e that
Arabian fabric, is a reality, and shall last forever. [Applause.] She
must not be allowed, to depreciate herself, and to call her glorious
book a mere 'bubble.' Such a bubble there never was before. I wish we
had ten thousand such bubbles. [Applause.] If it had been a bubble it
would have broken long ago. 'Man,' says Jeremy Taylor, 'is a bubble.'
Yea, but he is an immortal one. And such an immortal bubble is Uncle
Tom's Cabin; it can only with man expire; and yet a year ago not ten
individuals in this vast assembly had ever heard of its author's name.
[Applause.] At its artistic merits we may well marvel--to find in a
small volume the descriptive power of a Scott, the humor of a Dickens,
the keen, observing glance of a Thackeray, the pathos of a Richardson or
Mackenzie, combined with qualities of earnestness, simplicity, humanity,
and womanhood peculiar to the author herself. But there are three things
which, strike me as peculiarly remarkable about Uncle Tom's Cabin: it is
the work of an American--of a woman--and of an evangelical Christian.
[Cheers.] We have long been accustomed to despise American literature--I
mean as compared with our own. I have heard eminent _litterateurs_ say,
'Pshaw! the Americans have no national literature.' It was thought that
they lived entirely on plunder--the plunder of poor slaves, and of poor
British authors. [Loud cheers.] Their own works, when, they came among
us, were treated either with contempt or with patronizing wonder--yes,
the 'Sketch Book' was a very good book to be an American's. To parody
two lines of Pope, we

Admired such wisdom in a Yankee shape,
And showed an Irving as they show an ape.'

[Loud cheers.] And yet, strange to tell, not only of late have we been
almost deluged with editions of new and excellent American writers, but
the most popular book of the century has appeared on the west side of
the Atlantic. Let us hear no more of the poverty of American brains, or
the barrenness of American literature. Had it produced only Uncle Tom's
Cabin, it had evaded contempt just as certainly as Don Quixote, had
there been no other product of the Spanish mind, would have rendered it
forever illustrious. It is the work of a woman, too! None but a woman
could have written it. There are in the human mind springs at once
delicate and deep, which only the female genius can understand, or the
female finger touch. Who but a female could have created the gentle Eva,
painte