As we read the bulk of this we cannot help answering out of Schiller's lament for the "entgötterte Natur;" and the chorus in Faust rings in our ears "Weh! Weh! Du hast sie zerstört Die schöne Welt." It is the best and first, though unconscious, apology, for the comparative barrenness and hardness of New England thought, up to the author's time: it anticipates Hawthorne, whose first considerable work appeared five years later, in affirming that America is not yet ripe for romance. Margaret asks, "So you think New Englanders are the best people on the earth?" and Evelyn with a fine effrontery replies : "I think they might become such; or rather I think they might lead the August Procession of the race to Human Perfectability; that here might be revealed the coming of the day of the Lord, wherein the old Heavens of sin and error should be dissolved and a New Heavens and a New Earth be established, wherein dwelleth righteousness. I see nothing to prevent them from reassuming the old Hyperionic type... crowding out Jupiter and Mars, Diana and Venus (!) . . . New England! my birthplace, my chosen pilgrimage, I love it: its earth and its sky and the souls of its people. They, the Unconquerable, could alone subdue its ruggedness, and they are alone worthy to enjoy its amenities. I love the old folks and the children; I love the enterprise of its youth and honourable toil of its manhood. I love its snows and its grass, its hickory fires and its corn bread. The seeds of infinite good and of eternal truth are already sown in many minds. ... High Calculation, which is only the symbol of a higher Moral Sense, is even now at work; and they are ripping up the earth for a canal from Worcester to Providence." I should hesitate to quote the bathos of the close, as doing injustice to the writer; but the juxtaposition or overlapping of the strictly practical1 and the ideal, almost the mystic, is equally characteristic of his nation and of his book. Judd belongs to the second period of American thought that affected by Transcendentalism: he is an evident student of Emerson and the Dial: while he was writing, the experiment 1 See Note on Practical Religion at end of volume. of following the plough in the morning and reading Plato in the afternoon was being made at Brook Farm. Unable individually to take part in that adventure he went back to the past, and in his Mons Christi constructed a Utopia of the Revolution days, inspired by a deeper religious fervour. Margaret is, in one aspect, a farrago of opinions, dissertations, discussions on theology, politics, art, and society, often suggestive, sometimes fantastical—all inspired by the spirit of a man who had passed through the fire of a Revival, a man so defiant of the fashions of the world that, when, a few years later, he was called on to offer thanksgiving for the victories of the Mexican war, he read to his congregation the "Lamentations of Jeremiah." His book has another side, and to most its charm will be found chiefly to consist in the fresh and powerful delineations of New England life, in which it abounds. Judd's eye for external nature is almost as keen as Thoreau's, whom, in his description of the Maine Woods, he often forestalls. Probably the most graphic account of a snowstorm in English is that which fills the whole of the seventeenth chapter. The imagery is as fine as any in Whittier or The Luggie of David Gray; and it derives new human interest from the picture of the child half buried in the midst of it. The Indian episodes bear comparison with Cooper's the fireside scenes -as of The Thanksgiving and the fatal Husking Bee,-are equally vivid; their accuracy is attested by those familiar with the habits of the people, whose characters are so drawn as to make us not only believe in but remember them. Margaret, whose mental progress is the professed theme of the book, is a fascinating figure; and her brother Chilion, the inspired violinist, to whose tragic fate the comparatively slender thread of the plot conducts us through the labyrinth, is a distinct poetic creation. The following is in a different style from the foregoing extract :— "Only at the hour of his death did I understand the feelings of his life. He came out like the sun at the close of a cloudy day, glittered, and expired. His music always thrilled me, as I have seen it blow many about like leaves in the wind. His violin was truly oracular, orphean, superhuman. Through it I am sure he would have communicated much of the hidden secrecy of the soul. Reserved in manner, hesitating in speech, his instrument became his confidence, his utterance, his communicable self. An inexplicability took him from us. Soul of Chilion, descend into my soul. If tears were song, I would sing thee over the world: when I have ceased to weep, I only pray there may remain strength enough to sing. Yet, like an unapproachable star, his light descends to me from distant regions. There are many in whose hearts he silently sank, and upon whom he scattered his wild but divine musical seeds. Without putting forth a hand, his designs have been moulded into the beautiful forms of Art." Mr. Lowell, in our frequent guide, the Fable for Critics, testifies to his appreciation of this long anonymous and yet undeservedly-obscure romance "There goes, but stet nominis umbra, his name You'll be glad enough, some day or other to claim, And will all crowd about him and swear that you knew him, The old "porcos ante ne projiciatis Margaritas," for him you have verified gratis. What matters his name . . . 