UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.⁠[1]

Let us imagine one of our critical successors of a century hence—that is, in the month of October 1953—sitting musingly before a copy of a work called Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which a few days previously he had taken down by chance from one of the least-used shelves of his library. May one also amuse one’s imagination by a picture of the possible state of things then existing on the other side of the Atlantic, by the light of which our shadowy friend of 1953 has read the work which his substantial one of 1853 has just laid down?

—The present United States of America, after having been, perhaps, more than once split asunder and soldered together again—or the whole, or a large portion voluntarily reannexed to the mother country, and by and by again detached—after these and other, possibly more or less sudden, violent, and bloody vicissitudes—have become a great Empire, under the stern, but salutary, one-willed sway of the Emperor of America: his majesty a jet black, who had shown consummate and unexpected high qualities for acquiring and retaining the fear and submission of millions of the stormiest tempers of mankind; but his lovely empress a white. He has an immense army devoted to his person and will, composed of men of every complexion—from black, through copper-middle tints, down to white; and correspondingly diversified are his banners, but black, of course, the predominant: a quadroon being commander-in-chief. As for his majesty’s civil service, he has a coal-black chancellor, equally at home in the profoundest mysteries of white and black letter; a mulatto minister of instruction, and a white secretary of state; black and white clergy, and a similarly constituted bar—here a big black face frowning out of a white wig, and there a little white face, grinning out of a black wig, with black and white bands, and gowns varied ad libitum. And the laws which they are concerned in administering, accord with these harmonious diversities—it being, for instance, enacted, under heavy penalties, that no black shall, by gesture, speech, or otherwise, presume to ridicule a white because of his colour, nor, vice versâ, shall a white affect to disparage a black because of his complexion; that the emperor and empress shall always be of different colours, and that the succession to the throne shall alternate between black and white, or mulatto, members of the imperial family. By this and other provisions have been secured a complete fusion between North and South, between black and white, glitteringly typified by intermingled gems in the imperial crown; the central one being the identical black diamond that figured in the famous Exhibition in Great Britain in 1851, and presented to the emperor by one of the descendants of her Majesty Queen Victoria, then on the British throne! “To this complexion” shall it be that matters have “come at last?”

Or will our sturdy cousins of 1953 be still republican, a united republic, but with offices, honours, rights, and privileges, equally distributed, as in our fancied empire, among those of every shade of colour? Or, after a fearful succession of struggles between black and white, ... the ... is predominant; ... slavery, after a ... sang— ... or a noble spontaneous....⁠[2]

From a preliminary dissertation prefixed to the book, our critic of 1953 learns that it excited, almost immediately on its appearance, a prodigious sensation among all classes, both in Europe and America; that both sexes, high and low, young and old, literate and illiterate, vulgar and refined, phlegmatic and excitable, shed tears over it, and wrote and talked about it everywhere; that, within a few months’ time, impressions of it were multiplied by millions, and in most languages of the civilised world. That its writer, an American woman, immediately came over to England, and made her appearance in public assemblies, called in honour of her; and she was also “lionised” [a word explained, in a long note, as indicating a custom prevalent in that day, among weak persons, of running after any notorious person weak enough to appear pleased with it] among the fashionables and philanthropists of the day, but preserved, nevertheless, amidst it all, true modesty of demeanour, and silence amidst extravagant eulogy. Inflamed with curiosity, our shadowy successor sits down to peruse a work—then possibly little, if ever, mentioned—anxious to see what could have produced such a marvellous effect, in the middle of the intelligent nineteenth century, on all classes of readers; and whether it produced permanent results, or passed away as a nine days’ wonder. Having at length closed the pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and judged it according to the critical canons of 1953, will he deem it adequate to have produced such effects? What estimate will he form of our intellectual calibre?

We cannot tell, and shall not attempt to conjecture. Dismissing, therefore, but for a while only, the imaginary occupant of our critical chair a century hence, let us say for ourselves, that though our silence, and that of one or two quarterly contemporaries, may have excited notice, both in America and this country, we have been by no means indifferent spectators of the reception which this singularly-successful book has met with; regarding it as one of those sudden phenomena in literature, demanding, even, a deliberate consideration of cause and effect. We apprehend no one will doubt that, to excite such attention and emotion among all classes of readers, in both hemispheres, as this work has excited, it must possess something remarkable; and what that is, it will be our endeavour to determine. We ourselves never read this work till within the last month, and then as a matter of mere critical curiosity, uninfluenced by the past excitement of others, and the favourable and unfavourable opinions which we heard expressed as to the merits of the work. If we could have been biassed at all, it would have been rather against, than in favour of, a writer who had been over persuaded by her friends to come to this country, for the purpose of making a sort of public appearance, at the moment that admiration of her work was at fever height. Nothing could palliate such an indiscretion on the part of this lady’s advisers, in the eyes of a fastidious Englishman, but the belief that she was a simple-minded enthusiastic crusader against American slavery, considering that the totally unexpected celebrity of her work had afforded her an opportunity of accelerating a European movement, in a holy cause, by her personal presence. Criticism, however, ought not to be influenced by petty disturbing forces like these, nor will ours. We shall judge Uncle Tom’s Cabin by its own intrinsic merits or demerits—occasionally looking for the light which she has thought proper to reflect upon it from its companion volume, “The Key.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a remarkable book unquestionably; and, upon the whole, we are not surprised at its prodigious success, even as a mere literary performance; but whether, after all, it will have any direct effect upon the dreadful INSTITUTION at which it is aimed, may be regarded as problematical. Of one thing we are persuaded—that its author, as she has displayed in this work undoubted genius, in some respects of a higher order than any American predecessor or contemporary, is also a woman of unaffected and profound piety, and an ardent friend of the unhappy black. Every word in her pages issues glistening and warm from the mint of woman’s love and sympathy, refined and purified by Christianity. We never saw in any other work, so many and such sudden irresistible appeals to the reader’s heart—appeals which, moreover, only a wife and a mother could make. One’s heart throbs, and one’s eyes are suffused with tears without a moment’s notice, and without anything like effort or preparation on the writer’s part. We are, on the contrary, soothed in our spontaneous emotion by a conviction of the writer’s utter artlessness; and when once a gifted woman has satisfied her most captious reader that such is the case, she thenceforth leads him on, with an air of loving and tender triumph, a willing captive to the last. There are, indeed, scenes and touches in this book which no living writer, that we know of, can surpass, and perhaps none even equal.

No English man or woman, again, could have written it—no one, but an actual spectator of the scenes described, or one whose life is spent with those moving among them; scenes scarce appreciable by FREE English readers—fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters. We can hardly realise to ourselves human nature tried so tremendously as, it seems, is only adumbrated in these pages. An Englishman’s soul swells at the bare idea of such submission to the tyrannous will of man over his fellow-man, as the reader of this volume becomes grievously familiar with; and yet we are assured by Mrs Stowe that she has given us only occasional glimpses of the indescribable horrors of slavery. To this part of the subject, however, we shall return. Let us speak first, and in only general terms, of the literary characteristics of the author, as displayed in her work.

Mrs Stowe is unquestionably a woman of GENIUS; and that is a word which we always use charily: regarding genius as a thing per se—different from talent, in its highest development, altogether, and in kind. Quickness, shrewdness, energy, intensity, may, and frequently do accompany, but do not constitute genius. Its divine spark is the direct and special gift of God: we cannot completely analyse it, though we may detect its presence, and the nature of many of its attributes, by its action; and the skill of high criticism is requisite, in order to distinguish between the feats of genius and the operations of talent. Now, we imagine that no person of genius can read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and not feel in glowing contact with genius—generally gentle and tender, but capable of rising, with its theme, into very high regions of dramatic power. This Mrs Stowe has done several times in the work before us—exhibiting a passion, an intensity, a subtle delicacy of perception, a melting tenderness, which are as far out of the reach of mere talent, however well trained and experienced, as the prismatic colours are out of the reach of the born blind. But the genius of Mrs Stowe is of that kind which instinctively addresses itself to the Affections; and though most at home with the gentler, it can be yet fearlessly familiar with the fiercest passions which can agitate and rend the human breast. With the one she can exhibit an exquisite tenderness and sympathy; watching the other, however, with stern but calm scrutiny, and delineating both with a truth and simplicity, in the one case touching, in the other really terrible.

“Free men of the North, and Christians,” says she, in her own vigorous and earnest way, “cannot know what slavery is.... From this arose a desire,” on the author’s part, “to exhibit it in a living dramatic reality. She has endeavoured to show it fairly in its best and its worst phases. In its best aspect, she has perhaps been successful; but oh! who shall say what yet remains untold in that valley and shadow of death that lies on the other side?... The writer has only given a faint shadow—a dim picture—of the anguish and despair that are at this very moment riving thousands of hearts, shattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive race to frenzy and despair.”

Without going further, the beautiful, accomplished, but ruined and heart-broken slave Cassy—the bought, abhorring, and ultimately discarded mistress of the miscreant Legree, and whose heart is full of despair and murder towards him—affords many instances of both kinds, the tender and the terrible. Her successor in the affections! of the monster, is the lovely young slave Emmeline, of but fifteen summers! and Cassy obtains a great ascendancy over her, winning her love by the story of her own indignities and bereavements.

‘“What use will freedom be to me?” says Cassy, when they are whispering together in their place of concealment, where they lie like a couple of hunted hares, momentarily hidden from the hounds—“Can it give me back my children, or make me what I used to be?”

There was a terrible earnestness in her face and voice as she spoke. Emmeline, in her childlike simplicity, was half afraid of the dark words of Cassy. She looked perplexed, but made no answer. She only took her hand with a gentle caressing movement.

