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Show 8 llRELIMINAILY. What do you think of Uncle Tom's Cabin? and this latter question asked, too, more than once, with an air of tri1_1mph, as though the book were, to use its author's expressive epithet, a" settler." For my part, I think it is a riler: it hrts stirred up more Lad bile in twelve months, than can be settled in as many years. It is .evidently a live book. ~'his is proved by tho run it has had. Several months ago, its circulation bad reached 100,000 in this country, and 150,000 in England, in which latt.er country an Abridgment has also been issued for children, (!) entitled, "A Peep into Uncle Tom's Cabin." (Sec London Guardian, of Jan. 2G.) Moreover, it has been transla,tcd into several modern languages, French, German, Danish, and even VV clsh; the latter, under the euphonious title of "Caban F' Ewythr 'l1wm!" ~rhe next thing will be to translate it into Grebe, for the benefit of Quashy at home, to show him how much better & Christian his cannibal master in Africa is, than his brother Quashy's Christian master in America! To crown the whole, the stor,y (her story, not history, as some one. has very aptly remarked,) has been dramatized and brought out on tho London boards; and in Paris, on the night of the 18th of January, it was produced in eight acts (!) to an overflowing house, who "didn't go homo till" after "morning," sitting it out till ltalj past one, A. M. Shades of the Puritans! A descendant of yours, the daughter of one Theological Professor, and wife of another, catering for the Parisian Theatre, and "taking the shine oft' (deslustrer) of" Moliere and Eugene Scribe! Verily, truth is strange-stranger than fiction; than any other fiction, that is, than Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book, then, is a lit•e one. But ~n what does its lifo reside? Not in its plot, for it has none; probably for the same reason that Coleridge gave for women having no D souls:* it is itself a plot;- a plot against the peace of society. (I am speaking of the character of the work, not of the author's motives.) I say, it is a plot against the peace of society. llut of this more hereafter. My present business with it is, as a work of art; :.md viewing it as such, I must say, that of all the works of fiction I remem~r to have met with, it, so far as unity of action is concerned, is the most slovenly put together: its only bond of unity is an external one-the thread and paste of the binder. '11110 life of the work, then, is not in its organism: we mm;t seek it elsewhere. Luckily, we have not far to seck. Like an old cheese, its life is in its d1·arnatis personce. Such characters as Topsy, Miss Ophelia, and Black Sam, might curry on their backs all the lead of all tho novels of tho present generation, with a fair prospect, still, of floating down to posterity. Of all the characters in the book, there is but one that is a jailu1·e; and the reason is, that in that one, tho .author had no original to draw from: Legree is neither man nor devil, but a tertium quid, and such as none but a quidnunc could swallow. In One respect, Undo Tom's Cabin is like General liarrison's: its proprietor has left the "latch-string out," in sign of invitation; ot· rather, she has loft the Cabin itself open, and she must not, therefore, take it ill, if, in 'V estern parlance, I "walk into it." But first, while standing on the threshold, or rather, before the threshold, (prce limen,) I wish to "define my position," that there may be no mistake about it. I start, then, with tho Cht-istian doctrine of lmman brotlwrhood. I say, the Christian doctrine, for I am writing 2 *Nay, dearest Anna, why so grave? I snid you hn\·e no soul, 'tis true ; For what you arc, you cannot ltavc:- ''fis I tha.t have one, since I first lmvc you. |