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[183] that was all. But it comes back to memory like that one glimpse of Shelley which Browning describes, and which he likens to the day when he found an eagle's feather.

It is surprising to be asked whether Hawthorne was not physically very small. It seems at the moment utterly inconceivable that he could have been anything less than the sombre and commanding personage he was. Ellery Channing well describes him as a

Tall, compacted figure, ably strung,
To urge the Indian chase, or point the way.

One can imagine any amount of positive energy — that of Napoleon Bonaparte, for instance — as included within a small physical frame. But the self-contained purpose of Hawthorne, the large resources, the waiting power,--these seem to the imagination to imply an ample basis of physical life; and certainly his stately and noble port is inseparable, in my memory, from these characteristics. Again I met Hawthorne at one of the sessions of a short-lived literary club; and I recall the imperturbable dignity and patience with which he sat through a vexatious

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Nathaniel Hawthorne (3)
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