He seizes on some abnormal phase of spirit, and makes a man or woman out of it; subordinating every other affection, passion, and aim, to its despotic rule. For proof of this one need only consider such characters as the Leech, Judge Pyncheon, Clifford, Donatello, Miriam, Hilda, andˇ numerous heroes and heroines of his tales.

He seldom seeks to impress a moral, but, like a true preRaphaelite, aims only to delineate nature. This he himself virtually confesses in his preface to the The House of the Seven Gables. He says: "The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral, as with an iron rod, or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly, thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first."

The result of this unique treatment is that his favorite and chief creations, in the main, strike one as being unnaturally and repulsively sombre. Speaking of The Scarlet Letter, he himself says: "It wears to my eye a stern and sombre aspect; too much ungladdened by genial sunshine; too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences which soften almost every scene of nature and real life, and, undoubtedly, should soften every picture of them. . . . It is no indication, however, of a lack of cheerfulness in the writer's mind; for he was happier, while straying through the gloom of these sunless fantasies, than at any time since he had quitted the Old Manse."

The touches of simplicity, gayety, and humor, which here and there appear-for Hawthorne resembles Shakspeare in his wealth of episode are charming and restful, but too delicate to constitute a contrast with the abounding dark pigment of his canvas. So delicately drawn are his characters that they may hardly be said to be well-defined; and

there is a mysterious, suggestive life in them that transcends the description.

This passion for portraying the distempers of human nature has not, however, prevented Hawthorne from enriching us with some of the tenderest, purest, and cheeriest touches in the language. His mind was equally capable of revolving the mystery of sin and retribution, or of rambling with a prattling, spotless child in search of toys and sights.

"Every one, whether cultivated or uncultivated, acknowledges the charm of Hawthorne's style; but the most cultivated best appreciate the wonder of that power by which he wakens into clear consciousness shades of feeling and delicacies of thought, that perhaps have been experienced by us all, but were never embodied in words before. . . . Judging by this standard-the power of creating understanding within those whom he addresses-Hawthorne takes rank with the highest order of artists."*

"Hawthorne not only writes English, but the sweetest, simplest, and clearest English that ever has been made the vehicle of equal depth, variety, and subtilty of thought and emotion."+

* Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1868.

† Ibid., May, 1860.

STOWE.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, June 14, 1812. From her fifteenth until her twenty-first year she was associated with an older sister in the conduct of a female seminary at Hartford. She then married the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, and removed to the West, locating at Cincinnati. Early in life she began, in spirited and pithy articles and pamphlets, a war against the great national curse-Slavery; and a large proportion of her entire writings is directed in one form or another against her first enemy.

Without attempting to sketch the history of her numerous literary ventures, we shall simply enumerate the principal ones of them. They are, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854), Dred: a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), House and Home Papers (1864), The Chimney Corner (1868), Oldtown Folks (1869), Oldtown Fireside Stories (1871).

Of all Mrs. Stowe's works, Uncle Tom's Cabin is by far the most elaborate, and the most meritorious of its kind; and it has doubtless become the most popular work ever published, its circulation being estimated by millions of copies. It has been translated into all the languages of Europe and into many of those of Asia: moreover, it has been dramatized in some thirty different forms, and acted in every capital in Europe, not to speak of its favor on the American stage.

"There never was a fairer nor a kinder book than Uncle Tom's Cabin; for the entire odium of the revelation fell upon the Thing (Slavery), not upon the unhappy mortals who were born and reared under its shadow. The reader felt that Legree was not less but far more the victim of slavery than Uncle Tom, and the effect of the book was to

concentrate wrath upon the system which tortured the slave's body and damned the master's soul. Wonderful magic of genius! The hovels and cotton-fields which this authoress scarcely saw she made all the world see, and see more vividly and more truly than the busy world can ever see remote objects with its own unassisted eyes.

*

That book, we may almost say, went into every household in the civilized world, which contained one person capable of reading it. And it was not an essay; it was a vivid exhibition; it was not read from a sense of duty, nor from a desire to get knowledge; it was read with passion; it was devoured; people sat up all night reading it; those who could read read it to those who could not; and hundreds of thousands who would never have read it saw it played upon the stage. Who shall presume to say how many soldiers that book added to the Union army? Who shall estimate its influence in hastening emancipation in Brazil, and in preparing the amiable Cubans for a similar measure? Both in Cuba and Brazil the work has been read with the most passionate interest."*

Speaking of the authoress, the same writer quoted above remarks: "She is the only woman yet produced on the continent of America to whom the world assigns equal rank in literature with the great authoresses of Europe. If, in addition to the admirable talents with which she is endowed, she had chanced to possess one more, namely, the excellent gift of plodding, she had been a consummate artist, and had produced immortal works. All else she has, the seeing eye, the discriminating intelligence, the sympathetic mind, the fluent word, the sure and happy touch; and these gifts enabled her to render her country the precise service which it needed most. Others talked about slavery; she made us see it. She showed it to us in its fairest and in its foulest aspect; she revealed its average and ordinary working."

*Topics of the Time, by James Parton.

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.-CHAPTER XXV.

THE LITTLE EVANGELIST.

It was Sunday afternoon. St. Clare was stretched on a bamboo lounge in the verandah, solacing himself with a cigar. Marie lay reclining on a sofa, opposite the window opening on the verandah, closely secluded, under an awning of transparent gauze, from the outrages of mosquitos, and languidly holding in her hand an elegantly bound prayer-book. She was holding it because it was Sunday, and she imagined she had been reading it,—though, in fact, she had been only taking a succession of short naps, with it open in her hand.

Miss Ophelia, who, after some rummaging, had hunted up a small Methodist meeting within riding distance, had gone out, with Tom as driver, to attend it; and Eva had accompanied them.

"I say, Augustine," said Marie after dozing a while, “I must send to the city after my old Doctor Posey; I'm sure I've got the complaint of the heart."

"Well; why need you send for him? This doctor that attends Eva seems skillful."

"I would not trust him in a critical case," said Marie; “and I hink I may say mine is becoming so! I've been thinking of it, these two or three nights past; I have such distressing pains, and such strange feelings."

“Oh, Marie, you are blue; I don't believe it's heart complaint."

“I dare say you don't," said Marie; "I was prepared to expect that. You can be alarmed enough, if Eva coughs, or has the least thing the matter with her; but you never think of me.”

"If it's particularly agreeable to you to have heart disease, why, I'll try and maintain you have it,” said St. Clare; “I didn't know it was."

"Well, I only hope you won't be sorry for this, when it's too late!" said Marie; "but, believe it or not, my distress about Eva, and the exertions I have made with that dear child, have developed what I have long suspected."

What the exertions were which Marie referred to, it would have been difficult to state. St. Clare quietly made this commentary to himself, and went on smoking, like a hard-hearted wretch of a man as he was, till a carriage drove up before the verandah, and Eva and Miss Ophelia alighted.