“Don’t!” said Cassy, trying to draw it away,—(observe, she only tries!)—“you’ll get me to loving you! and I swore never to love anything again!”

“Poor Cassy!... I’ll be like a daughter to you!... I shall love you whether you love me or not!”

The gentle childlike spirit conquered. Cassy sate down by her, put her arm round her neck, stroked her soft brown hair; and Emmeline then wondered at the beauty of her magnificent eyes, now soft with tears. “O Emmeline!” said Cassy, “I’ve hungered for my children, and thirsted for them, and my eyes fail with longing for them! Here! here,” she exclaimed, striking her breast, “it’s all desolate! all empty!”’

Of the terrible we have a thrilling, indeed a sickening instance, in Cassy’s frenzied determination to murder the fiend Legree, whose brandy she has drugged for the purpose—but we anticipate.

Occasionally, also, Mrs Stowe displays a fine perception of external nature—irradiating her inanimate scenes with the rich hues of imagination. At these, however, she generally looks through a sort of solemn religious medium. Here, for instance, is a startlingly suggestive picture. It is poor Uncle Tom, sitting at midnight, exhausted and heart-broken, during a moment’s respite from the wasting and cruel inflictions of slavery, and reading his Bible by moonlight.

‘... Tom sate alone by the smouldering fire, that flickered up redly in his face.

The silver fair-browed moon rose in the purple sky, and looked down, calm and silent, as God looks on the scene of misery and oppression—looked calmly on the lone black man, as he sate, with his arms folded, and his Bible on his knee. “Is God here?” inquires he. ‘Ah,’ (proceeds the author,) ‘how is it possible for the untaught heart to keep its faith unswerving, in the face of dire misrule, and palpable unrebuked injustice? In that simple heart waged a fierce conflict: the crushing sense of wrong, the foreshadowing of a whole life of future misery, the wreck of all past hopes, mournfully tossing in the soul’s sight, like dead corpses of wife, and child, and friend, rising from the dark wave, and surging in the face of the half-drowned mariner? Ah, was it easy here to believe and hold fast the great password of Christian faith, that God IS, and is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him?’

Here, again, is the lovely smile of early morning flung over the monster Legree (poor Tom’s brutal master), as he wakes from a foul debauch:—

‘Calmly the rosy hue of dawn was stealing into the room. The morning star stood, with its solemn holy eye of light, looking down on the man of sin, from out the brightening sky. Oh, with what freshness, with what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born! as if to say to insensate man, “Behold! thou hast one more chance! Strive for immortal glory!” There is no speech nor language where this voice is not heard; but this bold bad man heard it not. He awoke with an oath and a curse. What to him were the gold and the purple, the daily miracle of morning? What to him the sanctity of that star which the Son of God has hallowed as his own emblem? Brute-like, he saw without perceiving; and, stumbling forward, poured out a tumbler of brandy, and drank half of it. “I’ve had a h—ll of a night!” he said.’

’Twas somewhat different, that same morning, with his poor slave Tom, waking bruised, wearied, and well-nigh spirit-broken.

‘The solemn light of dawn, the angelic glory of the morning star, had looked in through the rude window of the shed where Tom was lying; and, as if descending on that star-beam, came the solemn words, I am the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.... Without shuddering or trembling, he heard the voice of his persecutor as he drew near. “Well, my boy,” said Legree, with a contemptuous kick, “how do you find yourself? Didn’t I tell yer I could larn yer a thing or two? How do yer like it, eh? How did yer whaling”—he had been fearfully flogged over-night—“agree with yer, Tom? An’t quite so crank as yer was last night? Ye couldn’t treat a poor sinner now to a bit of a sermon, could yer, eh?”

Tom answered nothing.

“Get up, ye beast!” said Legree, kicking him again. This was a difficult matter for one so bruised and faint; and, as Tom made efforts to do so, Legree laughed.’

These passages, taken at random, are highly characteristic of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in more ways than one, as will by and by be shown.

Up and down the book are to be found strewn, as it were, carelessly, striking and grand reflections, evincing the deeply thoughtful moralist, and profoundly convinced believer.

‘True—there was another life—a life which, once believed in, stands as a solemn significant figure before the otherwise unmeaning ciphers of time, changing them to orders of mysterious unknown value.’

We have not met with this idea before; and it is very striking. Again⁠—

‘The gift to appreciate, and the sense to feel the finer shades and relations of moral things, often seems an attribute of those whose whole life shows a careless disregard of them. Hence Moore, Byron, Goethe, often speak words more wisely descriptive of the true religious sentiment, than another man whose whole life is governed by it. In such minds, disregard of religion is a more fearful treason—a more deadly sin.’

Again⁠—

‘Oh! how dares the bad soul to enter the shadowy world of sleep!—that land whose dim outlines lie so fearfully near to the mystic scene of retribution!...

Legree felt a secret dislike to Tom—the native antipathy of good to bad. He saw plainly that when (as was often the case) his violence and brutality fell on the helpless, Tom took notice of it; for so subtle is the atmosphere of opinion, that it will make itself FELT without words; and the opinion, even of a slave, may annoy a master....

What a sublime conception is that of a last judgment!... A righting of all the wrongs of ages!—a solving of all moral problems, by an unanswerable wisdom.’

One of these problems—perhaps the greatest at present insoluble by man—torments poor Tom.

‘It was strange that the religious peace and trust which had upborne him hitherto should give way to tossings of soul and despondent darkness. The gloomiest problem of this mysterious life was constantly before his eyes: souls crushed and ruined, evil triumphant, and God silent! It was weeks and months that Tom wrestled, in his own soul, in darkness and sorrow.’

Which of us cannot here sympathise with the poor, bruised, and bleeding black?

Yet once more.

‘Is not this truly feeling after God, and finding him? And may we not hope that the yearning, troubled, helpless heart of man, pressed by the insufferable anguish of this short life, or wearied by its utter vanity, never extends its ignorant pleading to God in vain? Is not the veil which divides us from an almighty and most merciful Father, much thinner than we, in the pride of our philosophy, are apt to imagine? And is it not the most worthy conception of Him, to suppose that the more utterly helpless and ignorant the human being is that seeks His aid, the more tender and condescending will be His communication with that soul?’

Character is often drawn by our author with delicate discrimination; and, at the same time, she almost as often exhibits a poverty and crudeness in dealing with such subjects, which would be surprising, but that it is evidently referrible to haste and inattention. Her mind, too, is so intent upon the great, noble, and holy purpose of her book, that she often does not give herself time to develop or mature her own happiest conceptions. The momentary exigencies of her story require the introduction of an additional figure; on which, having paused for a moment to call up the image of one before her mind’s eye, she forthwith gives a few strokes, possibly intending, at a future time, to complete and retouch them; but that future time never comes, for she has got into new scenes, and moves on, crowded with new characters and associations. In this respect her book may be compared to the studio of a great painter, where the visitor sees some pictures in all the splendour of their completeness, and others in various stages of incompleteness—some exhibiting the master’s hand, and others that of a hasty and unskilled workman; all which may, perhaps, be visibly accounted for by the painter’s being absorbed by some masterpiece, itself, however, only approaching completeness. We feel bound, nevertheless, to express our opinion that an additional solution of the matter is to be found in her probably limited range of observation of actual life, at all events of such life as Europeans can appreciate. In delineating the character of slaves and the “slave-trader, kidnapper, negro-catcher, negro-whipper,” as she herself groups them, she handles her pencil with the confident ease of a master. “The writer,” says she herself, at the close of her work, “has lived for many years on the frontier line of slave states, and has had great opportunities of observation among those who formerly were slaves.” To her sadly-familiar eye “there are some things about these slaves which cannot lie: those deep lines of patient sorrow upon the face—that attitude of crouching and humble subjection—that sad habitual expression of hope deferred in the eye—would tell their story, if the slave never spoke.” We shall, however, presently have ample opportunities of showing Mrs Stowe’s profound appreciation of the negro character; one of a far more composite construction than any but a philosopher might suppose, and also of great interest to those who are contemplating the future of the negro race, as a large, though many may unhappily deem it an unsightly element, in ascertaining the fates of the human family. “This is an age of the world, truly,” says our author, “when nations are trembling and convulsed. A mighty influence is abroad, surging and heaving the world as with an earthquake. And,” she asks, “is America safe? Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed Injustice, has in it the elements of this great convulsion.”

While the pathos of Mrs Stowe is deep and pure, her humour and satire are genuine and racy, but quiet. Gloomy as is the prevalent tone of her work, her reader’s feelings are discreetly relieved by many little touches of quaint dry drollery. Master Shelby, for instance, is a sharp youth of thirteen, the eldest son of Uncle Tom’s first and kind-hearted master; and he has taken it in hand to teach Tom (old enough to be almost his grandfather) his letters. Chloe is Uncle Tom’s wife, and the cook of Mr Shelby; and it seems that she is a capital cook, to boot, as Master Shelby has found out. He often visits Uncle Tom’s cabin, to teach old Tom his letters—and also partake of certain good things which Aunt Chloe used to prepare for her favourite; who displays no little art in inflaming her ambition by faintly undervaluing the culinary skill of one of her rivals, a cook at a neighbouring plantation. The whole scene is admirably sketched, and forms one of the earliest in the work. Excited to the utmost, she prepares a delicious supper for Master George, who, it will be seen, does it full justice.

‘By this time Master George had arrived at that pass to which even a boy can come (under uncommon circumstances)—i. e., when he could not eat another morsel; and, therefore, he was at leisure to notice the pile of woolly heads and glistening eyes which were regarding their operations hungrily from the opposite corner. [Who does not see the turgid youngster?—But one does not dislike him; for] “Here!—you, Mose! Peto!” [said he, addressing the young sables—the children of Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe]—breaking off liberal bits, and throwing them at them—“You want some, don’t you?”’

