MRS. STOWE'S LAST WORKS.*
THAT genius is elevated by unconsciousness is a dogma which it is not perhaps worth any man's while to disturb. It tends, at all events, to produce humility, and perhaps by suggesting the idea of inspiration really increases the reverence which it is for the world's best interest that genius should secure. Unconsciousness is never- theless only a form of ignorance, and ignorance is never without its drawbacks; a man may be better for not recognizing the full extent of his own powers, but he is much the worse for not understanding their kind. When Sir W. Jones thought that because he was a great linguist he could therefore dance he simply upset the quadrille, and authors every day puzzle and vex their admirers by travelling out of the sphere in which alone they are strong. Mrs. Stowe, for example, is, beyond all doubt, a woman of original genius. The praise lavished on her first work of course produced her a host of critics, but a careful judgment will, we believe, only confirm the popular verdict. No man of healthy mind can read the account of the death of Eva aloud, or fail to laugh at the humour which lightens up the gloom of her slave scenes. We question, indeed, whether the wit of the book was ever fairly appreciated except by the masses, who, if they did not understand the terrible theological repartees at least appreciated Topsy. The "Minister's Wooing," too, which never. received the seal, or stigma, of high public approval, displayed a power not often found iu female writing, a subtly hostile analysis of the effects produced by peculiar tenets. Women can often de- scribe the religious sentiment with which they sympathize, and de- scribe it accurately, but they rarely or never appreciate while
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detesting, as Mrs. Stowe does in the case of Calvinism. But with all her faculties, imagination, humour, and power of sympathy, Mrs. Stowe does not understand her own strength, thinks, evidently, thst because she possesses a matchless weapon, she is, without it, strong. Her weapon is knowledge of American life. It is her use of the couleur locale which gives her pictures their form and life, and with- out it she is but a painter who, having made a reputation by colour, attempts, without equally understanding form, to succeed as a graver. Eva, in " Uncle Tom's Cabin," is intelligible only as the child of the South, with misery and injustice always before her eyes. Topsy is only possible because she is a child slave, of a race in which the re- flective power seems never to have been awakened. St. Clair and Miss 'Feely, Haley and the Hallidays, are all marvellous creations, but they would be ridiculous or inexplicable out of America. In St. Clair the true power of the description consists in the wonderful picture of the influence exercised by slavery over a nature which disowns it. Miss Oplielia shows, and shows perfectly, the effect of New England training on a strong woman's mind, but imagine her as a German C' Haley is a kind of villain, and the Hallidays a sort of philanthropists, impossible except among men who are promoting or cursing the habitual theft of an inferior race. So m " Dred," what little the book has of beautiful consists in the account of tropical scenery, the development of a wild half insane tropical nature, and the vague impression we gain, not so much from description as from a general tone, of the degradation of the "white trash" of the South. In the "Minister's Wooing" all interest concentrates in the effect of Calvinism on an American mother and girl. A. Frenchwoman saying or doing the things these women say and do would be simply unnatural, and the fact fixes the limit of Mrs. Stowe's capacity. She has lived among Americans of all grades, watched them, and sympathized with them, till her imagination can create an Ame- rican, place him or her in almost any position, and bring his ex- istence home as a known reality to thousands of foreign readers. But she has not genius of that rare class which can seize on the points common to all humanity, describe a citizen of any race or clime, and make him thenceforward part of the human family. Her wand has no power except within her own magic circle. It is broken when she steps over the line, and not even the descriptions of highly placed Britons in " Sunny Memories" could induce Englishmen to read those gentle inanities, redeemed as they were only by the absence of the gall we are wont to expect in American descriptions of England. Perhaps, however, the best proof of the source from which she derives her power is to be found in the two works she has just completed. The Pearl of Orr's Island is, on the whole, the feeblest of her American stories. Mara, the heroine, is but Eva, weird, graceful, and consumptive, but placed amid Northern associa- tions. Moses, the hero, is but a type Southerner vulgarized, and there- fore deprived of the flavour which gave its charm to the original dish. The incidents, which turn on a child of Spanish blood wrecked on a New England fishing village, are old and melodramatic, and the comic side of the book is but sketchily finished. But the story is, nevertheless, readable. Even a replica of Eva has an indefinable charm. Zephaniah Pennel, the Puritan fisherman who so bitterly loves his child, lives to the reader, and Kittridge, the old captain, who would be religious if he could, but is somehow a fine old heathen • The Pearl of Orr's Island. By. Mrs. H. B. Stowe. Sampson Low, Son, and Co. Agnes of Sorrento. