land at Dorchester, where he resided for upwards of six years, when he was persuaded to remove to Salem by the tender of further grants of land there, it being considered a public benefit that he should become an inhabitant of that town. He represented his fellow-townsmen in the legislature, and served them in a military capacity as a captain in the first regular troop organized in Salem, which he led to victory through an Indian campaign in Maine. Originally a determined “Separatist,” and opposed to compulsion for conscience, he signalized himself when a magistrate by the active part which he took in the Quaker persecutions of the time (1657-1662), going so far on one occasion as to order the whipping of Anne Coleman and four other Friends through Salem, Boston and Dedham. He died, an old man, in the odour of sanctity, and left a good property to his son John, who inherited his father’s capacity and intolerance, and was in turn a legislator, a magistrate, a soldier and a bitter persecutor of witches. Before the death of Justice Hathorne in 1717, the destiny of the family suffered a sea-change, and they began to be noted as mariners. One of these seafaring Hathornes figured in the Revolution as a privateer, who had the good fortune to escape from a British prison-ship; and another, Captain Daniel Hathorne, has left his mark on early American ballad-lore. He too was a privateer, commander of the brig “Fair American,” which, cruising off the coast of Portugal, fell in with a British scow laden with troops for General Howe, which scow the bold Hathorne and his valiant crew at once engaged and fought for over an hour, until the vanquished enemy was glad to cut the Yankee grapplings and quickly bear away. The last of the Hathornes with whom we are concerned was a son of this sturdy old privateer, Nathaniel Hathorne. He was born in 1776, and about the beginning of the 19th century married Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, a daughter of Richard Manning of Salem, whose ancestors emigrated to America about fifty years after the arrival of William Hathorne. Young Nathaniel took his hereditary place before the mast, passed from the forecastle to the cabin, made voyages to the East and West Indies, Brazil and Africa, and finally died of fever at Surinam, in the spring of 1808. He was the father of three children, the second of whom was the subject of this article. The form of the family name was changed by the latter to “Hawthorne” in his early manhood.

After the death of her husband Mrs Hawthorne removed to the house of her father with her little family of children. Of the boyhood of Nathaniel no particulars have reached us, except that he was fond of taking long walks alone, and that he used to declare to his mother that he would go to sea some time and would never return. Among the books that he is known to have read as a child were Shakespeare, Milton, Pope and Thomson,The Castle of Indolencebeing an especial favourite. In the autumn of 1818 bis mother removed to Raymond, a town in Cumberland county, Maine, where his uncle, Richard Manning, had built a large and ambitious dwelling. Here the lad resumed his solitary walks, exchanging the narrow streets of Salem for the boundless, primeval wilderness, and its sluggish harbour for the fresh bright waters of Sebago lake. He roamed the woods by day, with his gun and rod, and in the moonlight nights of winter skated upon the lake alone till midnight. When he found himself away from home, and wearied with his exercise, he took refuge in a log cabin where half a tree would be burning upon the hearth. He had by this time acquired a taste for writing, that showed itself in a little blank-book, in which he jotted down his woodland adventures and feelings, and which was remarkable for minute observation and nice perception of nature.

After a year’s residence at Raymond, Nathaniel returned to Salem in order to prepare for college. He amused himself by publishing a manuscript periodical, which he called theSpectator, and which displayed considerable vivacity and talent. He speculated upon the profession that he would follow, with a sort of prophetic insight into his future. “I do not want to be a doctor and live by men’s diseases,” he wrote to his mother, “nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So I don’t see that there is anything left for me but to be an author. How would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written by your son, with ‘Hawthorne’s Works’ printed on their backs?”

