John Seely Hart

“ At last, in the heart of the sensualist, the crust of worldliness is broken up, and Euston Hastings, roused from the guilty selfishness of his life, leaves Rome to seek the wife who has become his all in the world. He finds her in Paris, and they are again united, not by any wavering passion, but by holy love and marriage, which gains a higher beauty from the bright faith and exquisite description of its able defender. ”

“ The country at Southampton was entirely level, and the town situated immediately on the Atlantic, within sight of its foaming surf, and sound of its ceaseless roar—while Hempstead Harbour was located at the head of a beautiful bay running in from the Long Island Sound, and surrounded with high hills, covered with forest trees and evergreens. It was truly a place to charm the eye, and enrich the imagination; and thus it was, that while my first love was for the grand and magnificent ocean, my second was for the more fascinating and picturesque beauty of nature’s scenery ”

“ If it were not so, we should be disappointed; for they manifest that genius of a loving humanity, which cannot help but oftentimes be sad. Grace Greenwood, say what persons will, is not what we should call a sprightly writer. Her productions are not mere sprightly flashes, but many-toned utterances of feelings, that lay deep down in the breast, and to which occasions gave nothing but expression.
“Genius, accompanied with strong sensibility, were it not for certain compensations, would be a penalty and not a boon. Such compensation Grace Greenwood has in considerable affluence. ”

“ In the gayest tale of hers,—we read below it meanings from the heart; in the most laughing letter, we can often discern a pensive wisdom hidden in the smile; in the passing criticism on a work of art, we have often not only the fine enthusiasm, which flames up with the love of beauty; but when the work is devotional, we have, with phrase more happy and with spirit more profound, the subdued eloquence of inborn reverence. ”

“ The seriousness of Grace Greenwood is not the less intense because it is not moody or murky; because it does not tire you with tears, nor disturb you with groans, nor disgust you with men, nor dishearten you with nature. Grace is too healthy for mumps; she is too sincere to be maudlin; she is too cheerful for lamentations; and her love is too large for creation and too kind, to tolerate the gloom of a dissatisfied spirit. But no soul is more quick to kindle at a wrong done to the lowest ”

“ Yet the reader, when the book is closed, and he has gone to his daily labour, or mingles in social life, finds lingering in his brain, and warming in his heart, a true principle of honour and love that is constantly contrasting itself with the hollow forms by which he is surrounded, and if he fails to bear himself up to that high ideal of principle which he feels to be true, he still walks a little nearer to his conscience and his God, and long after the volume is returned to the shelf and forgotten, a kindly benediction is given to the noble influence it incited. ”

“ How it may affect others we cannot tell; but it is to us like moonlight on the flowers when the weary day is done, or like music on the waters, to meet with a sketch so replete with playfulness, yet so delicately marked with Coleridge’s ‘instinct of ladyhood.’ There is genius, too, and originality, in its naiveté—a nice and feminine perception of the beautiful, with an ability to portray it, which cannot fail of its purpose whenever it is thus executed. ”

“ But Evelyn loves with an engrossing passion. With a strength of feeling that demands a constant return, and forgetting the hundred busy things that are calling a man’s attention, she desires the whole time and the whole regard of her husband. This selfish, exclusive love, that engrosses the object when it submits, and is thrown into tears when it does not, produces the natural consequence on a man to whom perfect liberty is an accustomed right. He seeks for the regard from other persons, that he cannot receive from his wife without a corresponding degree of personal restraint. ”

“ The banks of the Hudson seem destined to become classic ground. Not a few of our most distinguished writers, men and women, have either lent their genius to the celebration of its beauties, or have themselves drawn inspiration from its mountain breezes. The name of Alice B. Neal is now to be added to the list. Born in 1828, in the city of Hudson, she may have owed her early love for the beautiful to the romantic scenery by which her childhood was surrounded. ”