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. Smith, Elder, and Co. with a taste for romantic lying, and ".hops over all moral boundaries with a cheerful alertness of conscience quite discouraging," is a figure no one who reads the book will think indistinct or poor. Ruey and Roxy, the sisters who nurse, bury, and dress the village, are original, and their good sayings, if less profuse than those scattered through "Uncle 'lom's Cabin," are still racy of the soil. Nobody but an American nurse would think of saying, "Cows is the Lord's ordi- nances for bringing up babies that's lost their mothers ; it stands to reason they should be—and babies that can't eat milk why they can't be fetched up ; but babies can eat milk, and this un will, if it lives, and if it can't it won't live." Nor would this quaint expression of the first educational truth, though of universal application, sound natural except out of a New England mouth : " All children a'n't alike, Miss Kittridge. ," said Miss Roxy, sententiously. "This 'un a'n't like your Sally. 'A hen and a bumble-bee can't be feched up alike, fix it how you will l' " Nor would any sailor away from the land where Puritanism is in the air, dream of illustrating a romance as Cap'n Kittridge does this : " 'Laws, child, I wish now I had,' said the Captain, good-naturedly. Why, when I was in India, I went up to Lucknow, and Benares, and round, and saw all the Nabobs and Biggtims —why, they don't make no more of gold and silver and precious stones than we do of the shells we find on the beach. Why, I've seen one of them fellers with a diamond in his turban as big as my fist.'—'Cap'n Kittridge, what are you telling?' said his wife once more.—` Fact—as big as my fiat,' said the Captain, obdurately; and all the clothes he wore was jist a stiff crust of pearls and precious stones. I tell you, he looked like something in the Revelations— a real New Jerusalem look he I call that ar talk wicked, Cap'n Kittridge, wain' Script& that ar way,' said his wife.—' Why, don't it tell about all sorts of gold and precious stones in the Revelations ?' said the Captain; that's all 1 meant. Them ar countries off in Asia a'n't like our'n—stands to reason they shouldn't be ; them's Scripture countries, and everything is different there. "
The couleur locale is over everything, the people, and their creed, their sayings, and their temptations, and consequently, if the readers criticise plot and moral, they still read on with a thorough sense of amusement, and a dim feeling that they are being instructed, intro- duced, as it were, to a mode of life which is outside their experience, but which they instinctively feel to be true. Agnes of Sorrento is just the opposite of all this. The story is well written, and the plot, on the whole, well devised. A young Italian girl of the time of the Borgias might have lived in an Italian convent innocent and imaginative, have fallen in love with an ex- communicated knight, have doubted whether she ought not to he the bride of Christ, and have been disenchanted by a visit to Rome when ruled by the Borgias. There is no passage in the book which is open to the charge of absurdity; some of the descriptions are fine, and the struggle of the pious monk with his love for Agnes is power- fully though somewhat womanishly described. But of the average of eighty-four thousand readers whom Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co. claim for the Cornhill Magazine, we doubt if eighty-four ever got through Agnes of Sorrento. Terribly weary they must have been if they did, for the whole story has as little in it of human interest as if it were told of the fairies. The people are lay figures, the de- scri.ptions read as if taken out of a book of travels, and the sayings are incongruous with people and scenes alike. Mrs. Stowe has visited Italy, and read some Italian history, and fancies the know- ledge so acquired is material for a good story. Unfortunately, she cannot infuse the breath of life into the clay she has kneaded toge- ther. The whole book is lifeless from beginning to end, for the author has tried to make the life of to-day vivify figures dead five hundred years ago. Her characters all talk unnaturally. An old and pious Catholic servant ledtures his master thus : " Oh, my lord, my lord ! a religion got out of poetry books and romances won't do to die by. We have no business with the affairs of the Head of the Church ; it's the Lord's appointment : we have only to shut our eyes and obey. It may do well enough to talk so when you are young and gay; but when sickness and death come, then we must have religion: and if we have gone out of the only true Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, what becomes of our souls?"' An old nurse quizzes her priest, who has remarked on the virtues of St. Martha, in a sentence which would have well fitted Roxy, but which in its time and place is simplT absurd: " Honourable ! I should think it might be !' retorted Elsie. ' I warrant me, if everything had been left to Saint Mary's doings, our Blessed Lord and the Twelve Apostles might have gone supperless. But it's Martha gets all the work, and Mary all the praise." Agnes throughout has the religious self-consciousness of the nineteenth century, and moreover worries herself about the precise little morsel of theology which is just now worrying this generation, the eternity of punishment. Agostino, the hero, is a shadowy figure of an Italian noble and bandit, who abhors Rome, pants for holiness of faith, talks eternally about his sword, and thinks the world no place for an honourable man. The sketch of Savonarola is a failure, for it has in it nothing to distinguish it from the sketch of any other enthusiast, and is consequently as uninteresting as the Virtues and Vices of some old lyric drama. Whatever is real is American, as for example Elsie the nurse, who wants to have a little comfort deducted from her allowance in heaven and given her here on earth, and as much out of place as an iceberg would be in a Neapolitan landscape. To those who read for analysis the contrast of figure and costume, and costume and speech, the perpetual anachronisms, and the attempt to insert American thoughts in Italian monks give a bizarre impression one is apt to mistake for interest. But to those who read to enjoy, and who expect from Mrs. Stowe pictures better than bad medie=val tapestry, Agnes of Sorrento is simply and wearily dull.
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