One Black Sam, a friendly fellow-slave of Uncle Tom’s, is unconsciously caught in the attitude of deeply considering the interests of number One, as soon as he hears of the departure of poor Uncle Tom, who has been suddenly sold to another master, leaving a vacancy in his somewhat confidential office, which some one must supply. “One touch of” selfishness “makes the whole world kin”—and here is how it strikes our black brother.

‘Never did fall of any prime minister at court occasion wider surges of sensation than the report of Tom’s fate among his compeers on the place. It was the topic in every mouth, everywhere; and nothing was done in the house or in the field, but to discuss its probable results.

Black Sam, as he was called, from his being about three shades blacker than any other son of ebony on the place, was revolving the matter profoundly in all its phases and bearings, with a comprehensiveness of vision, and a strict look-out to his own personal well-being, that would have done credit (says good, sly Mrs Stowe) to any white patriot at Washington.

“It’s an ill wind dat blows nowhar—dat ar a fact,” said Sam, sententiously, giving an additional hoist to his pantaloons, and adroitly substituting a long nail in place of a missing suspender-button. “Yes, it’s an ill wind blows nowhar,” he repeated. “Now, dar, Tom’s down—wal, ’course der’s room for some nigger to be up; and why not dis nigger?—dat’s de idee! Tom, a-ridin’ round de country—boots blacked—pass in his pocket—all grand as Cuffee; who but he? Now, why shouldn’t Sam?—dat’s what I want to know!”’

There are, however, many indications throughout the work of the writer’s humorous powers being checked and restrained, either purposely or unconsciously, as if from a severe sense of the purpose with which she writes—as though before her mind’s eye was ever the bleeding heart of the negro. We have an indistinct recollection of more than one disposition, or rather juxta-position, of persons and incidents most suggestive of fun: but they are suddenly discarded, the reader breathlessly following the grave and ardent writer, over whose pale countenance the smile had but furtively flickered for an instant, like a glance of moonlight on a gloomy sea. Here is one of the passages to which we allude. Mr St Clare and his heartless lackadaisical wife are conversing about his newly-acquired slave, Uncle Tom, for whom he feels no little regard; but she is speaking of him in a disparaging, contemptuous tone.

‘“Tom isn’t a bad hand, now, at explaining Scripture, I’ll dare swear,” said St Clare. “He has a natural genius for religion. I wanted the horses out early this morning, and stole up to Tom’s cubiculum⁠[3] there, over the stables, and there I heard him holding a meeting by himself; and, in fact, I haven’t heard anything quite so savoury as Tom’s prayer this some time. He put in for me with a zeal that was quite apostolic.”

“Perhaps he guessed you were listening! I’ve heard of that trick before!”

“If he did he wasn’t very polite; for he gave the Lord his opinion of me pretty freely! Tom seemed to think there was decidedly room for improvement in me, and seemed very earnest that I should be converted.”

“I hope you’ll lay it to heart,” said Miss Ophelia, (who is the pious, simple-minded, conscientious, elderly spinster, and cousin of Mr St Clare.)’

How much of the pious disinterested character of the poor slave, the heartless distrust of his mistress, the humorous, good-natured levity of his master, and the earnest goodness of Ophelia, does this quiet touch reveal to us!

On another occasion, Mrs St Clare, who has no more intellect or feeling than her thimble, or thread paper, is conversing with her lovely little daughter, Eva, who is pleading with her mamma on behalf of the poor little negress, Topsy (of whom more anon), and meekly suggesting the possibility of Topsy’s being human! and consequently capable of improvement.

‘“Mamma, I think Topsy is different from what she used to be; she’s trying to be a good girl.”

“She’ll have to try a good while before she gets to be good,” said Mrs St Clare, with a careless laugh.

“Well, you know, mamma, poor Topsy! everything has always been against her!”

“Not since she’s been here, I’m sure. If she hasn’t been talked to”—(not by the silly speaker, let our readers understand, but by good Miss Ophelia aforesaid, for whom poor Topsy has been bought! good-humouredly by Mr St Clare, simply to try whether moral and religious training can make anything of the little sooty gnome)⁠[4]—“and preached to, and every earthly thing done that anybody could do; and she’s just so ugly, and always will be, you can’t make anything of the creature!”

“But, mamma, it’s so different to be brought up as I’ve been, with so many friends—so many things to make me good and happy; and to be brought up as she has been, all the time, till she came here!”

“Most likely,” said Mrs St Clare, yawning. “Dear me! how hot it is!”

“Mamma, you believe, don’t you, that Topsy could become an angel, as well as any of us, if she were a Christian?”

“Topsy! what a ridiculous idea! Nobody but you would ever think of it! I suppose she could, though!”

“But, mamma, isn’t God her father, as much as ours? Isn’t Jesus her Saviour?”

“Well, that may be. I suppose God made everybody.—Where’s my smelling-bottle?”’

This is very masterly. It has a sort of rich stillness of satire, and, at the same time, a truthfulness and suggestiveness which make the reader first admire the writer’s acute perception of character and power of felicitous dialogue, and then pause and ponder the state of mind and feeling revealed—that of frivolous, ignorant, indifferent acquiescence!

The above extract incidentally indicates another excellence of Mrs Stowe. Her dialogue is almost always admirable; brief, lively, pointed, and characteristic—that is, when she does not, so to speak, crowd too much sail upon it, in her intense anxiety to be didactic and hortatory on the great subject on which her eyes are ever fixed. When she yields to the promptings of her own power over character and expression, she exhibits high dramatic capabilities. She perceives a fine situation with the unerring intuition of genius, and inspires her characters with fitting sentiments, conferring upon them appropriate eloquence. Akin to this is the easy strength of her narrative. She hurries her reader along with her, breathless. The flight and pursuit of poor Eliza and her child—the incidents selected to heighten the interest in their fate—the introduction of Marks and Tom Loker, and their interview with Haley—their encounter at the rocky pass with George and his wife and child, are, in parts, worthy of the pencil of Sir Walter Scott: but, it must be added, that that consummate master of his art would never have drawn up suddenly in his exciting course, to interpolate drivelling allusions to Austria and the Hungarians, Poland, Ireland, and England—or tame and even irritating moralisings at the very crisis of the adventure, as is but too often the case with Mrs Stowe. But this very fault, and a serious one to a reader of fiction it is, must be referred to a cause infinitely and eternally honourable to the author—her pure and noble purpose in writing the book. With our eye fixed on that purpose, we will forgive her five times as many faults of style and arrangement as she is fairly chargeable with.

“In every work regard the writer’s end.”

And in the application of this obviously just critical canon, we are disposed to look, in the present case, with peculiar benignity on miscarriages as to means. One or two of them, however, we must lightly indicate (for we are in our critical chair) in addition to those at which we have already glanced.

We shall begin with a small matter. It is evident that the writings of one English author at least of the present day have made a deep impression on Mrs Stowe. This is Mr Dickens, with whom, indeed, she has much in common; but he must not attribute it to mere gallantry, if we express our opinion that there are parts of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which he never can surpass, which he never has surpassed. She probes human nature every whit as tenderly and truly as he; her sympathies are as keen and subtle, her spirit is as generous, as his; her perception of the humorous as quick and vivid as his own. She shows also his—so to speak—structural faults; which, in a general way, we may indicate by saying, that condensation and directness of course would greatly improve the compositions of both. A lively reader hates to be detained on his way, in order to have traced out for him the source and operation of the motives by which characters are actuated. He likes to be given credit for a capacity to do that for himself. It occurs to us, that had Mr Dickens passed his life among the same scenes as Mrs Stowe, making allowance for certain special circumstances affecting the latter, he would have produced a work very similar, in both its faults and excellencies, to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That she is a reader, and doubtless an admirer of his, is abundantly evident; for she has closely copied his manner, and that not in its most favourable manifestations, but rather the more obvious mannerisms. Mr Dickens might have written this passage for her.

‘Carriage sticks fast, while Cudjoe on the outside is heard making a great muster among the horses. After various ineffectual pullings and twitchings, just as Senator is losing all patience, the carriage suddenly rights itself with a bounce, two front wheels go down into another abyss, and Senator, woman, and child, all tumble promiscuously on to the front seat; Senator’s hat is jammed over his eyes and nose quite unceremoniously, and he considers himself fairly extinguished; child cries, and Cudjoe on the outside delivers animated addresses to the horses, who are kicking, and floundering, and straining under repeated cracks of the whip. Carriage springs up with another bounce—down go the hind wheels—Senator, woman, and child, fly over on to the back seat, his elbows encountering her bonnet, and both her feet being jammed into his hat, which flies off in the concussion. After a few moments the “slough” is passed, and the horses stop, panting; the Senator finds his hat, the woman straightens her bonnet, and hushes her child, and they brace themselves firmly for what is yet to come.’

Here again⁠—

‘If any want to get up an inspiration, under this head, “the beauty of old women,” we refer them to our good friend Rachel Halliday, just as she sits there in her little rocking chair. It had a turn for quaking and squeaking—that chair had—either from having taken cold in early life, or from some asthmatic affection, or perhaps from nervous derangement. But as she gently swung backward and forward, the chair kept up a kind of “creechy-crawchy” that would have been intolerable in any other chair. But old Simon Halliday often declared it was as good as any music to him, and the children all avowed that they wouldn’t miss of hearing mother’s chair for anything in the world.’

