save Margaret Fuller, has ever yet taken the pains to train
herself for first-class literary work,--has no doubt had a transient
influence on Harriet Prescott. Add to this, perhaps, the common and
fatal necessity of authorship which pushes even second-best wares into
the market. It is evident, that, with all the instinct of a student and
an artist, she has been a sensation-writer against her will. The whole
structure of "Azarian," which is evidently a work of art and of love,
indicates these higher aspirations, and shows that she is resolved to
nourish them, not by abandoning her own peculiar ground, but by training
her gifts and gradually exorcising her temptations. Like her "Amber
Gods," the book rests its strength on its descriptive and analytic
power, not on its events; but, unlike that extraordinary story, it is
healthful in its development and hopeful in its ending. The name of "An
Episode" seems to be given to it, not in affectation, but in humility.
It is simply a minute study of character, in the French style, though
with a freshness and sweetness which no Frenchman ever yet succeeded in
transferring into language, and which here leave none of that bad taste
in the mouth of which Charlotte Bronte complained. The main situation is
one not new in fiction, being simply unequal love and broken troth, but
it is one never to be portrayed too often or too tenderly, and it is not
desecrated, but ennobled by the handling. It is refreshing to be able to
say for Miss Prescott that she absolutely reaches the end of the book
without a suicide or a murder, although the heroine for a moment
meditates the one and goes to the theatre to behold the other. The
dialogue, usually a weak point with this writer, is here for better
managed than usual, having her customary piquancy, with less of
disfigurement from flippancy and bad puns. The plot shows none of those
alarming pieces of incongruity and bathos which have marred some of her
stories. And one may fancy that it is not far to seek for the originals
of Azarian, Charmian, and Madame Sarator.

It is the style of the book, however, to which one must revert with
admiration, not unmingled with criticism, and, it may be, a trifle of
just indignation. There are not ten living writers in America of whom it
can be said that their style is in itself a charm,--that it has the
range, the flexibility, the delicacy, the ease, the strength, which
constitute permanent power,--that it is so sat