Stowe seems in her
former novels to have sought in a form of society alien to her
sympathies, and too remote for exact study, or for the acquirement of
that local truth which is the slow result of unconscious observation.
There can be no stronger proof of the greatness of her genius, of her
possessing that conceptive faculty which belongs to the higher order
of imagination, than the avidity with which 'Uncle Tom' was read at
the South. It settled the point that this book was true to human
nature, even if not minutely so to plantation life.
"If capable of so great a triumph where success must so largely depend
on the sympathetic insight of her mere creative power, have we not a
right to expect something far more in keeping with the requirements of
art, now that her wonderful eye is to be the mirror of familiar
scenes, and of a society in which she was bred, of which she has seen
so many varieties, and that, too, in the country, where it is most
_naive_ and original? It is a great satisfaction to us that in
'The Minister's Wooing' she has chosen her time and laid her scene
amid New England habits and traditions. There is no other writer who
is so capable of perpetuating for us, in a work of art, a style of
thought and manners which railways and newspapers will soon render as
pal?ozoic as the mastodon or the megalosaurians. Thus far the story
has fully justified our hopes.
Pages:
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371