with the real and the personal, and with the life of the affections. We may be sure that the meeting of two such perfected spirits, so in harmony one with another, was attended with no qualified degree of joy. If it was calm and reticent, without rush of excitement or exuberant utterance, this was because movement at its acme becomes akin to rest. Let us leave his love in that sanctity which, in his own mind, it shared with his genius.
Picturesquely considered, however,—and the picturesque never goes very deep,—it is certainly interesting to observe that Hawthorne and his wife, both of Salem families, should have been born on opposite sides of the same street, within the sound of a voice; should have gone in separate directions, remaining unaware of each other's existence; and then should finally have met, when well beyond their first youth, in an old house on the borders of the ancient burial-ground in which the ancestors of both reposed, within hail of the spot where both had first seen the light.
When they became engaged, there was opposition to the match on the part of Hawthorne's family, who regarded the seemingly confirmed invalidism of Miss Peabody as an insuperable objection; but this could not be allowed to stand in the way of a union so evidently pointed out by providential circumstance and inherent adaptability in those who were to be the parties to it. The engagement was a long one; but in the interval before her marriage Miss Peabody's health materially improved.
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