“ That Grace Greenwood is a writer, ready, rapid, bold, brilliant, and most discursive, whatever she throws from her pen at once reveals. But to be ready and rapid is often to be nothing more than possessed of fatal facility; and to seem bold, brilliant, and discursive is frequently to have only the hardihood of ignorance, and to be glittering and superficial. The readiness and rapidity, however, of this writer are in themselves surprising, from the truth and force with which thought keeps pace with expression ”

“ Two days before his death, my husband was taken with the same fever, and also died, after an illness of only four days. Nothing but the consolations of religion could have supported me under this double bereavement. Left entirely alone, thousands of miles away from every relative I had on earth, there was no human arm on which I could lean, and I was to rely on God alone. It was well, perhaps, for me, that I was just so situated. It has taught me a lesson that I have never forgotten, that our heavenly Father will never lay upon us a heavier burthen than he will give us strength to bear. ”

“ In portraying the incidents of actual life, in depicting scenes of familiar occurrence in the family or the neighbourhood, she has few equals, and no superiors. That sterling common sense which strips off the mask of frivolity and conventionalism, which falls with withering and mortifying weight upon false pretensions, which holds up to derision and contempt those hollow and heartless principles and practices, which obtain in so-called “fashionable” society, lends a peculiar charm of satisfaction to the perusal of her tales. ”

“ Early impressions are seldom effaced, and the first six years of her life spent amid rural scenes gave a permanent tone and colouring to her mind. She was educated to love birds and flowers, and the children of the family were always called to look at a rainbow as an object worthy of peculiar admiration. One of her dearest pleasures was to watch, with her sister, the early garden-plants, when they first broke through the dark, rich soil. ”

“ At her brilliant Saturday evening reunions one may see all who are in any way distinguished for scientific, artistic, or literary attainments, mingled with a band of fine appreciating spirits, who are content with that power of appreciation, and whose social position shows at once the high station which Miss Lynch has won by her merits as a woman and a scholar. ”

“ It will be obvious to every one familiar with Miss McIntosh’s writings, that she is a delineator entirely of mental life. The physical in man, in animals, and nature, is never used, except so far as is necessary to bring forward the mind and its virtues, desires, and principles. She has apparently excluded from her attention everything that did not absolutely belong to the moral life. Evelyn and Euston live for a summer on the Tiber, but not the faintest tinge of the golden light, or the lowest breath of Roman air enters within their villa. ”

“ Hyde Hillside is, some might affirm, a very lonely abode, on the southern slope of a rocky hill, yet surrounded by scenery of remarkable beauty. On the east, the descent is quite abrupt for a few hundred yards to a beautiful expanse of water, partly lying in the shadow of dark pine woods, and again spread out in the sunshine, sparkling like a lake of molten diamonds. ”

“ The workings of mere fancy, however admirable or admired, could never exhaust, could never express, could never content a nature such as hers for she feels too much in herself, and she feels too much for others, to find only play and summer-time in the life of genius. ”

“ The blow falls fearfully heavy on one who had centred all her hopes on the dearly loved husband. Everything is forgotten but her mighty love, and she follows him abroad. A valet accompanying leads her to Rome, and she meets her husband. He is struck by her devotion and the wrongs he has inflicted. He provides her a house and every attention, and they reside together happy in the love which is at last acknowledged above every consideration. But it is on this express agreement, that Evelyn is not to be known as his wife, and that they are free to part whenever either of them may choose. ”

“ Mind, with its wayward creeds, can alone be seen in the Imperial City. Feelings right and wrong, and promises faithfully performed are more to Hubert than earth, air, and water, and the glorious gifts of Nature.
Miss McIntosh still further restricts herself in the characters of her story, and selects only the common ones of practical life, as though anxious for the principle alone, and the fiction that would draw the reader off from the moral is discarded. In her quiet pages there never occurs the extreme either of character or passion. ”

“ A very quiet place is the Hillside; beautiful and picturesque in its environments. Sequestered like a nest among the hills, it is a sweet, wild, rural abode, every way fitted to be a child’s paradise, and the nursery and school of that species of genius which feasts on natural beauty and unfolds most successfully in solitude. ”

