He was now forty-six. In 1851, he published "The House of the
Seven Gables," "The Wonder-Book," and "The Snow Image, and Other
Tales." In 1852 came "The Blithedale Romance," a rich ironical
story drawn from his Brook Farm experience. Four years in the
American Consulate at Liverpool and three subsequent years of
residence upon the Continent saw no literary harvest except
carefully filled notebooks and the deeply imaginative moral
romance, "The Marble Faun." Hawthorne returned home in 1860 and
settled in the Wayside at Concord, busying himself with a new,
and, as was destined, a never completed story about the elixir of
immortality. But his vitality was ebbing, and in May, 1864, he
passed away in his sleep. He rests under the pines in Sleepy
Hollow, near the Alcotts and the Emersons.
It is difficult for contemporary Americans to assess the value of
such a man, who evidently did nothing except to write a few
books. His rare, delicate genius was scarcely touched by passing
events. Not many of his countrymen really love his writings, as
they love, for instance the writings of Dickens or Thackeray or
Stevenson.
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