Nathaniel entered Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in the autumn of 1821, where he became acquainted with two students who were destined to distinction—Henry W. Longfellow and Franklin Pierce. He was an excellent classical scholar, his Latin compositions, even in his freshman year, being remarkable for their elegance, while his Greek (which was less) was good. He made graceful translations from the Roman poets, and wrote several English poems which were creditable to him. After graduation three years later (1825) he returned to Salem, and to a life of isolation. He devoted his mornings to study, his afternoons to writing, and his evenings to long walks along the rocky coast. He was scarcely known by sight to his townsmen, and he held so little communication with the members of his own family that his meals were frequently left at hislocked door. He wrote largely, but destroyed many of his manuscripts, his taste was so difficult to please. He thought well enough, however, of one of his compositions to print it anonymously in 1828. A crude melodramatic story, entitledFanshawe, it was unworthy even of his immature powers, and should never have been rescued from the oblivion which speedily overtook it. The name of Nathaniel Hawthorne finally became known to his countrymen as a writer inThe Token, a holiday annual which was commenced in 1828 by Mr S. G. Goodrich (better known as “Peter Parley”), by whom it was conducted for fourteen years. This forgotten publication numbered among its contributors most of the prominent American writers of the time, none of whom appear to have added to their reputation in its pages, except the least popular of all—Hawthorne, who was for years the obscurest man of letters in America, though he gradually made admirers in a quiet way. His first public recognition came from England, where his genius was discovered in 1835 by Henry F. Chorley, one of the editors of theAthenaeum, in which he copied three of Hawthorne’s most characteristic papers fromThe Token. He had but little encouragement to continue in literature, for Mr Goodrich was so much more a publisher than an author that he paid him wretchedly for his contributions, and still more wretchedly for his work upon anAmerican Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, which he persuaded him to edit. This author-publisher consented, however, at a later period (1837) to bring out a collection of Hawthorne’s writings under the title ofTwice-told Tales. A moderate edition was got rid of, but the great body of the reading public ignored the book altogether. It was generously reviewed in theNorth American Reviewby his college friend Longfellow, who said it came from the hand of a man of genius, and praised it for the exceeding beauty of its style, which was as clear as running waters.

The want of pecuniary success which had so far attended his authorship led Hawthorne to accept a situation which was tendered him by George Bancroft, the historian, collector of the port of Boston under the Democratic rule of President Van Buren. He was appointed a weigher in the custom-house at a salary of about $1200 a year, and entered upon the duties of his office, which consisted for the most part in measuring coal, salt and other bulky commodities on foreign vessels. It was irksome employment, but faithfully performed for two years, when he was superseded through a change in the national administration. Master of himself once more, he returned to Salem, where he remained until the spring of 1841, when he wrote a collection of children’s stories entitledGrandfather’s Chair, and joined an industrial association at West Roxbury, Mass. Brook Farm, as it was called, was a social Utopia, composed of a number of advanced thinkers, whose object was so to distribute manual labour as to give its members time for intellectual culture. The scheme worked admirably—on paper; but it was suited neither to the temperament nor the taste of Hawthorne, and after trying it patiently for nearly a year he returned to the everyday life of mankind.

One of Hawthorne’s earliest admirers was Miss Sophia Peabody, a lady of Salem, whom he married in the summer of 1842. He made himself a new home in an old manse, at Concord, Mass., situated on historic ground, in sight of an old revolutionary battlefield, and devoted himself diligently to literature. He was known to the few by hisTwice-told Tales, and to the many by his papers in theDemocratic Review. He published in 1842 a further portion ofGrandfather’s Chair, and also a second volume ofTwice-told Tales. He also edited, during 1845, theAfrican Journalsof Horatio Bridge, an officer of the navy, who had been at college with him; and in the following year he published in two volumes a collection of his later writings, under the title ofMosses from an Old Manse.

After a residence of nearly four years at Concord, Hawthorne returned to Salem, having been appointed surveyor of the custom-house of that port by a new Democratic administration. He filled the duties of this position until the incoming of the Whig administration again led to his retirement. He seems to have written little during his official term, but, as he had leisure enough and to spare, he read much, and pondered over subjects for future stories. His next work,The Scarlet Letter, which was begun after his removal from the custom-house, was published in 1850. If there had been any doubt of his genius before, it was settled for ever by this powerful romance.

Shortly after the publication ofThe Scarlet LetterHawthorne removed from Salem to Lenox, Berkshire, Mass., where he wroteThe House of the Seven Gables(1851) andThe Wonder-Book(1851). From Lenox he removed to West Newton, near Boston, Mass., where he wroteThe Blithedale Romance(1852) andThe Snow Image and other Twice-told Tales(1852). In the spring of 1852 he removed back to Concord, where he purchased an old house which he called The Wayside, and where he wrote aLife of Franklin Pierce(1852) andTanglewood Tales(1853). Mr Pierce was the Democratic candidate for the presidency, and it was only at his urgent solicitation that Hawthorne consented to become his biographer. He declared that he would accept no office in case he were elected, lest it might compromise him; but his friends gave him such weighty reasons for reconsidering his decision that he accepted the consulate at Liverpool, which was understood to be one of the best gifts at the disposal of the president.

