selfish and hysterical woman has never been so
faithfully depicted by any other author.

Distinguished as the novel is by its character-drawing and its pathos,
I doubt if it would have captivated the world without its humor. This
is of the old-fashioned kind, the large humor of Scott, and again of
Cervantes, not verbal pleasantry, not the felicities of Lamb, but
the humor of character in action, of situations elaborated with great
freedom, and with what may be called a hilarious conception. This
quality is never wanting in the book, either for the reader's
entertainment by the way, or to heighten the pathos of the narrative by
contrast. The introduction of Topsy into the New Orleans household saves
us in the dangerous approach to melodrama in the religious passages
between Tom and St. Clare. Considering the opportunities of the subject,
the book has very little melodrama; one is apt to hear low music on the
entrance of little Eva, but we are convinced of the wholesome sanity of
the sweet child. And it is to be remarked that some of the most exciting
episodes, such as that of Eliza crossing the Ohio River on the floating
ice (of which Mr. Ruskin did not approve), are based upon authentic
occurrences. The want of unity in construction of which the critics
complain is partially explained by the necessity of exhibiting the
effect of slavery in its entirety. The parallel plots, one running
to Louisiana and the other to Canada, are tied together by this
consideration, and not by any real necessity to each other.

There is no doubt that Mrs. Stowe was wholly possessed by her theme,
rapt away like a prophet in a vision, and that, in her feeling at the
time, it was written through her quite as much as by her. This idea
grew upon her mind in the retrospective light of the tremendous stir the
story made in the world, so that in her later years she came to regard
herself as a providential instrument, and frankly to declare that she
did not write the book; "God wrote it." In her own account, when she
reached the death of Uncle Tom, "the whole vital force left her."
The inspiration there left her, and the end of the story, the weaving
together of all the loose ends of the plot, in the joining together
almost by miracle the long separated, and the discovery of the
relationships, is the conscious invention of the novelist.

It would be perhaps going beyond the province of the critic to remark
upon what the author considered the centr