meeting at
Stafford House, and the address, composed by Lord Shaftesbury, was put
into the hands of canvassers in England and on the Continent, and as far
as Jerusalem. The signatures of 562,848 women were obtained, with their
occupations and residences, from the nobility on the steps of the throne
down to maids in the kitchen. The address is handsomely engrossed on
vellum. The names are contained in twenty-six massive volumes, each
fourteen inches high by nine in breadth and three inches thick, inclosed
in an oak case. It is believed that this is the most numerously signed
address in existence. The value of the address, with so many names
collected in haphazard fashion, was much questioned, but its use was
apparent in the height of the civil war, when Mrs. Stowe replied to it
in one of the most vigorous and noble appeals that ever came from her
pen. This powerful reply made a profound impression in England.

This is in brief the story of the book. It is still read, and read the
world over, with tears and with laughter; it is still played to excited
audiences. Is it a great novel, or was it only an event of an era of
agitation and passion? Has it the real dramatic quality--the poet's
visualizing of human life--that makes works of fiction, of imagination,
live? Till recently, I had not read the book since 1852. I feared to
renew acquaintance with it lest I should find only the shell of an
exploded cartridge. I took it up at the beginning of a three-hours'
railway journey. To my surprise the journey did not seem to last half an
hour, and half the time I could not keep back the tears from my eyes. A
London critic, full of sympathy with Mrs. Stowe and her work, recently
said, "Yet she was not an artist, she was not a great woman." What is
greatness? What is art? In 1862 probably no one who knew General Grant
would have called him a great man. But he took Vicksburg. This woman did
something with her pen,--on the whole, the most remarkable and effective
book in her generation. How did she do it? Without art? George Sand
said, "In matters of art there is but one rule, to paint and to move.
And where shall we find conditions more complete, types more vivid,
situations more touching, more original, than in Uncle Tom?" If there
is not room in our art for such a book, I think we shall have to stretch
our art a little. "Women, too, are here judged and painted with a master
hand." This subtle critic, in her overpoweringly tender and