they were commonplace, every-day occurrences, giving to my fair auditors the impression, all the while, that I thought such inflictions all right where negroes were the subjects of them. Thus I went on, pouring out horror after horror, with a fertility of invention that I had never before imagined myself possessed of, and which seems truly wonderful when I look back upon it. The ancient maidens listened, all the while, with open eyes and mouth, swallowing my inventions easily, and with throats apparently capacious enough to admit ‘a few more of the same sort;' but, unluckily for our sport, the coach brought me and my companion to our journey's end, and I had to break off in the midst of a horror which, for that reason, has remained untold to this day."

Now all this was very naughty, no doubt, and the only apology we can make for it is in Black Sam's language, (vol. i. p. 113,) mutatis mutandis:-"It was ugly on me,there's no disputin' that ar; and of course good people wouldn't encourage no such works. I'm sensible of dat ar; but a wild fellow like me's 'mazin' tempted to act ugly sometimes, when ancient maidens and 'collecting clerks' will be so green."

So much for the "fist and knuckles." Now for another inconsistency and improbability: "I don't go for savin' niggers. Use up, and buy more, 's my way;-makes you less trouble, and I'm quite sure it comes cheaper in the end ;' and Simon sipped his glass.

"And how long do they generally last?' said the stranger.

"Well, donno; 'cordin' as their constitution is. Stout fellers last six or seven years; trashy ones gets worked up in two or three. I used to, when I fust begun, have considerable trouble fussin' with 'em, and trying to make 'em hold out,-doctorin' on 'em up when they's sick, and givin'

on 'em clothes and blankets, and what not, tryin' to keep 'em all sort o' decent and comfortable. Law, 't was n't no sort o' use; I lost money on 'em, and 'twas heaps o' trouble. Now, you see, I just put 'em straight through, sick or well. When one nigger's dead, I buy another; and I find it comes cheaper and easier, every way.'" (p. 173.) Now I challenge Mrs. Stowe to bring forward any authority, or shadow of an authority, for such a representation. She cannot find a single instance of the kind since the abolition of the foreign slave-trade: before that time, there may have been instances, for then it really was cheaper to "use up niggers," but now it is dearer, "every way;" and Mrs. Stowe herself admits that it is dearer, for she makes Cassy say to Legree, "I've saved you some thousands of dollars, at different times, by taking care of your hands;" so hard it is to be consistent in fiction that professes to be founded on fact, and whose whole aim and end is, to put the worst face possible upon things.

But enough of the inconsistencies and improbabilities of the story: to expose the whole of them would require a volume. Let these serve for a specimen.

NOTE 18.--IRRELIGIOUS TENDENCY OF THE WORK.

At the "breakfast" given to Mrs. Stowe, the morning. after her arrival in Liverpool, Professor Stowe, in his afterbreakfast speech, is thus reported :-"Speaking of the success of his gifted lady's book, he said-Incredible as it may seem to those who are without prejudice, it is nevertheless a fact, that this book was condemned by the leading religi ous newspaper in the United States as antichristian, and its author associated with infidels and disorganizers."

I have not seen the article referred to, but I find the following extract from it in "The Planter: or, Thirteen Years

in the South:""We have read the book, and regard it as antichristian. We have marked numerous passages in which religion is spoken of in terms of contempt, and in no case is religion represented as making a master more humane; while Mrs. Stowe is careful to represent the indulgent and amiable masters as without religion. This taint pervades. the work, just as it does the writings of all the modern school of philanthropy. It is certainly a non-religious, if not anti-evangelical school. Mrs. Stowe labors through all her book to render ministers odious and contemptible, by attributing to them sentiments unworthy of men or Christians." (p. 24.)

Now all this I fully concur with: I have myself "marked numerous passages," and I presume they are the same with those marked by the Editor of the Observer. They may be found on pages 58, 139, 181, 191, 262, 264, 265, and 266, of volume first, and on pages 10 and 127, of volume second. In each of these passages there is an open or covert sneer at the Church or the Clergy. As a set-off to all these, there is but one redeeming passage in the book: it is to be found on page 137 of volume second. How Mrs. Stowe could reconcile it with the passages above referred to, or, indeed, with the whole spirit of her Work, is past my comprehension.

I say, with the whole spirit of her work; for unless the Church of Christ has, from the beginning, utterly misapprehended the character of Christianity, that spirit is an antichristian spirit; it is the spirit of the so-called moral reforms of the present day; the atheistic spirit of the old French Revolution: its sympathies are not with Christ, but with "the false prophet." Even the temperance movement,the most plausible of them all,—is a Mahommedan, and not a Christian movement: years ago, in one of the Congregational Churches in Lowell, Mass., (the third, I believe,) it

substituted for wine, in the Lord's Supper, molasses-andwater; and recently, in the Unitarian Church in Bedford, (the place of my nativity,) reversing the miracle of our Lord, it has changed wine into water! Mrs. Stowe may not be ready yet to go to such a length, but her tendencies. are in that direction: the spirit of her work is the spirit of the several "movements;" her sympathies are not with Christ, and with St. Paul, and St. Peter, and St. Jude, but with Theodore Parker and Horace Mann. Like them, she is "presumptuous," "self-willed," "not afraid to speak evil of dignities."

It is painful to have to speak thus of a woman, but she has left me no alternative. Who would have supposed that a woman could deliberately pen so shockingly irreverent a sentence as that at the end of the first paragraph on page fifteenth of volume second? And what could we expect from such an one but that she should be found, as she actually is found, arraying herself in open hostility to the laws of her country, and not merely encouraging passive non-obedience for conscience sake-that we might respect, however much we thought the conscience misguided-but actually inciting to active resistance to the execution of those laws, even to the extent, if need be, of taking human life?

Alas for my country, when such a work, from such a source, is read by such multitudes-thousands upon thousands, I had almost said, millions upon millions! I solemnly believe that it has done more, considering its immense circulation, to debauch public sentiment and sap the foundations of social order, and lead men to infidelity and open atheism, than any other publication, with the single exception of the New York Tribune. The Independent, judging from the little I have seen of it, is as bad, but its circulation is comparatively limited. As to the Herald, even in its worst

days, it was a good Christian, side by side with the Tribune, and now it is an angel of light in the comparison. By its ridicule of "Philosopher Greely" it has furnished the young men of New York, and of the country, with an antidote to the Tribune's bane, and I should look upon its discontinuance, the Tribune still continuing to be issued,as a public calamity.

NOTE 19.-KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.

This the author evidently considers a "settler," and it is certainly ponderous enough to settle almost anything. Uncle Tom's Cabin is probably the first one of its kind that ever had a key, and therefore it seems to have been thought fitting that it should have a large one,-larger, strange to say, than the Cabin itself. It is evidently a permutation and combination key; it carries on the face of it the marks of more than one person having been engaged in the manufacture of it, and of there having been a shifting (not sifting) of materials from time to time. The author, having made a handsome speculation on the Cabin, has invested a part of the proceeds in a new venture, and a paying one, too, for there is no end to human gullibility:

if not a little

Stowe has very

"Doubtless the pleasure is as great

Of being cheated as to cheat,"

greater; and this innocent pleasure Mrs. benevolently ministered to, and on a magnificent scale. Having abundant resources at her command, she has spread a drag-net from the Rio Grande to Cape Sable, "which, when it was full," with much ado and great flourish of trumpets, she has succeeded in "drawing to land;" but instead of "gathering the good into vessels and casting the bad away," she has pretty nearly reversed the process, having saved only enough of the good to keep up a show of