publication at once brought Hawthorne noticeably forward. The book was published in 1850, after he had left the custom-house in Salem; and he took his family at this time to Lenox, in the western part of Massachusetts, where he lived for a little more than a year. He wrote there another of his great novels, The House of the Seven Gables, and also his Wonder-Book, in which he retold for children some of the old classic legends. Afterwards he wrote the Tanglewood Tales, a book of similar stories.
Hawthorne was now a well-known American author, not so much because he had written books which everybody had read, as because the best judges of good books in America and England were eager to read everything he might write, for they saw that a new and great author had arisen. In 1853 his old college friend Franklin Pierce was President, and he appointed Hawthorne consul of the United States in Liverpool, England. Thither he went with his family, and remained in Europe until 1860, although he left the consulate in 1857. The seven years which he spent abroad were happy ones, and his Note-Books, passages from which have been published, give charming accounts of what he saw and did. Two books grew out of his life in Europe: Our Old Home, which tells of sights and people in England; and The Marble Faun, which is a novel, with its scene laid in Italy.
Hawthorne wrote other books, which are not named
here, and he began one or two which he never finished. Most of his writings are better read by older people than by children, for though he wrote some books expressly for the young, he was most deeply moved by thoughts about life which the young cannot under-