“ But does this new connexion produce the happiness to Evelyn that she desired? On the contrary, there is a sense of wrong in every pleasure. She looks at her own servants with shame; and between her and every flower she touches, every kiss she receives, there seems springing up a consciousness of guilt. ”

“ They are simple tales of American life, told in graceful and easy language, and conveying a moral of beauty and truthfulness that wins love at once for the fictitious character and the earnest writer. ”

“ She possesses great enthusiasm of character—the enthusiasm described by Madame De Stael as, ‘God within us,’—the love of the good, the holy, the beautiful. She has neither pretension nor pedantry, and, although admirably accomplished, and a perfect classic and belles lettres scholar, she has all the sweet simplicity of an elegant woman. ”

“ Miss Browne’s parents belonged to that judicious class, who, while their pecuniary means were restricted, considered the acquisition of a liberal education by their children of vastly more value than the inheritance of that wealth which so proverbially spreads its pinions and flies away, or, what is worse, enchains the energies to frivolity and indolence. To facilitate so desirable an object, these excellent parents did what they could. ”

“ The new world of pleasure has no effect on the novice, save so far as it stimulates her to excel, that she may the more be worthy of her husband’s love. She mingles in the dance to acquire grace, in the soirée to learn the styles of fashionable life, and all for the sole purpose of being the better fitted to be the companion and wife of the high-born noble. ”

“ Domestic architecture in this country must be adapted to the circumstances and condition of the people. As it is an art originating from necessity, the progress of society must change the architecture of every country, from age to age. As wealth and refinement increase, taste and elegance must be consulted, without destroying convenience and appropriateness. We can no more adopt the style of architecture than the dress of a foreign people. ”

“ There is, too, a certain gentle amenity of thought and diction that never forsakes her, taking from the edge of what might otherwise be harsh, and giving a charm to what might be common place. If her stories are not deeply tragical or thrilling, they are always beautiful, they always please, they always leave the mind instructed and the heart better. ”

“ Though yet at the very commencement of her literary career, Miss Browne has won very unequivocal favour both as a vigorous painter of illustrative fiction and a teacher of religious truth.
Her prose is characterized by a very marked originality, force, and point. The moral she invariably inculcates is always apparent in its meaning and strong in its application. The characters she delineates are clearly individualized, and usually contrasted finely with one another, while a tendency to, and keen relish of, the humorous is distinctly perceptible. ”

“ It is the only professed novel in which real religion, at least as understood by evangelical Christians, is exhibited with truth. We know not how it could be possible for any one to read the story of “Little Ellen Montgomery” (which ought to have been the title of the book) , without being made both wiser and better by the perusal; and we have yet to hear of the first person, young or old, that has commenced the story without finishing it. No living writer has such power to open the fountains of tears, or to warm the heart with thoughts and instances of goodness. ”

“ You may think that my hostess, for one so young and so very fair, opened her doors too wide. Perhaps so, for though I detest the duenna system and believe that the unguarded freedom permitted to our young ladies far safer as well as more agreeable, yet I would rather have seen the mother of Miss Lynch present. Certainly no one ever needed an ægis less than my lovely hostess. She has that quiet delicacy and dignity of manners that is as a ‘glittering angel’ to exorcise every evil spirit that should venture to approach her. ”

“ She seems to have dipped the pen in her own soul, and written of its emotions. She exalts all that is good, noble, or generous in the human heart, and gives to even the clouds of existence a sunny softness, like the dreamy light of a Claude Lorraine picture. ”

“ Her writings have been more like the dew than the lightning. Yet the dew, it is well to remember, is not only one of the most beneficent, but one of the most powerful of nature s agents—far more potential in grand results than its brilliant rival. When account shall be made of the various agencies, moral and intellectual, that have moulded the American mind and heart during the first half of the nineteenth century, few names will be honoured with a larger credit than that of Lydia H. Sigourney. ”