rrative interest to her work, and gave to her characters
a very life-like effect. Her pathetic and humorous scenes are natural
and well arranged. The peculiarities of negro life and habits of
thought are placed before the reader with genuine sympathy and truth.
Uncle Tom and Topsy are fine and original creations. But taken simply
as a novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not more remarkable than a hundred
others, and cannot compete with such works as "Tom Jones," "Adam Bede,"
or "David Copperfield." Mrs. Stowe's extraordinary success was fully
deserved, but it resulted less from the literary excellence of her
work, than from the fact that when one great subject rose pre-eminent
in the public mind, she was able to embody it in a popular and easily
comprehended form. Gilmore Simms and John P. Kennedy have contributed
largely to the novel of Southern life. Mr. G.W. Cable is now studying
Louisiana characters, and Judge Tourgee the general condition of the
South since the war.

Novels descriptive of Western life have been written by Charles Fenno
Hoffman, James Hall, Timothy Flint, Thomas, and O'Connell. But none of
these writers have given such original sketches of character, or have
so graphically portrayed the spirit of life in the far West as Mr.
Bret Harte. "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and the other stories of this
talented writer have opened a vein of romance where it was least
expected.

American fiction has been exceptionally rich in stories adapted to the
juvenile mind, among which the most prominent are Mrs. Whitney's "Faith
Gartney's Girlhood," Miss Alcott's "Little Women," and Mr. T.B.
Aldrich's "Story of a Bad Boy." Edgar Allan Poe's "Tales of the
Grotesque and the Arabesque," are remarkable for intensity and
vividness of conception, combined with a circumstantial invention
almost equal to that of Defoe. Mrs. Burnett and Mr. J.W. De Forest are
still writing excellent novels of American life; and Mr. Henry James,
Jr., is studying that peculiar form of human nature known as the
American in Europe.[210]

[Footnote 210: Other American writers of fiction:--R.B. Kimball, Herman
Melville, Dr. R. Bird, John Neal, H.W. Longfellow, Washington Allston,
Maria S. Cummins, W.G. Simms, Theodore Winthrop, Mary J. Holmes, Mrs.
Terhune, Augusta Evans Wilson, Catherine Sedgwick Valerio.]

VII.

The historical novel is obviously a subdivision of the novel of life
and manners. But, dealing as it does with remote ages, with forgot