Another little mannerism acquired from the same quarter is the use, in grave composition, of the colloquial, “can’t,” “won’t,” “didn’t,” “couldn’t,” &c. &c. These are little bits of vulgar slip-slop which are sad eyesores to readers of taste; and we cannot for the life of us see what end is gained by introducing them into black and white, except, perhaps, in fitting dialogue.

We have already intimated a considerable want of tact in Mrs Stowe, in twitching aside, as it were, her reader, when in full course of following her breathless, to listen to some very self-obvious and commonplace moralising. Here is one most provoking instance. Poor beautiful Eliza Harris, supported by almost supernatural energy, is flying from misery and infamy—her little son close-clasped in her arms—with but a little time to improve her precarious chances of escape to Canada; knowing that her little one is sold, and that the blood-hounds may almost then, even, be snuffing on her track! ’Tis early—very early—in a frosty February morning; the sparkling stars are looking down, as it were, out of the cold silent heavens with pitying looks on the poor fugitive. She hastily hushes her child into silence, as “with vague terror he clings round her neck.” He could have walked;—but let good Mrs Stowe’s own fleet pencil tell of her heroine’s feathery movements:⁠—

‘Her boy was old enough to have walked by her side, and in an indifferent case she would only have led him by the hand; but now the bare thought of putting him out of her arms made her shudder; and she strained him to her bosom with a convulsive grasp as she went rapidly forward. The frosty ground creaked beneath her feet, and she trembled at the sound; every quaking leaf and fluttering shadow sent the blood backward to her heart, and quickened her footsteps. She wondered within herself at the strength that seemed to be come upon her—for she felt the weight of her boy as if it had been a feather, and every flutter of fear seemed to increase the supernatural power that bore her on; while from her pale lips burst forth, in frequent ejaculations, the prayer to a Friend above—“Lord, help! Lord, save me!”’

While the reader—perhaps herself a palpitating mother, almost blinded with her tears—is flying along with the dear fugitive and her child, bah! she is arrested, to listen to twaddle—we must say it—as follows:⁠—

‘If it were your Harry, mother, or your Willy, that were going to be torn from you by a brutal trader to-morrow morning—if you had seen the man, and heard that the papers were signed and delivered, and you had only from twelve o’clock till morning to make good your escape—how fast could you walk? How many miles could you make in those few brief hours, with the darling at your bosom—the little sleepy head on your shoulder—the small soft arms trustingly holding on to your neck?’

Forgive us, dear Mrs Stowe, if we gently reproach you for thus marring your own beautiful narrative, and also giving English mothers credit for being so obtuse and phlegmatic as to be unable to realise all these thoughts and feelings as they are hasting along with you!

And there are very many such instances of defective workmanship. A considerable portion of these consists of preaching—always, doubtless, perfectly orthodox and evangelical, but smacking too strongly—will she forgive us?—of the conventicle twang. After all, however, Mrs Stowe must be tried by the canon already cited—“regard the writer’s end;” and doubtless she knows that portion of the American public for which she chiefly writes, and what kind and amount of hard-hitting, so to speak, is necessary to make an impression on sensibilities enclosed in rhinoceros hide. We do not say that it is so; but we suppose that Mrs Stowe has classes of hard people in view, and knew the rough force requisite to hit home.

All these, however, and other similar little matters which might be mentioned, are mere motes in sunbeams, when regarded by the eye of a just and generous criticism; which only regrets, every now and then, that the gifted authoress had not had the advantage of submitting her MS., or her printed sheets, to the eye of some competent censor, capable of seizing the scope of her noble purpose, and solicitous to remove every obstacle in the way of her attaining it. But she evidently did not write for us in England—in Europe; nor did this pious daughter of genius dream of the world-wide fame which she was destined to acquire. She has assured us, in print, that, “when writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” she was “entirely unaware and unexpectant of the importance which would be attached to its statements and opinions.” We implicitly believe her; and our heart gives her its entire confidence, as to a simple-minded and gifted Christian woman, writing out of the fulness of her heart, in order to open before the eyes of free shuddering Christendom a hideous and blood-smeared page of living humanity. She has repeatedly and solemnly asseverated that she has taken the greatest possible pains not to mis-state or exaggerate the case against slavery; that she speaks from long personal observation; and, in short, “that this work, more than any other work of fiction that ever was written, has been a collection and arrangement of real incidents, of actions really performed, of words and expressions really uttered, grouped together with reference to a general result, in the same manner that the mosaic artist groups his fragments of various stones into one general picture. His is a mosaic of gems—this is a mosaic of facts.... The book had a purpose entirely transcending artistic purpose, and accordingly encounters, at the hands of the public, demands not usually made on fictitious works. It is treated as a reality—sifted, tried, and tested as a reality; and, therefore, as a reality it may be proper that it should be defended.... It is a very inadequate representation of slavery, and necessarily so, for this reason—that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purpose of art. A work which should represent it strictly as it is, would be a work which could not be read.” “The writer,” she adds, in the preface to her Key, “has aimed, as far as was possible, to say what is true.... She has used the most honest and earnest endeavours to learn the truth.” ... “And the book is commended to the candid attention and earnest prayers of all Christians throughout the world.” These are grave statements, especially when falling from the pen of one who had already secured a world-wide hearing; and by the light of such statements Uncle Tom’s Cabin ought to be read, unless Mrs Stowe’s means of knowledge, or her truthfulness, can be seriously impeached. Looked at in this light, the writer is regarded as actuated by a magnificent spirit: one which cannot stoop to regard petty carping and cavilling, and need concern itself with nothing but grave and temperate objections based upon facts. It will not do for her American critics to aver, that, “without being actuated by wrong motives in the preparation of this work, she has done a wrong which no ignorance can excuse, and no penance can expiate”⁠[5]—unless such an allegation can be sustained by unequivocal evidence of exaggeration, misrepresentation, and falsehood. All we shall say at present is, that if Mrs Stowe is to be believed by her reader, he will lay down her book, on having deliberately read it, with feelings and thoughts too painful and deep for utterance, and which ought to lead to action.

The title of Mrs Stowe’s book—“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—is far from commensurate with the scope of the fiction, or rather series of “pictures,” of which it consists. The cabin is not the scene of any events of importance to the story. It is not impossible that her intention originally was to confine her pencil to the delineation of Tom, his residence, family, relations, and the incidents which befell item personally through the operation of slavery. Uncle Tom and his fortunes might have constituted a work by itself, and those of George and Eliza Harris, a second. The former might have been called Uncle Tom, and the latter George and Eliza; or The Cabin, and The Flight; for there are two classes of adventures quite separate from each other—the experiences of the submissive, and the adventures of the recalcitrant, slave. It is true that the authoress seeks to link them together, at starting, by making Uncle Tom and Eliza Harris fellow-slaves of the same master and mistress, and Uncle Tom and Eliza’s child, Harry, the subjects of a joint sale to the slave-trader; but beyond this slight connection there is none other. Eliza, with her sold child, pays only one hasty affrighted midnight visit to the cabin of Uncle Tom; but her husband is never shown near it. At the very end of the story, however, Mrs Stowe seems to have had suggested to her the propriety of coupling the fates of her characters together in some way or other—so that, in a manner which may provoke the smile of a veteran novelist, she contrives to make a female slave, Cassy, whom Tom encounters at the close of his career, prove to be the mother of Eliza Harris; and a lady passenger, who happens, by the merest accident on earth, to be in the steamboat in which the aforesaid slave is escaping, turns out to be the sister of George Harris! Rather a fortunate coincidence this, it must be owned. Thus it is, that, under the title “Uncle Tom’s Cabin—a Picture of Slave Life in America,” there are two distinct threads of story, only nominally and arbitrarily connected together; while on each is strung a series of interesting, affecting, and even horrifying incidents, developing character, and the working of institutions upon it.

Let us now give some account of the style in which she has executed her work.