'tis enough that I look On the author of Margaret, the first Yankee book, Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true, Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new." Margaret on the whole, the most suggestive of the numerous class of American didactic novels-is one of the not unfrequent works refuting the maxim that desert, sooner or later, gets its due. Merit is only among the causes that conduce to literary success; to ensure which, genius, short of the highest, often requires longevity, like that of Dryden, if not of Carlyle the former had achieved little of value; the latter was still practically unrecognised, at the age when Mr. Judd died. It must, however, be admitted that Judd's comparative failure is owing to the defects, as well as to some of the excel lences, of his work-to its want of form, its over-ambitious aims, as well as to its heterodoxy of sentiment, and disregard of prejudice. A rapid and wide popularity can, by a previously unknown author, only be secured by clearness and precision of style; and by his being in essential sympathy with a multitude of ordinary intelligences. To avoid straining their attention, he must not disdain commonplace; but endeavour to obtain a reputation for originality, by appealing, in trenchant phrases, or by picturesque situations, to the best part of their average nature-above all, to their capacity for laughter or tears. He will be most immediately effective if he contrives to satirise a minority; to lead an attack on a vice growing out of favour; to denounce a party which has fallen behind, or shot before, the ranks. In religious and social morals he must be liberally conservative: in politics an optimist. All these conditions are combined in perhaps the most popular tale of the century; and they go a great way to explain its being so. In 1852, three works of fiction-two in America, and one in England-appeared nearly simultaneously :Esmond, The Blithedale Romance, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. The two former (the first being the author's artistic masterpiece) met with only a moderate, the last with an enthusiastic, reception 350,000 copies were sold in the States, probably as many in Europe, and its publication was talked of as a national event. "I forgot to put a nigger into my book," sneered Thackeray. Hawthorne said nothing, but published no other novel for seven years. Mrs. Beecher Stowe, mistaking, as was natural, the main causes of her success, followed it up with a series of literary failures; none of which has, in this hemisphere at least, attracted attention, save the vulgarly-sensational article in "Macmillan's Magazine," the undesigned result of which has been to cast aspersions on the sanity of a once celebrated, and long universally respected, English lady. "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN." 367 Detailed examination of a book so notorious, and so frequently reviewed, as Uncle Tom's Cabin, were manifestly a work of supererogation but it must be acknowledged to have some conspicuous merits. The tact of the writer is apparent in her choice of subject, her talent in the treatment of it. Her story appeared at exactly the right time: it was in harmony with the passion on the winning side of an obviously impending struggle; and it gave voice to a suffering race, in a manner peculiarly acceptable to a philanthropic age. It was a definite thrust at an anachronistic crime; and its aggressive strength, increased by some of the unscrupulousness attaching to most political movements, made it really among the torches that lighted up the gunpowder magazine of the war. The mere style of the book is mediocre : it wants unity, consisting of a series of scenes, on different-coloured paper, stitched together; but the best characters, as those of St. Clair, Miss Ophelia, and Topsy, are drawn with fidelity and force, and some of the incidents, especially-Eliza's escape over the ice; Mrs. Bird giving away, for charity's sake, the little articles of dress of her dead child; Eva's efforts to induce Topsy to be good; the Quaker pulling on his boots, and bracing himself to resistance of the law; the whole episode of Cassy and Legree; exhibit some real dramatic humour and pathos. It has been observed that the original authorities for some of the keenest touches -as Topsy's "S'pose I grow'd," are found as simple facts in the after-published Key; but the power to select and set well, if not that of creative imagination, must be granted to the writer. Her production has the air, and much of the reality, of a simple narrative, not compiled for mere artistic purposes: it seems to be a precise, though somewhat crude, résumé of observations on the black world. Mrs. Stowe's religious views-like those of her brother, the vigorous, though often tasteless, pulpit and platform orator, Henry |