Hawthorne departed for Europe in the summer of 1853, and returned to the United States in the summer of 1860. Of the seven years which he passed in Europe five were spent in attending to the duties of his consulate at Liverpool, and in little journeys to Scotland, the Lakes and elsewhere, and the remaining two in France and Italy. They were quiet and uneventful, coloured by observation and reflection, as his note-books show, but productive of only one elaborate work,Transformation, or The Marble Faun, which he sketched out during his residence in Italy, and prepared for the press at Leamington, England, whence it was despatched to America and published in 1860.

Hawthorne took up his abode at The Wayside, not much richer than when he left it, and sat down at his desk once more with a heavy heart. He was surrounded by the throes of a great civil war, and the political party with which he had always acted was under a cloud. His friend ex-President Pierce was stigmatized as a traitor, and when Hawthorne dedicated his next book to him—a volume of English impressions entitledOur Old Home(1863)—it was at the risk of his own popularity. His pen was soon to be laid aside for ever; for, with the exception of the unfinished story ofSeptimius Felton, which was published after his death by his daughter Una (1872), and the fragment ofThe Dolliver Romance, the beginning of which was published in theAtlantic Monthlyin July 1864, he wrote no more. His health gradually declined, his hair grew white as snow, and the once stalwart figure that in early manhood flashed along the airy cliffs and glittering sands sauntered idly on the little hill behind his house. In the beginning of April 1864 he made a short southern tour with his publisher Mr William D. Ticknor, and was benefited by the change of scene until he reached Philadelphia, where he was shocked by the sudden death of Mr Ticknor. He returned to The Wayside, and after a short season of rest joined his friend ex-President Pierce. He died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, on the 19th of May 1864, and five days later was buried at Sleepy Hollow, a beautiful cemetery at Concord, where he used to walk under the pines when he was living at the Old Manse, and where his ashes moulder under a simple stone, inscribed with the single word “Hawthorne.”

The writings of Hawthorne are marked by subtle imagination, curious power of analysis and exquisite purity of diction. He studied exceptional developments of character, and was fond of exploring secret crypts of emotion. His shorter stories are remarkable for originality and suggestiveness, and his larger ones are as absolute creations asHamletorUndine. Lacking the accomplishment of verse, he was in the highest sense a poet. His work is pervaded by a manly personality, and by an almost feminine delicacy and gentleness. He inherited the gravity of his Puritan ancestors without their superstition, and learned in his solitary meditations a knowledge of the night-side of lifewhich would have filled them with suspicion. A profound anatomist of the heart, he was singularly free from morbidness, and in his darkest speculations concerning evil was robustly right-minded. He worshipped conscience with his intellectual as well as his moral nature; it is supreme in all he wrote. Besides these mental traits, he possessed the literary quality of style—a grace, a charm, a perfection of language which no other American writer ever possessed in the same degree, and which places him among the great masters of English prose.

HisComplete Writings(22 vols., Boston, 1901) were edited, with introduction, including a bibliography, by H. S. Scudder. The standard authority for Hawthorne’s biography isNathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife(2 vols., Boston, 1884), by his son Julian Hawthorne (b. 1846), himself a novelist and critic of distinction. See also Henry James,Hawthorne(London, 1879), in the “English Men of Letters” series; Julian Hawthorne,Hawthorne and his Circle(New York, 1903); a paper in R. H. Hutton’sEssays Theological and Literary(London, 1871); George B. Smith,Poets and Novelists(London, 1875); Moncure D. Conway,Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne(London, 1890, in the “Great Writers” series); Horatio Bridge,Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne(New York, 1893); Rose Hawthorne Lathrop,Memories of Hawthorne(Boston, 1897); W. C. Lawton,The New England Poets(New York, 1898); Sir L. Stephen,Hours in a Library(1874); Annie Fields,Nathaniel Hawthorne(Boston, 1899); G. E. Woodberry,Life of Hawthorne(1902); and bibliography by N. E. Browne (1905).

(R. H. S.)

HAWTREY, CHARLES HENRY(1858- ), English actor, was born at Eton, where his father was master of the lower school, and educated at Rugby and Oxford. He took to the stage in 1881, and in 1883 adapted von Moser’sBibliothekarasThe Private Secretary, which had an enormous success. He then appeared in London in a number of modern plays, in which he was conspicuous as a comedian. He was unapproachable for parts in which cool imperturbable lying constituted the leading characteristic. Among his later successesA Message from Marswas particularly popular in London and in America.

