The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1859-07-13
From the New York Tribune.
Mrs. STOVES NEW NOVEL,

Mrs. STOVES NEW NOVEL.
1t has always seemed to us that tho
anti slavery element it the two former
novels of Mrs. Stowe stood IN the way of
Il fuI appreciation of her remarkable
genius, at least in own country. 1t was
50 easy to account for tie unexampled
popularity of "Uncle TOM" by attribu-
ing it to cheap sympathy with senti-
mental philanthropy As p Ole began
to recover from the first enchantment. they
began also to resent it, and began to
complain that dose of that insane
Garrison root which takes the reason
prisoner had been palnied upon them
without their knowing it., and that their
ordinary water Cruel of fiction, tbinned
with sentiment and thickened with moral
had been hocussed with the bewillering
hasheosh of Abolition We had the al
vantage Of reading that extraordinary
book in Europe, long after the whirl of
excitement produced by its publication
aad subsiled, in Tie seclusion Of distanc",
aud with judgment undisturbed by
those political sympathies which 1t is
impossible, perhaps unwise to avoid at
home. We felt then, and believe now,
that the secret of Mrs. Stoves power lay
in that same genius by which the greet
successes in creative literature have al
ways been achieved the genius that IT.
stinctivcly goes right to the organic ele-
ments of human nature, whether under n
| white skin or black, AMI which dlsre-
CARDS as trivial the conventional and
fictitious notions which make SO large a
part both of our thinking and feeling.
Works of imagination written with an
aim at immediate impression are com
monly ephenera, like Miss Mart'neaux's
Tales and Elliotts Corn-law verses; but
the creative faculty of Mrs. Stow, like
that of Ceryantes in ''Don QulXote' and
of Fielding in Joseph Andrews" over
powered the narrow specially Of her de-
sign. and expanded n local aud temper
airy tl4eme with the cosmopolitan of gen
JUS.
1t is proverb that "there is great
deal of human nature in men," but it is
coraHy and sadly true that there is amaz-
inclv little of it in books. Fielding is
the only English novelist who 1cals with
life in its broadcast sense. Thackcray, his
disciple and eongener, and Dickens, the
conoener of StnoI!ett, do not SO much
| treat Of Life as of the strata Of Society
| the one studying nature from the club
room window, the other from reporters
box in the Police Court. 1t may be
that the general obIiteration of dist;nc
tons of rank in this country which is gen
orally considered detrimont to the nov
elst will in the end turn t, his advantage
bv compelling him to depend for his eff
fects on the contrast and collisions of
innate character, rather than on those@
shalower traits superinducod by particu
lar social arrangements or hereditary
associations. Shakespeare drew his ideal,
and Fielding natural men and women;
Thackeray draws either gentlemen Or
snobs, and Dickens either unnatural men
or the oddities natural only in the lowest
grades of highly artificial system of so
ciety. The first two knew human nature;
of the two latter, one knows what is cali
ed the World and T. oth@r the 81 re. t, of
London. It is possible that the very Sc
Gal democracy which here rcbs tho nov
elist of so much romance, so much cos
tune, SO much antithesis of caste, SO
much, in short, that is purely external,
will give hima set-off in making it easier
for him to get at that element of univer-
sal humanity which neither of the two
extremes; of an aristocratic system, nor
the salient and picturesque points of con
trast between the two, can alone lay open
to him.
We hope to see this problem solvedby
Mrs. Stowe. That kind of romantic in
terest which Scott evolved from the rela-
lions of lord and vassal, of chief and
clansman, from the social more than the
moral contrast OF Rodndhcad and Casa-
Her. far descend 4 papper and roareaa-