THE

UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY.

No. III.

JULY, 1860.

ARTICLE I.-MRS. STOWE AND HER CRITICS.

THE announcement, that a story from Mrs. Stowe's pen would appear in the Atlantic Monthly, excited a two-fold interest among her admirers. Its title was truly suggestive, and an intimation that a distinguished divine of the olden time would be its hero, intensified the curiosity every one felt, to see how the authoress of Uncle Tom would treat so recherché a subject. The first number showed that the artist's hand had not yet lost its cunning, and, as chapter after chapter developed the plot, interest deepened into admiration, until, upon its completion, we doubt not that those who had studied its teachings and cherished its seeds of thought, found them, despite the decision of hostile critics, springing up to beautify and enrich their souls with perennial harvests of golden fruit.

Illustrated newspapers swarm out on us like the flies of Egypt, offering, among their chiefest attractions, thrilling tales of extraordinary lovers, in unheard of circumstances, whose true love courses over the rockiest channels, and who, after running an apparently interminable gauntlet of malicious opposition, passing through amazing escapes of hair-breadth impossibility, contrive, at last, by the almost miraculous assistance of dame Fortune, to out-wit the evil genii, who have so long balked them, and-get married. Avoiding this thronged and dusty path, Mrs.

Stowe tells us a quiet story, in a quiet way, of a plain village parson and a few of his parishioners, showing us New England life, before its Sabbath stillness and beauty had been shattered and ruined by the rush and whirl of the Revolution. Molded by an inferior mind, these materials would have stiffened into a meager sketch. But the hand of genius has carved and grouped such characters, and enshrined in them such lofty ideals of beauty and grandeur, that we stand reverently in absorbing contemplation. While reading, we seem bound by the spell of a mighty magician, rapt from self and the present, and borne by a viewless irresistible power, to the quaint simple scenes of other days. There we live a most intense life, feeling as though every note of joy or sorrow was struck on the quivering chords of our own hearts. And when we have lived, as it were, the whole life of the book, and it becomes formed within us as one complete picture, we perceive a nobility in its conception, and an accuracy in the delineation of character, a nice taste in arranging lights and shades, and, in fine, an energy of Sampsonic strength in the expression of thought and feeling, which stamp it with the signet of royalty. Most powerfully has this impressed us, exciting a deep feeling of self-distrust, and unfitness to offer any reflection worthy of its merits. If, however, our efforts shall inspire in any mind a truer appreciation of, and a more hearty love for, this work, our object will have been gained.

When the above-mentioned announcement was made, inevitably the first inquiry was, "Will it be equal to Uncle Tom's Cabin ?" This question can best be answered by comparing the two. As no writer of true genius will descend to servile imitation, such a comparison must be based on those unmistakable characteristics, belonging to each author's mental constitution, which are more or less perceptible in all his works, forming marks of resemblance, as clearly defined as facial features. Applying the principle to the present subject, the question is,— Are those elements of power, that sweep of intellect, that brilliancy of imagination, that delicacy of feeling, and that vivid expression of each faintest gradation of coloring, which so signalize the earlier story, equally manifest in the later?

The works before us belong to distinct and opposite classes of fiction, and their conception, plan and detail, are not only dissimilar, but incompatible. Uncle Tom's Cabin is dramatic, full of swift-shifting scenes, each fanning the rising flame of excitement. Now it moves in the grandeur of high-wrought Tragedy, and now with the facetiousness of laughter-loving Comedy. Now the most solemn chords of the heart are struck, and you seem to hear them wail like great cables stretched to the storm and anon, every inner emotion is hidden under the whirl and confusion of the outer and the worldly. In it, Mrs. Stowe has caught up the great harp of human nature, and, inspired like the bards of ancient time, has swept with a bold and master hand, from the least to the largest string. In the Minister's Wooing, this dramatic element is at its minimum. The curtain never falls to rise on some distant tropical scene. The soul is thrilled, but it is not by an angel-assisted flight of a trembling mother across an angry river. We are still ever reading about Mary and the Dr., and their little coterie. Instead of that luxuriant extravagance which wealth engenders, the single-hearted purity of New England cottage life is portrayed. A resistless power moves us, but it is not the power of startling disclosure, and conflicting passions, but of character, developed in a country, and at a period, when simplicity was the prevailing element of society,-character, standing out in bold relief, individual and self-reliant, as cultivated and matured under the cold, calm severity of puritanism. The former story is touched with tints deep and rich as the ever-varying gorgeous dyes of Autumn. The latter wears single shades, like spring in her fresh modest green. That bears one away in the whirlwind of emotion, and the fiery chariot of passion. This lifts the soul, on calm and steadily mounting wing, up to those heights where angels tread. That mirrors the world, seething and foaming with selfish ambition, and rioting. This draws the vail of a quiet Christian home, whose inmates "have respect unto the recompense of the reward." There, the common emotions and feelings of every day life are delineated. Here, those deeps of the soul, which none but the mightiest storms ever agitate, are fathomed. There we see the poor and lowly, the ignorant and

degraded, walking with God on earth in spotless white. Here is portrayed one of those master intellects, who with giant strides explored the unknown fields of thought, bringing thence new and vital truths, and who, sublimated by that same sanctifying piety, rose, at last, to "that celestial grade which blazes dazzling and crystalline, where the soul knows self no more; having learned, through a long experience of devotion, how blest it is to lose herself in that eternal Love and Beauty, of which all earthly fairness and grandeur are but the dim type, the distant shadow." Yet amid these varying characteristics, the elemental features are the same. In the latter, as distinctly at least as in the former, are the characters made to live before us, so that we know them more thoroughly than many an acquaintance of years. Aunt Chloe's kitchen is not more vividly pictured than Mrs. Scudder's. The etherial beauty of Eva is reproduced with a higher and stronger cast in Mary. That power which described the flight of Eliza, finds a new revelation in the anguish of Mrs. Marvyn. And in fine, both productions manifest the same flexibility of style, delicacy of finish, and universality of genius. Nay, more. The judgment has already been pronounced,-with which, it is believed, the growing conviction of the future will coincide, that the later work surpasses its rival. There is in it an exaltation of conception, and a tremendous might, and forceful spring of thought, which find no parallel in the other. Uncle Tom's Cabin reminds one of those gorgeous frescoes in the European cathedrals, before which the gazer sits in rapturous admiration, and the recollection of which, as of beautiful dreams, entrances the soul forever. But there are characters in The Minister's Wooing comparable only to those lofty statues at Thebes, whose calm, changeless faces have smiled on the shifting sands of cycles of centuries. For in that, which, raising human nature to the pinnacle of attainment, renders it truly sublime, this stands regal among works of fiction.

In noticing some details of this book, we remark first upon its title; for the voice of criticism, from many a fair one's lip, has pronounced it a misnomer. "I don't see as the Dr. wooed at all. Mrs. Scudder and James did what little was done,"