HAWTREY, EDWARD CRAVEN(1789-1862), English educationalist, was born at Burnham on the 7th of May 1789, the son of the vicar of the parish. He was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, and in 1814 was appointed assistant master at Eton under Dr Keate. In 1834 he became headmaster of the college, and his administration was a vigorous one. New buildings were erected, including the school library and the sanatorium, the college chapel was restored, the Old Christopher Inn was closed, and the custom of “Montem,” the collection by street begging of funds for the university expenses of the captain of the school, was suppressed. He is supposed to have suggested the prince consort’s modern language prizes, while the prize for English essay he founded himself. In 1852 he became provost of Eton, and in 1854 vicar of Mapledurham. He died on the 27th of January 1862, and was buried in the Eton College chapel. On account of his command of languages ancient and modern, he was known in London as “the English Mezzofanti,” and he was a book collector of the finest taste. Among his own books are some excellent translations from the English into Italian, German and Greek. He had a considerable reputation as a writer of English hexameters and as a judge of Homeric translation.

HAXO, FRANÇOIS NICOLAS BENOÎT, Baron (1774-1838), French general and military engineer, was born at Lunéville on the 24th of June 1774, and entered the Engineers in 1793. He remained unknown, doing duty as a regimental officer for many years, until, as major, he had his first chance of distinction in the second siege of Saragossa in 1809, after which Napoleon made him a colonel. Haxo took part in the campaign of Wagram, and then returned to the Peninsula to direct the siege operations of Suchet’s army in Catalonia and Valencia. In 1810 he was made general of brigade, in 1811 a baron, and in the same year he was employed in preparing the occupied fortresses of Germany against a possible Russian invasion. In 1812 he was chief engineer of Davout’s I. corps, and after the retreat from Moscow he was made general of division. In 1813 he constructed the works around Hamburg which made possible the famous defence of that fortress by Davout, and commanded the Guard Engineers until he fell into the enemy’s hands at Kulm. After the Restoration Louis XVIII. wished to give Haxo a command in the Royal Guards, but the general remained faithful to Napoleon, and in the Hundred Days laid out the provisional fortifications of Paris and fought at Waterloo. It was, however, after the second Restoration that the best work of his career as a military engineer was done. As inspector-general he managed, though not without meeting considerable opposition, to reconstruct in accordance with the requirements of the time, and the designs which he had evolved to meet them, the old Vauban and Cormontaigne fortresses which had failed to check the invasions of 1814 and 1815. For his services he was made a peer of France by Louis Philippe (1832). Soon after this came the French intervention in Belgium and the famous scientific siege of Antwerp citadel. Under Marshal Gérard Haxo directed the besiegers and completely outmatched the opposing engineers, the fortress being reduced to surrender after a siege of a little more than three weeks (December 23, 1832). He was after this regarded as the first engineer in Europe, and his latter years were spent in urging upon the government and the French people the fortification of Paris and Lyons, a project which was partly realized in his time and after his death fully carried out. General Haxo died at Paris on the 25th of June 1838. He wroteMémoire sur le figuré du terrain dans les cartes topographiques(Paris, N.D.), and a memoir of General Dejean (1824).

HAXTHAUSEN, AUGUST FRANZ LUDWIG MARIA,Freiherr von(1792-1866), German political economist, was born near Paderborn in Westphalia on the 3rd of February 1792. Having studied at the school of mining at Klausthal, and having served in the Hanoverian army, he entered the university of Göttingen in 1815. Finishing his course there in 1818 he was engaged in managing his estates and in studying the land laws. The result of his studies appeared in 1829 when he publishedÜber die Agrarverfassung in den Fürstentümern Paderborn und Corvey, a work which attracted much attention and which procured for its author a commission to investigate and report upon the land laws of the Prussian provinces with a view to a new code. After nine years of labour he published in 1839 an exhaustive treatise,Die ländliche Verfassung in der Provinz Preussen, and in 1843, at the request of the emperor Nicholas, he undertook a similar work for Russia, the fruits of his investigations in that country being contained in hisStudien über die innern Zustände des Volkslebens, und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Russlands(Hanover, 1847-1852). He received various honours, was a member of the combined diet in Berlin in 1847 and 1848, and afterwards of the Prussian upper house. Haxthausen died at Hanover on the 31st of December 1866.

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