Item 1 - Letter from Charles Eliot Norton to Richard Monckton Milnes

4 ff.

Newport, Rhode Island. - Success of The Scarlet Letter etc in England; Hawthorne has enhanced unpoetic life of New England with a romance of its past; Hawthorne's reclusive habits; encloses an autograph [no longer present]; is sending Hawthorne's last volume, and a pamphlet of his own, via Chapman in the Strand. Report of poor American display at the Great Exhibition will be a timely blow to national vanity, but it does demonstrate America's lack of an underclass 'to produce luxuries for others, while they starve themselves'; hopes the same can be said in 1951 or 2051. Would like to revisit London. Has read Mrs Browning's noble new poem [Casa Guidi Windows] and Companions of My Solitude [by Arthur Helps]. Postscript: letters should always be addressed to Cambridge, Mass.