The tale opens with a very skilfully contrived scene, the object being to arrest attention, without plunging into horrors which might at first shock a reader, and render him incredulous; and yet it is very startling to a European not familiar with slavery. It is a tête-à-tête between a respectable Kentuckian planter, involved by over-speculation, and the slave-dealer Haley, an impudent, swaggering, hard-hearted, gaudily-dressed brute, who bargains over his brandy-and-water for flesh and blood, just as he would do in respect of a bale of cotton. Mrs Stowe opens the wretch’s character, as it were an oyster, with a firm and practised hand. It is quickly seen that the subject of chaffering is the sale of poor Tom, with whom Mr Shelby is reluctantly compelled to part, as some of his heaviest “paper” had found its way into the hands of Mr Haley. In this introductory dialogue we meet with new and fearful phraseology, as applied to human beings. Mrs Stowe, with much tact, contrives, by a word or two, to excite the reader’s interest in Tom long before he comes on the scene. In enumerating his good qualities, Mr Shelby speaks of poor Tom’s religious character as a guarantee of his fidelity. This is how it strikes the slave-dealer. “Some folks don’t believe there’s pious niggers, Shelby; but I do. I had a feller, now, in this yer last lot I took to Orleans—’twas as good as a meetin’ now, really, to hear that critter pray!... He fetched me a good sum, too; for I bought him cheap of a man that was ’bliged to sell out” (a tasteful allusion to the exact quandary of his companion!) “so I realised six hundred on him. Yes.—I consider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it’s the genuine article, and no mistake!” By and by, in bursts little Harry, romping about the room, trotted out by Mr Shelby, to amuse his hateful companion by his quaint antics; who had first asked, as the child entered—while the two gentlemen! were haggling about the price of Tom—“Well; haven’t you a boy or a gal that you could throw in with Tom?”... After a while, Mr Haley adds—“I’ve got a friend that’s going into this yer branch of the business—and wants to buy up handsome boys to raise for the market—fancy articles entirely!” Mr Shelby having hinted his reluctance to separate the child from his beautiful mother, who had just withdrawn him from the room, Mr Haley favours his companion with the result of his experiences in such matters; deprecating doing anything rashly (“though these critters arn’t like white folks, you know”), lest—lest—it should injure the mother’s health, and lower her price in the market! And he mentions a grievous blunder made by a friend of his, who too suddenly sold away a mother’s baby, on which she “jist went ravin’ mad, and died in a week—clear waste, sir, of a thousand dollars, jist for want of management—there’s where’t is. It’s always best to do the humane thing, sir; that’s been my experience.” (By this time, our gentleman reader is disposed to fling friend Haley through the window; and our lady reader—but, oh! as for her, we have much more serious matter in store). Mr Shelby, it is intimated, was desirous to help Mr Haley down stairs with a kick, but he was Mr Shelby’s creditor! On the former’s return, his debtor’s scruples have been overcome; and poor good old Tom, and little Harry, have become the property of Mr Haley, who is to take them away the next morning! The whole of this introductory scene is highly creditable to Mrs Stowe’s powers: it is graphic and dramatic, character and incident being hit off with a quiet strength, auguring well for the rest of her performance. She has not overdrawn Haley. She has given us quite enough to startle and disgust us with—the system, more than the individual, and has at the same time relieved the reader’s mind by a just perceptible strain of drollery and piquant satire. But how distinctly you see, all the while, the dismayed and ungratefully-treated patriarch, old Tom, and the beautiful mother, with bleeding heart soon to come before us—the one, his big heart heaving with grief and astonishment; the mother’s, bleeding and broken! The first few chapters of this work will satisfy the most fastidious reader that he is sitting down before the production of a great artist. The scene enacting in Uncle Tom’s cabin, during the time that his master is selling him to Haley, and consigning him to those of unknown suffering and death, is first-rate, and peculiarly racy to European readers; who, though strangers to such scenes, feel that this must be painted to the very life. From the first to the end of the eighth chapter, including also the tenth, we are conducted, indeed, “from gay to grave, from lively to severe;” the lights and shadows of negro life are brought before us with equal vividness and distinctness, by scenes most happily contrived, without a tinge of exaggeration, or a disfiguring touch of coarseness. Mr and Mrs Shelby are just what they ought to be, without any marked characteristics; the reader’s attention being thus fixed undisturbedly on the new figures of Haley, Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe, George and Eliza Harris, Marks, and Tom Loker, as well as the skittish, frolicsome, mischievous, and selfish negro servants. The story, too, is advancing; Tom is on his journey, manacled and fettered, in the slave-waggon with Haley, whose pursuit after Eliza and her child has been hitherto in vain, in spite of his grim auxiliaries; and George also has started safe on the desperate race for freedom: the little we have seen of him induces us heartily to say—God speed you! brave soul, you are worthy of the prize—may you win it!

The ninth chapter introduces us to quite a different scene—Senator Bird, and his bustling little soft-hearted wife, who became the host and hostess of fugitive Eliza—the pallid, the breathless—with tottering knees and bleeding feet—who has been led by the Kentuckian, who had helped her up the bank of the river, to the house of the senator and his wife, just as they are discussing—the abolition question. They, their children, and their quiet home-scene, are beautifully sketched—as are the means by which Eliza and her child are conducted to a place of temporary succour and safety.

The eleventh chapter introduces us to a different time and locality—an evening in a remote Kentucky hotel. The wild Kentuckian guests squat about and straddle their legs, and chew, and spit, before us. What a gathering of hats of all shapes and sizes—“quite a Shakspearian study!”—is before us! We see them all, and can conjecture the stranger aspect of those who wear them! It is here that our disguised friend George turns up, in the way we have mentioned. ’Tis here that he says, with erect form and flashing eye, to his former kind master, Mr Wilson, “I’ve said Mas’r for the last time to any man! I’m free!”

“Take care. You may be taken,” replies good Mr Wilson, apprehensively.

“All men are free and equal in the grave, if it comes to that, Mr Wilson,” says lion-hearted George, who is armed to the teeth.... “Good-by, sir; if you hear that I’m taken, you may know that I’m dead!” He stood up like a rock, and put out his hand with the air of a prince. Well done, Mrs Stowe! And how tenderly she presently smites the rock of his resolution, till the pent-up waters of a husband and a father gush forth! So do those of Mr Wilson, as he accepts poor George’s little commission, to give to his wife the pin which she had formerly given to him as a Christmas present, and beseech her to get to Canada if ever she have the means, “and,” he adds, “tell her to bring up our boy A FREE MAN!”

Chapter XII. gives us a hateful glimpse of an auction sale of slaves; after which we accompany friend Haley, with poor Tom and some other human cattle, in La Belle Rivière, a boat on the Ohio, “floating gaily down the stream,” stuffed full of slaves, “under a brilliant sky, the stripes and stars of free America waving and fluttering overhead!” Who can read without a shudder of the young mother, whose infant has been deceitfully sold from her—who is suddenly told of her bereavement: “she did not scream, the shot had passed too straight and direct through her heart for cry or tear. Dizzily she sate down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and the hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to the bewildered ear; and the poor dumb-stricken heart had neither cry nor tear to show for its utter misery. She was quite calm.” In vain, during the bright starlight solitude and silence, had poor Tom, forgetting his own griefs—his forlorn wife and children—crawled for a moment to her side, and tried to whisper a word of comfort from the New Testament. Her heart was palsied; and some time afterwards the good old slave was startled from his doze. “Something black passed by him quickly, ... he heard a splash in the water.... No one else had seen or heard anything. He got up and searched—the woman’s place was vacant—the poor bleeding heart was still at last, and the river rippled and dimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed above that heart!”—“Where alive is that gal?” said her new master, perplexedly, in the morning, searching every corner of the boat in vain; and then trying to make up his mind to the loss of so many dollars’ worth, with what philosophy he might.

Chapter XIII. finds Eliza and her husband in the Quaker settlement, all prim, precise, kindly, thoughtful, and resolute about securing the safety of the fugitives. “Thou’rt safe here by daylight,” said his hospitable host Simeon, “for every one in the settlement is a Friend, and all are watching. Moreover, it is safer to travel by night.” Thus ends the chapter. The next three, XIV., XV., XVI., in continuation with chapters XVIII., XIX., XX., XXII., XXIII., XXIV., XXV., XXVI., XXVII., XXVIII., XXIX., (that is, fourteen, or upwards of a third of the entire work) find us in widely distant and different scenes,—travelling up the magnificent Mississippi, and finally housed at New Orleans, and moving among a new set of characters: Tom having, on the voyage, changed hands, and become the property of Mr St Clare, grateful for his having saved the life of his daughter Eva—for she falls over boat side into the water, and Tom plunges in after her. This is a somewhat startling incident, and it was not quite necessary to peril the fragile little creature’s life, in order to supply her father with an inducement to buy Tom. Story-tellers should never use greater machinery to bring about their ends than is adequate. The doing so generally argues a deficiency of power or invention. In the present instance the gentle reader’s feelings are shocked, and needlessly; for as little Evangeline St Clare was the only and idolised child of her father, who was onboard, and wanted a coachman—having dismissed his own for drunkenness—what more natural than for Tom, having gained, as in a very pretty and natural way he had done, the affection of little Eva on the voyage, to occur to her, and to her father, as a good successor to his discarded Jehu? A silvery word or two from Eva’s sweet little lips would have sufficed, and Tom, in the quietest way in the world, would have become the sable chattel of Mr St Clare. Observe, the very idea had occurred to Eva before her sudden and superfluous immersion, and she herself had told him of her intention.

‘... “So, Uncle Tom, where are you going?”

“I don’t know, Miss Eva.”

“Don’t know,” quoth she, concernedly.

“No, I am going to be sold to somebody. I don’t know who.”

“My papa can buy you,” said Eva quickly, “and if he buys you, you will have good times. I mean to ask him to⁠[6] this very day.”

“Thank you, my little lady,” said Tom.’

Five minutes afterwards Mrs Stowe has heart enough to let the benevolent little creature go overboard, simply to be rescued by Tom! Nor is the incident told forcibly; and it elicits no unusual trait of character in anybody. Having thus introduced Tom to new places and persons, let us give a general account of this elaborate episodical portion of Mrs Stowe’s undertaking.

The figures in the foreground of this large picture are—Mr and Mrs St Clare, his cousin Miss Ophelia, his daughter Eva (or Evangeline), Topsy, and Uncle Tom. Those in the background are Mr St Clare’s brother, his youthful son Henrique, and a confused heap of domestic slaves—all as happy as happy can be, under the protection of their wealthy, indolent, good-natured proprietor, Mr St Clare; but there is also, almost hid in the dark shadow, one Prue! As for Tom, the lines have fallen to him in exceedingly pleasant places; he leads a life of only nominal servitude—the huge pet of pretty little Eva, and consequently a favourite of her father. Here Mrs Stowe has evidently expended much greater pains than on any other portion of her work; but we doubt greatly whether she will be satisfied with our judgment on the subject. Speaking as English critics, we are of opinion that Topsy is worth all the others, ten times over; then comes Mrs St Clare; then the cook, ladies’-maids, and the valet Adolph; then Miss Ophelia, then Eva, and then Mr St Clare. The others have nothing distinctive about them, and seem introduced simply to “draw out” the characters and opinions of Mr St Clare and his daughter Eva.

