enthusiastic
review, had already inquired about the capacity of this writer. "Mrs.
Stowe is all instinct; it is the very reason that she appears to
some not to have talent. Has she not talent? What is talent? Nothing,
doubtless, compared to genius; but has she genius? I cannot say that she
has talent as one understands it in the world of letters, but she has
genius as humanity feels the need of genius,--the genius of goodness,
not that of the man of letters, but of the saint." It is admitted that
Mrs. Stowe was not a woman of letters in the common acceptation of that
term, and it is plain that in the French tribunal, where form is of
the substance of the achievement, and which reluctantly overlooked the
crudeness of Walter Scott, in France where the best English novel seems
a violation of established canons, Uncle Tom would seem to belong where
some modern critics place it, with works of the heart, and not of the
head. The reviewer is, however, candid: "For a long time we have striven
in France against the prolix explanations of Walter Scott. We have cried
out against those of Balzac, but on consideration have perceived that
the painter of manners and character has never done too much, that every
stroke of the pencil was needed for the general effect. Let us learn
then to appreciate all kinds of treatment, where the effect is good, and
where they bear the seal of a master hand."

It must be admitted to the art critic that the book is defective
according to the rules of the modern French romance; that Mrs. Stowe
was possessed by her subject, and let her fervid interest in it be felt;
that she had a definite purpose. That purpose was to quicken the sense
of responsibility of the North by showing the real character of slavery,
and to touch the South by showing that the inevitable wrong of it lay in
the system rather than in those involved in it. Abundant material was in
her hands, and the author burned to make it serviceable. What should she
do? She might have done what she did afterwards in The Key, presented to
the public a mass of statistics, of legal documents. The evidence would
have been unanswerable, but the jury might not have been moved by
it; they would have balanced it by considerations of political and
commercial expediency. I presume that Mrs. Stowe made no calculation of
this kind. She felt her course, and went on in it. What would an artist
have done, animated by her purpose and with her material? He would ha