The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-05-17
NEW BOOK AND A LOST SOCIETY.

a NEW BOOk AND LooA SoOAH&"
II Abraham Page, in Mr.. John Hollis mover
by this name and other personages holding
subordinate places in the same story, do not
exhaustively typify Southern life and charac-
ter as they were, but as they are no more,
they serve to exhibit in quiet and unpreteno-
ing, but none the less attractive and impress
sive manner. certain phases of society in the |
South which are fast passing away, If they |
are not. indeed, already extinct. We do not
purpose SO much to descant upon the literary
qualities of the book as to glance at some OF
the social peculiarities which are illustratedin
its paces. Yet viewed from a strictly literary
stand point, it is a work which may challenge
comparison with some of the most classical
fctions in English literature. In its simple,
pellucid style, and in its sequestered scenes,
it recalls in some degree the "Ficar OF
Wakefield" and where its descriptions apply
to a state of society of which only the ruins
and traditions remain, it brings to mind
touches of pensiye pathos from the most ex- I
quisite passages of the Deserted Village.
But the resemblance is in no way suggestive
of imitation accompanied as it is by differ
erences as wide as the contrast between the
present century and the epoch OF OliVer
Goldsmith, and between what antiquity
Il means in the New. The author
nf 1" Abraham Page" in boldly striking
out from the beaten track of contamrn-~-S-
novel writing, has managed, with admirable
tact. to avoid other paths that were made
equally worn and trite in preceding era OF
literature In being eminently unsensational,
it is eminently unique, and bresthes an air OF
peculiar freshness. And yet it is by no means
destitute of passion, of animated incident,
and of strong and salient character. 1t sim
ply rejects the plan of the sensational nov
elist who paints only the exceptional, the alb
normal and the morbid in human nature, and
whose works can be accepted as truthful pic
lures of society only upon the theory that the
civilized world is vast pest-house which is
separated by thin and fragile partition from
pandemonium. Those who may, on this
account, pronounce it less imaginative than
the novels of Reade or Braddon, must,
| for the same reason, allow that it is also more
| probable, more human and more healthful.
As typical or representative man, Abra-
ham Page belongs, SO to speak, to an extinct
race. The precise social conditions which
made him have ceased to exist, and will never
reappear. To expect to look upon bis like
| hereafter would be as unreasonable as to ex-
| pect to behold q live mastodon or paleo-
| therium, OF to behold a second edition OF
| Washington, jefferson or jackson. Nature
breaks the moulds in which she casts the
societies as well as the great men of certain
| epochs. The society of which Mr.. Page was
one of the expressions, was such as could
only have been developed about half GEN.
fury ago, in quasi frontier portion of the
| South. Elsewhere lifelong students were to
be found, but not his methods of studying.
Elsewhere men Of wide erudition, of deep
and comprehensive thought, of wonderful
| versatility, and yet free from pedantry and
| dry technicalities, were not wanting. And
there were philosophers, pbilanthropists and
| humorists elsewhere. But there was some
thing peculiar as well as typical in the learn.
ing, the simplicity, the philosophy, the phi
| lanthrnpy and the hnmor of Mr.. Page, be-
cause his education and his environments
belonged to state of society which was in
many respects equally unexampled and fell
citous.
In the period referred to, the social quiet
| ude of the South was profound 1t was grow
ing in wealth faster than in population; not
with mushroom growth, but rapidly enough
There was enterprise on a solid basis of in
dustry and capital, and plenty of substantial
progress was made without spasm and giddi
ness. The dollar was neither worshiped mol
utterly despised. 1t was not place whert
the idle and tbri(tless were countenanced, o.
where vulgar obsequiousness encouraged tn
wealthy to neglect the graces and amenities o
life and to cultivate snobbish exelusiyeness
Let it not be supposed, however, that tn
society referred to was remarkable for uni
formity. If there never was more harmo
NOUS society, there never was on
more complex and diversified.
All political opinions, oil religious creeds
all scientific crotchets, all individual eccen
tricities found in it ample room, and seldom
or never jostled one against another. Uni
versal tolerance prevailed. We say this in tn
face of the hackneyed assertion of som
Northern writers that freedom of opinion wa
never tolerated in the South on the subject 0
slavery. There were always men of know
abolition sentiments in the South, who wer
as safe and respectable there as they woul
have been in Faneuil or Exeter hall. 1t wa
the intolerance of the Northern abolitionist
and not his opposition to slavery, that cause
him to be detested by the mass of the South
ern people, and by none more intensely tina
by those who did not own slave. His exist
ence, along with his loose ideas of constitr
tional limitations, was perpetual menace
! the laiSSezJaire system under which domesti
affairs in the South adjusted themselves spor