Augustine St Clare and his brother Alfred are of Canadian descent—the sons of a wealthy Louisianian planter; their mother having been a lovely and pious Huguenot French lady, whose family had been early emigrants to Louisiana; and these two had been her only children. It is with Augustine⁠[7] that we are at present concerned; and he having been crossed in love, through the cunning cupidity of the young lady’s guardians—in disgust, and to show his indifference towards one whom he erroneously supposed to have jilted him, married the wealthy reigning belle of the season—“a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and—a hundred thousand dollars.” Her husband was of a “sensitive temperament”—“gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical, sceptical.” Indeed, he himself declares, as to this last, “religion is a remarkably scarce article at our house.” Almost immediately after his marriage, he received a letter from the lady to whom he had been “so passionately—romantically” attached, explaining the true state of matters. She was yet unmarried, and wrote fervently to him, supposing him also unmarried!

“Thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St Clare,” whose wife was the mere incarnation of silliness, vanity, selfishness, and tyranny, as far as she dared to show this last. Her husband treated her, from first to last, with undisguised but laughing contempt; but it may be doubtful whether she really appreciated the extent to which he civilly despised her.

‘“Mr St Clare, I wish you wouldn’t whistle,” said Marie; “it makes my head worse.”

“I won’t,” replied St Clare. “Is there anything else you would wish me not to do?”

“I wish you would have some kind of sympathy for my trials; you never have any feeling for me!”

“My dear accusing angel!” said St Clare.

“It’s provoking to be talked to in that way!”

“Then, how will you be talked to? I’ll talk to order—any way you’ll mention, only to give satisfaction.”...

“St Clare always laughs when I make the least allusion to my ill health,” said Marie, with the voice of a suffering martyr. “I only hope the day won’t come when he’ll remember it!” she added, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. Of course, there was a rather foolish silence.’

Happy couple! But we think we have such in our own island home! Mrs St Clare was “beautiful, accomplished, and an heiress—having no doubt that Augustine was a most fortunate man in having obtained her.” “It is a great mistake,” justly observes Mrs Stowe, “to suppose that a woman with no heart will be an easy creditor in the exchange of affection. There is not on earth a more merciless exactor of love from others than a thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more jealously and scrupulously she exacts love to the uttermost farthing.” At length she brings her husband a solitary child—Evangeline—whom he names after his gifted, beloved, and sainted mother. From the time of Eva’s birth, her mother’s health “gradually sunk. A life of constant inaction, bodily and mental—the friction of ceaseless ennui and discontent, united to the ordinary weakness which attended the period of maternity, in the course of a few years changed the blooming young belle into a yellow, faded, sickly woman, whose time was divided among a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered herself in every sense the most ill-used and suffering person in existence.”

Such a woman as this, being worse than a mere cipher in his establishment, and Eva’s health requiring change of air, he had taken her to Vermont for a season; bringing back with him his cousin Ophelia—a spinster of forty-five; a model of propriety, exactitude, and a sort of hard conscientiousness. She was the absolute bond-slave of the “ought.” Her standard of right was so high, so all-embracing, so minute, and making so few concessions to human frailty, that, though she strove with heroic ardour to reach it, she never actually did so, and of course was burdened with a constant and often harassing sense of deficiency. This gave a severe and somewhat gloomy cast to her religious character.

The contrast between this starched, prim, yet worthy beau-ideal of Duty and “gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical” St Clare is well conceived, and nearly as well carried out before the reader, who gradually conceives a kind of respect for her, which seems continually on the point of warming into regard; but the predominant idea in his mind is, that Miss Ophelia would make an excellent housekeeper in—somebody else’s establishment: for himself, she would—he fears—be too good, and, too hard—and—“tall, square-formed, and angular.” What a treasure, however, thinks he, for a widowed cousin—three hundred miles off, with eight or ten wild boys and girls to break in! Mrs Stowe tells us, that Miss Ophelia is “the representative of a very numerous class of the very best of northern people, of activity, zeal, unflinching conscientiousness, clear intellectual discrimination between truth and error, and great logical and doctrinal correctness;⁠[8] but with a want of that SPIRIT OF LOVE, without which, in the eye of Christ, the most perfect character is as deficient as a wax flower, wanting in life and perfume.... Yet that blessed principle is not dead, but only sleepeth, and always answers to the touch of the true magnet—divine love.” She, however, “unconsciously represents one great sin—the prejudice of caste, and colour.” Even in the New England States, where slavery has been abolished by law, this prejudice flourishes in full and fell vigour, despite, even, the melting sunbeams of Christianity! Those who will nobly stint themselves of luxuries, and almost necessaries, to send the gospel to the distant dark heathens—at home, loathe the sight and contiguity of their black brother, and exhibit it even in the house of God. “Supposing,” Mrs Stowe says, solemnly and finely, “our Lord was now on earth as he was once, what course is it probable that he would pursue with regard to this unchristian prejudice of colour? There was a class of men in those days, as much despised by the Jews as the negroes are by us; and it was a complaint made of Christ that he was a friend of publicans and sinners. And if Christ should enter, on some communion season, into a place of worship, and see the coloured man sitting afar off by himself, would it not be just in His spirit to go there and sit with him, rather than to take the seats of his richer and more prosperous brethren?”

The character of Miss Ophelia is most happily developed, by means, principally, of Topsy—the Gem of the book, of whom more anon; and that character is, as will be seen, proper to the moral climate of New England; whereas, according to Mrs Stowe herself, “Mrs St Clare is the type of a class of women not peculiar to any latitude, nor any condition in society ... she may be found in England, or America.” The same, indeed, is to be said of “Alfred and Augustine St Clare, who represent,” she says, “two classes of men which are to be found in all countries, the radically aristocratic and democratic men.” In defining her “aristocrat” and “democrat,” it must be borne in mind that she is speaking of American exhibitions of those characters, and as connected with the relation of slaveholders. On this subject we might make many observations; but content ourselves with saying, that, in the main, we concur with Mrs Stowe’s views, as expounded by herself, with reference to the perilousness of intrusting man with practically irresponsible authority over his fellow-man. That state of society is essentially vicious, and foully rotten before the eyes of our Almighty Maker, who hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, which does not make THE LAWS the indifferent and easily accessible protector, vindicator, and avenger of every human being living in that state.

The two brothers discuss frequently, and with considerable force, the question of slavery, as to its consistency or inconsistency with an enlightened and civilised system of laws, and the spirit and precepts of Christianity.

Why Mrs Stowe should have thought it necessary to represent her favourite St Clare as a sceptic on religious subjects, is not quite clear; unless, indeed, she intends to intimate that it is a dark and grievous characteristic of the whole class which he represents. Perhaps it may be, unfortunately, so; and, indeed, she seems, with bitter sarcasm, to hint that one thing which tends to produce this result is, the cool accommodation of the principles and precepts of the Gospel to the existing order of things in the slave states, in even their vilest aspects. Upon the whole, however, Mrs Stowe succeeds in satisfying the reader that her gentleman hero is a manly fellow, with all his faults. His love of his little daughter, his grief as he perceives her withering away before his eyes under the blight of consumption, his anguish and despair when she is taken from him, are all told touchingly—very touchingly, with true pathos. So also the fondness with which he cherishes the memory of his mother. He forms the resolution to give poor Tom his freedom; but as it is necessary, for the exigencies of the story, to get poor Tom into worse hands, there is no other way occurs to the author than to make Mr St Clare die abruptly; and the most suitable mode of bringing about that result is, when his moral being has been soothed and solemnised by a religious conversation with his cousin Ophelia, in which he says he “does not know what makes him think so much of his mother that night.” He “has a strange kind of feeling as if she were near him ...;” he by and by says, “I believe I’ll go down street and hear the news to-night.” He gets into a café; and while reading the paper, an affray arises between two partially intoxicated gentlemen; he “attempts to wrest a bowie knife from one of them, who gives him a fatal stab with it in the side.” He is brought home on a shutter, wrapped in a cloak, to the consternation of all in the house, and dies the same evening, having first said to Tom, “pray!” He dies, “opening his eyes with a sudden light, as of joy and recognition, and saying ‘mother’—and then he was gone.”

Eva is evidently a favourite creation of the author’s, and she is undoubtedly a gentle and sweet little spirit, suggesting the tenderest thoughts of love and pity; but a mere worldly reader is apt to think, with a little impatience, that she is so very good; she talks so much beyond her years;⁠[9] and challenges our admiration, with the confidence of a pattern child. No one can find fault with anything she says or does; but unfortunately, you see that the writer from the first intended her to be a little piece of perfection. Frail and sensitive human nature is a little irritated by this, and suspects something factitious. It says, peevishly, “I know many good and charming children, but here’s an angel in flesh!” When, however, our excellent and pious author herself tells us, that “the gentle Eva is an impersonation, in childish form, of the love of Christ—” worldly criticism utters not another word, but reverences the writer’s motives. Here is little Eva’s death⁠—

‘St Clare saw a spasm of mortal agony pass over the face.... “Eva!” said he, presently, gently. She did not hear. “Oh, Eva, tell us what you see! What is it?” A bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and she said, brokenly,—“Oh, love—joy—peace!” gave one sigh, and passed from death to life.’

It might have been grander, perhaps, if her voiceless response, had been that “glorious smile,” reflecting the ineffable happiness—the suddenly seen glory of heaven. Are not these words, again, more likely to have fallen from an adult, than a mere child?—Let the spectator’s eye now be turned heavily towards the darkest portion of the background—and there is crouching a grisly figure—old Prue—“cross old Prue”—as even sweet Eva styled her! This creature is introduced and disposed of by the author, with a certain dreadful power; she is seen for but a short space—but in that short space, what a tale of horror does she tell!

Prue was a tall, bony, coloured woman, with a scowling expression of countenance, and a sullen, grumbling voice. Her office was, to carry on her head a basket of rusks and hot rolls to Mr St Clare’s house.

