nd has held the stage in France ever since. It
was placed upon the "Index" in Italy, as being subversive of established
authority. Millions of copies were sold in Europe, and "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," more than any other cause, held the English working men in
sympathy with the North in the English cotton crisis of our Civil War.

It is easy to see the faults of this masterpiece and impossible not to
recognize its excellencies. "If our art has not scope enough to include
a book of this kind," said Madame George Sand, "we had better stretch
the terms of our art a little." For the book proved to be, as its author
had hoped, a "living dramatic reality." Topsy, Chloe, Sam and Andy,
Miss Ophelia and Legree are alive. Mrs. St. Clare might have been one of
Balzac's indolent, sensuous women. Uncle Tom himself is a bit too
good to be true, and readers no longer weep over the death of little
Eva--nor, for that matter, over the death of Dickens's little Nell.
There is some melodrama, some religiosity, and there are some absurd
recognition scenes at the close. Nevertheless with an instinctive genius
which Zola would have envied, Mrs. Stowe embodies in men and women the
vast and ominous system of slavery. All the tragic forces of necessity,
blindness, sacrifice, and retribution are here: neither Shelby, nor
Eliza, nor the tall Kentuckian who aids her, nor John Bird, nor Uncle
Tom himself in the final act of his drama, can help himself. For good or
evil they are the products and results of the system; and yet they have
and they give the illusion of volition.

Mrs. Stowe lived to write many another novel and short story, among
them "Dred," "The Minister's Wooing," "Oldtown Folks," "Oldtown Fireside
Stories." In the local short story she deserves the honors due to one of
the pioneers, and her keen affectionate observation, her humor, and her
humanity, would have given her a literary reputation quite independent
of her masterpiece. But she is likely to pay the penalty of that
astounding success, and to go down to posterity as the author of a
single book. She would not mind this fate.

The poetry of the idea of Freedom and of the sectional struggle which
was necessary before that idea could be realized in national policy is
on the whole not commensurate with the significance of the issue itself.
Any collection of American political verse produced during this period
exhibits spirited and sincere writing, but the combination of mature
literary