ieve the darkness of his coloring in each
instance by lines of light, but it is not made palpable enough for
running readers. He has seen the weakness that generally develops itself
in, and the hypocrisy that almost invariably clings to the skirts of a
great popular movement, and it is these alone which he aims to bring
down. In this he is right. He errs in that his vision is neither clear
nor broad. He does not always wisely discriminate as to the nature or
extent of the disease, or the effect of the remedy which he applies. The
cause of the difficulty has baffled his researches. The people upon whom
his strictures fall, and to whom strictures belong, will be inflamed,
but they will not be enlightened; and they who do see the real nature of
the movement, its bane as well as its blessing, and who are constantly
laboring to separate the chaff from the wheat, will not be helped, but
hindered, by his well-meant efforts.

But, as we intimated, the book, like fame, increases in going. Under all
the wit and humor, which are often very charming, under all the satire,
which is none the less enjoyable because occasionally half-hidden, under
the somewhat multifarious machinery, which the peculiar structure of the
book renders necessary, there rises slowly into view and presently into
prominence the outline of a purpose as noble as it is rare. In the teeth
of popular prejudice, Bayard Taylor has had the courage to take for his
heroine a woman "strong-minded," austere in her faith, past her first
youth, given to public speaking, and imbued, we might almost say to
stubbornness, with ultra ideas of "woman's rights." True, he has given
her to us in the most modified form possible to such a character,
utterly pure, unselfish, true, refined, without ambition, impelled by
the highest motives, and guided by the highest principles. But the
conjunction of these two classes of qualities in one person is the real
Malakoff. That accomplished and the work is done. In this conception
lies the true originality of the book. In this attempt lies the true
consciousness of power. He who can make his hero say,--"It was my
profound appreciation of those very elements in your character which led
you to take up these claims of woman and make them your own, that opened
the way for you to my heart: I reverence the qualities, without
accepting all the conclusions born of them,"--has a deeper insight than
most of his fellows. He shows that he looks at things,