‘She set down her basket (in the kitchen), squatted herself down, and resting her elbows on her knees, said—“O, Lord! I wish I’se dead!”

“Why do you wish you were dead?” asked Miss Ophelia.

“I’d be out of my misery,” said the woman, gruffly, without taking her eyes from the floor.’

She is among the merry, saucy, black and quadroon servants, who jibe her, as soon as Miss Ophelia is gone. The only one who notices her is Tom, who offers to carry her basket for her, and tries to persuade her to leave off drinking—to which misery has driven her. She wishes herself in hell—Tom shuddering the while—to be out of her misery.

‘“Where was you raised?” he asked.

“Up in Kentuck. A man kept me to breed chil’en for market, and sold ’em as fast as they got big enough; last of all, he sold me to a speculator, and my mas’r (a baker), got me o’ him.”

“What set you into this bad way of drinkin?”

“To get shet of my misery.”’

And she proceeds to describe that misery; and many a tender mother has sickened and shuddered over the next eighteen lines.

A few days afterwards another woman came in old Prue’s place, to bring the rusks. On being asked about her by Dinah, another servant, she says, mysteriously, “Prue isn’t coming any more!”

‘“Why not?” inquires Dinah. “She an’t dead, is she?”

“We doesn’t exactly know. She’s down cellar,” said the woman, glancing at Miss Ophelia. After Miss Ophelia had taken the rusks, Dinah followed the woman to the door.

“What has got Prue, anyhow?” she said.

The woman seemed desirous, yet reluctant, to speak, and answered in a low, mysterious tone. “Well, you mustn’t tell nobody. Prue, she got drunk agin—and they had her down cellar—and thar they left her all day; and I hearn ’em saying that the flies had got to her—and she’s dead!”’

The unhappy wretch had been whipped to death in a cellar, left there, and—“the flies had got to her!” Miss Ophelia’s honest soul was fired with indignation on hearing it; and when she expressed her kindled womanly feelings to Mr St Clare, he received it with levity, “peeling his orange,” while good excited Miss Ophelia is denouncing it as “perfectly abominable”—and answering her with badinage; gaily adding, “My dear cousin, I didn’t do it, and I can’t help it; I would, if I could!”

Let us turn, however, from this revolting incident, to Mrs Stowe’s chef-d’œuvre—the inimitable Topsy—a true psychological curiosity—a character quite new to us, and delineated by the pencil of a consummate limner. The portrait will not bear an additional touch, nor the loss of one that has been given it. It exactly satisfies the critical eye.

We have already given the reader Topsy’s presentation to Miss Ophelia. Here is the little black imp in propriâ personâ before you, as Mr St Clare paraded her before the astounded eye of his prim cousin:⁠—

‘She was eight or nine years of age—one of the blackest of her race; and her round, shining eyes, glittering as glass beads, moved with quick and restless glances over everything in the room. Her mouth, half open with astonishment at the wonders of the new mas’r’s parlour, displayed a white and brilliant set of teeth. Her woolly hair was braided in sundry little tails, which stuck out in every direction. The expression of the face was an odd mixture of shrewdness and cunning, over which was oddly drawn, like a kind of veil, an expression of the most doleful gravity and solemnity. She was dressed in a single filthy, ragged garment, made of bagging; and stood with her hands demurely folded before her. Altogether there was something queer and goblin-like about her appearance. “Here, Topsy,” said Mr St Clare, giving a whistle, as a man would to call the attention of a dog, “give us a song, now, and show us some of your dancing.” The black glassy eyes glittered with a kind of wicked drollery, and The Thing struck up, in a clear shrill voice, an odd negro melody, to which she kept time with her hands and feet, spinning round, clapping her hands, knocking her knees together, in a wild, fantastic sort of time, and producing in her throat all those strange guttural sounds which distinguish the native music of her race; and, finally, turning a somerset or two, and giving a prolonged closing note, as odd and unearthly as that of a steam whistle, she came suddenly down on the carpet, and stood with her hands folded, and a most sanctimonious expression of meekness and solemnity over her face, only broken by the cunning glances which she shot, askance, from the corners of her eyes. Miss Ophelia stood silent, perfectly paralysed with amazement.’

A world of scrubbing and cleansing brings to sight “great welts and calloused (?) spots”—ineffaceable marks of the system under which she had grown up that far, at the sight of which the heart of Miss Ophelia—who had a horrid repugnance to the touch of a nigger!—“became pitiful within her!” She had compelled Jane, one of the quadroon maids, to assist her in the task of ablution, as she did, tossing her head with disgust; the “young one” “scanning, with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears!”

When arrayed, at last, in a suit of decent clothing, and her hair had been cropped close to her head, Miss Ophelia sits down to question the thing; who tells her, with a grin showing all her glittering teeth, that she does not know how old she is; that she never had a mother; never was born; never had no father, nor mother, nor nothin. “I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take care on us.”

‘“Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?” She looked bewildered, and grinned.

“Do you know who made you?”

“Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child, with a short laugh. “I ’spect I grow’d! Don’t think nobody ever made me!”’...

“Virgin soil here,” indeed, as St Clare slily suggested to his dismayed cousin. By and by—behold Topsy, washed and shorn, arrayed in a clean gown, with well-starched apron, standing reverently before Miss Ophelia, with an expression of solemnity well befitting a funeral, while she carefully initiates her sooty little charge into the mysteries of bed-making. Topsy pays profound attention to all the directions about under-sheets, bolsters, and turning down; but not too profound to prevent her, the young disciple, when her teacher’s back was turned for a moment, snatching a pair of gloves and a ribbon, which she adroitly slipped into her sleeves, and stood with her hands duly folded as before!

Being required, by and by, to reduce her lessons to practice, out drops from her sleeve an end of the purloined ribbon! at which she looks, when furiously challenged, with innocent wonder. She declares solemnly she had never seen it till that minute; and when angrily shaken by Miss Ophelia, out dropped the gloves from the other sleeve! Topsy now owns to the gloves, steadily denying the ribbon; but, threatened with a whipping, confesses to both, with woeful expressions of penitence. Being adjured to “confess” if she has taken anything else, the little wretch owns to having taken “Miss Eva’s red thing she wears round her neck,” and Rosa’s red earrings, and having burnt them! “Burnt them! why did you do that?” inquires the astounded lady. “’Cause I’se wicked—I is! It’s mighty wicked, anyhow. I can’t help it!” But in a moment or two’s time, Eva and Rosa make their appearance, with necklace and earrings as usual, never having parted with them.

“I’m sure I can’t tell what to do with such a child,” said Miss Ophelia in despair. “What did you tell me you took these things for, Topsy?”

“Why, missis said I must ’fess; and I couldn’t think of nothing else to ’fess,” said Topsy, rubbing her eyes.

“But, of course, I didn’t want you to confess to things you didn’t do. That’s telling a lie just as much as the other.”

“Laws, now, is it?” said Topsy, with an air of innocent wonder!’

Here is an impressive contrast:⁠—

‘Eva stood looking at Topsy. There stood the two children, representatives of the two extremes of society. The fair, high-bred child, with her golden head, her deep eyes, her spiritual, noble brow, and prince-like movements; and her black, keen, subtle, cringing, yet acute neighbour. They stood the representatives of their races. The Saxon, born of ages of cultivation, command, education, physical and moral eminence; the African, born of ages of oppression, submission, ignorance, toil, and vice.’

If Miss Ophelia’s conscientiousness was—to use the slang of the phrenologists—“largely developed,” that of Topsy was about equal to the conscientiousness of a squirrel or a monkey; and good Miss Ophelia observes her protegée, “lithe as a cat, and active as a monkey,” and to the full as wantonly mischievous, with dumb despair. One of her fancies was to deck herself in Miss Ophelia’s choicest ornaments, and rehearse in them, like an actress, before the glass, singing, whistling, and making grimaces. Once surprised by the lady, with her “very best scarlet Indian crape shawl wound round her head for a turban,” “Topsy,” says she, at the end of all patience, “what does make you act so?”

“Dun no, missis. I ’spects ’cause I’se so wicked.”

“I don’t know what I shall do with you, Topsy.”

“Law, missis, you must whip me. My old missis allers whipped me. I an’t used to workin’ without I gets whipped.”

“Why, Topsy, I don’t want to whip you. You can do well if you choose; why won’t you?”

“Laws, missis, I’se used to whippin’. I ’spects it’s good for me.”’

Though one might almost as well, one would have thought, have tried to teach a hedgehog astronomy, Miss Ophelia devoted herself to teaching the gnome the Catechism; and, after a patient year and a half’s efforts, here were some of the blessed results, as exhibited before laughing Mr St Clare, before whom were confident catechist and hopeful catechumen:⁠—

“Q.—Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the state wherein they were created.” Topsy’s eyes twinkled, and she looked inquiringly.

“What is it, Topsy?” said Miss Ophelia.

“Please, missis, was dat ar state Kintuck?”

“What state, Topsy?”

“Dat state dey fell out of. I used to hear Mas’r tell how as we com down from Kintuck!”’

But what the sedulous didactic teaching of Miss Ophelia failed to do, would have doubtless been effected by sweet little Eva, had she lived: from whom, one day, fell the first word of kindness she had ever heard in her life; and the sweet tone and manner struck strangely on the wild rude heart, and a sparkle of something like a tear shone in the keen, round, glittering eye.

Twice again this strange creature flits across the scene, and on one of these occasions says⁠—

‘“Old missus whipped me a deal harder, and used to pull my har, and knock my head agin the door; but it didn’t do me no good! I ’spects if theys to pull every spear o’ har out of my head, it wouldn’t do no good, neither! I’se so wicked! Laws! I’se nothing but a nigger, no ways!” ... “But, Topsy, if you’d only try to be good, you might”—⁠—

“Couldn’t never be nothin but a nigger, if I was never so good! If I could be skinned, and come white, I’d try then!”’

Poor Topsy!—these words go to the heart of all but—a moral leper white as snow! There is in them a huge volume of anguish and reproach.

It required the potent eloquence of little Eva’s death to dispel the last lingering feelings of Miss Ophelia’s repugnance towards the unhappy little black, in whom also the same solemn event had worked a marked change. “The callous indifference was gone ... there was a striving for good—a strife, irregular, interrupted, suspended, oft—but yet renewed again.” The finishing touch to this singular and masterly delineation is exquisite in every way:⁠—

‘One day, when Topsy had been sent for by Miss Ophelia, she came, hastily thrusting something into her bosom. “What are you doing there, you limb? You’ve been stealing something, I’ll be bound,” said the imperious little Rosa (a quadroon slave), who had been sent to call her, seizing her at the same time roughly by the arm.

“You go ’long, Miss Rosa!” said Topsy, pulling from her; “’tan’t none o’ your business!”

“None o’ your sa’ce!” said Rosa. “I saw you hiding something—I know yer tricks,” and Rosa seized her arm, and tried to force her hand into her bosom; while Topsy, enraged, kicked and fought valiantly for what she considered her rights. The clamour and confusion of the battle drew Miss Ophelia and St Clare both to the spot.

“She’s been stealing!” said Rosa.

“I han’t, neither!” vociferated Topsy, sobbing with passion.

“Give me that, whatever it is!” said Miss Ophelia, sternly.

Topsy hesitated; but, on a second order, pulled out of her bosom a little parcel done up in the foot of one of her own old stockings. Miss Ophelia turned it out. There was a small book which had been given to Topsy by Eva, containing a single verse of Scripture arranged for every day in the year; and in a paper, the curl of hair which she had given on that memorable day when she had taken her last farewell. St Clare was a good deal affected at the sight of it; the little book had been rolled in a long strip of black crape, torn from the funeral weeds.

“What did you wrap this round the book for?” said he, holding up the crape.

“’Cause—’cause—’cause ’twas Miss Eva. Oh, don’t take ’em away, please!” she said; and, sitting flat down on the floor, and putting her apron over her head, she began to sob vehemently.’⁠[10]

“Topsy,” says Mrs Stowe, “stands as the representative of a large class of the children who are growing up under the institution of slavery—quick, active, subtle, and ingenious—apparently utterly devoid of principle and conscience—keenly penetrating, by an instinct which exists in the childish mind, the degradation of their condition, and the utter hopelessness of rising above it.” In a note to a friend on the same subject, she writes very beautifully—“There lies, buried down in the heart of the most seemingly stupid and careless slave, a bleeding spot that bleeds and aches, though he could scarcely tell why—and this sore spot is the degradation of his position.”

Miss Ophelia, having had a formal gift of Topsy from Mr St Clare, takes her home to Vermont, where we are told, she “grew rapidly in grace and favour with the family,” at first sufficiently staggered by the quaint apparition. “At the age of womanhood she was at her own request baptised; and finally recommended and approved as a missionary to one of the stations in Africa.” Of course the mode of training Topsy was beyond the scope of the writer’s purpose; but we could have wished to see a good deal more of Topsy, in the progress of her mental and moral development. But as it is, the sketch is pregnant with instruction, encouragement, and warning: and were it for this one portrait alone, Mrs Stowe would be entitled to the blessings of generations of blacks yet unborn. With the divine penetration of genius consecrated by holiness, she has wrought down to the seat of our common nature, in the black, crushed beneath whole piled up mountains of prejudice, scorn, and despair.

We must now return to poor Tom, whose course is henceforth brief, and of deepening gloom, and whose sun goes down in blood.

Detestable Mrs St Clare, released from the humanising presence of her husband, as though she had been a deadly snake half-crushed by the presence of authority, makes amends for past inaction, by darting venomously at every one within her reach. She orders off a poor girl to the whipping-house, to be flogged, naked, by the common flogger—a huge man—in the presence of as many of both sexes as chose to look on, and be entertained by her shrieks, and the sight of her quivering ensanguined flesh.⁠[11] Mrs St Clare contemptuously discarded the entreaties of Miss Ophelia, based mainly, with a womanly energy, on the mere sense of sex: and in disgust, Miss Ophelia returns, with Topsy, to her own country. Moreover, though poor Tom had been repeatedly promised his freedom by her husband, as she well knows, she ruthlessly sells him, with all the other slaves. Tom is told of his fate—to be forthwith sent to the slave mart. “The Lord’s will be done!” he exclaimed, folding his arms, and sighing heavily. He appeals to Miss Ophelia, who makes a hopeless attempt on Mrs St Clare, relying on her deceased husband’s promise. “Indeed,” says that charming lady, delicately clad in most elegantly made mourning for him whose solemn wishes she was violating, as he lay scarce cold in his grave—“Indeed I shall do no such thing! Tom is one of the most valuable slaves in the place! It could not be afforded any way!” ... “But consider his chance of getting a bad master——” “O! that’s all humbug——:” and the good lady turns a scornfully deaf ear to the solemn assurance, that Mr St Clare had made the promise to Eva on her deathbed. Marie St Clare is the type, we are told, of a class.

‘When Marie comes under a system of laws which gives her absolute control over her dependants—which enables her to separate them, at her pleasure, from their dearest family connections, or to inflict upon them the most disgraceful, degrading, and violent punishments, without even the restraint which seeing the execution might possibly induce—then it is that the character arrives at full maturity.’

Here we part with this viper; assuring the class whom she may represent, that they are burthened with the execration of the civilised world—most piercing of all, those of her fair, Free sisters.

Now one’s heart aches to see poor Tom, the helpless, sorrowful inmate, amongst a great quantity of uproarious and quasi-merry other live lumber—of a New Orleans slave-market. O sickening scene! But here the two figures arresting the eye—and whose brief tale is told with melting pathos and simplicity—are Susan and Emmeline, both beautiful, mother and daughter; the latter only fifteen, just budding into womanhood: both with hearts trembling at the fear of approaching separation—and what kind of life before them? The mother to be sold for the purpose of breeding other slaves; the daughter—oh speak it not in the ears of Free fathers and mothers—of Christian men or women—to be “sold to a life of shame!” She has “the same soft, dark eye” as her mother, “with longer lashes, and her curling hair is of a luxuriant brown.” And in passing, we are told, with an appalling irony, that “the gentleman to whom they belong, and to whom the money for their sale is to be transmitted, is a member of a Christian church in New York, who will receive the money, and go thereafter to the sacrament of his Lord AND THEIRS, and think no more of it.”

The hurriedly-whispered dialogue of these two would break a heart of stone to overhear: they are—that forlorn mother and daughter—trying to express a hope—a faint hope—poor souls!—that they may be sold together! In order to aid this result, and disguise her beauty, the mother and she comb out her luxuriant tresses, so as to “look plain and decent;” but in the morning, when the watchful owner comes round to look at his human cattle—“How’s this?” he said, stepping in front of Susan and Emmeline, “where’s your curls, gal?” He is told, timidly, that they thought it looked “more respectable so.”

‘“Bother!—You go right along, and curl yourself real smart,” he added, giving a crack to a ratan he held in his hand; “and be back in quick time, too! You go and help her,” to her mother—“them curls may make a hundred dollars difference in the sale of her!”’

Can horror go deeper? Yes, one step. The loathsome monster, Legree—of whom in a moment—is presently attracted by her beauty.

“He put out his heavy, dirty hand, and drew the girl towards him”—oh, Mrs Stowe! shall we go on?—“passed it over her neck and bust; felt her arms; looked at her teeth, and then pushed her back against her mother, whose patient face showed the sufferings she had been going through, at every motion of the hideous stranger.”

‘The girl was frightened, and began to cry.

“Stop that, you minx!” said the salesman, “no whimpering here! The sale’s going to begin!”’

Presently the mother is put up on the block, and bought by a benevolent purchaser; in descending from it she gazes wistfully at her lovely daughter; and implores her purchaser—“O, do buy my daughter!” He tries to do so; but alas! she has inflamed the sensual monster Legree: he quietly bids against Benevolence, resolved to secure his victim: “the hammer falls; he has got the girl, body and soul, unless God help her!” But will He? The chapter ends ominously with a passage from his Word⁠—

“When he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble!”

This Legree also purchases Tom, having quickly appreciated his “points,” as a “valleyable nigger:” and here you may see the cobra, uncoiled for you, in all its hideousness.

‘He was a short, broad, muscular man, in a checked shirt, considerably open at the bosom, and pantaloons much the worse for dirt and wear, who elbowed his way through the crowd, like one who is going actively into a business; and coming up to the group, began to examine them systematically. From the moment that Tom saw him approaching, he felt an immediate and revolting horror at him, that increased as he came near. He was evidently, though short, of gigantic strength. His round, bullet head, large, light-grey eyes, with their shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned air, were rather unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large coarse mouth was distended with tobacco, the juice of which, from time to time, he ejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands were immensely large, hairy, sun-burned, freckled, and very dirty, and garnished with long nails, in a very foul condition. This man proceeded to a very free personal examination of the lot. He seized Tom by the jaw, and pulled open his mouth, to inspect his teeth (!) made him strip up his sleeve, to show his muscle; turned him round, made him jump and spring, to show his paces.

“Where was you raised?” he added briefly to these investigations. “In Kintuck, mas’r,” said Tom, looking about as if for deliverance. “What have you done?” “Had care of mas’r’s farm,” said Tom. “Likely story!” said the other shortly, as he passed on.’