We have, however, no reason to doubt that these volumes contain a faithful record of Mrs Beecher Stowe’s impressions of such parts of Europe as she has visited; and we so receive them. In her preface she requests “the English reader to bear in mind that the book has not been prepared in reference to an English, but an American public, and to make due allowance for that fact.”—We do not think that any explanation of the kind was required. Mrs Stowe says plainly enough, that “the object of publishing these letters is to give to those who are true-hearted and honest the same agreeable picture of life and manners which met the writer’s own eyes.”—In short, she was delighted with her tour and reception, and generally pleased with the people whom she met; and she wishes to communicate her own agreeable impressions to her countrymen. No one, on this side of the water at least, is likely to object to so kindly and benevolent a design. And we are bound to say, that had she prepared this book with the sole object of gratifying the people of Great Britain by indiscriminate praise of everything which met her eye, she could hardly have been more eulogistic than she is. Nor is this at all surprising, when we remember under what circumstances her journey to this country was made.
No work published within our memory made so rapid an impression on the public mind as Mrs Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It became famous among us almost as soon as it was imported from America. The theme was of surpassing interest, the characters were powerfully drawn; there was enthusiasm and pathos enough to thrill the heart, to call up tears, and to awaken the general sympathies of the free for the wrongs of the persecuted negro. It brought home to the minds of all of us the horrors of slavery in its worst and most unendurable form. The separation of husband and wife—the sale of children—the exposure in the public market of men and women, whose education was often superior to that of the brutes who bought and sold them: all these things, so revolting to humanity, were described with an energy and power greater, perhaps, than have been exhibited by any recent writer. Add to this that the tone of the novel was eminently religious, and calculated to make it find its way into circles from which other works of fiction were studiously banished; and it is easy to account for its immense and sudden popularity. Thousands of persons who would have thought it a positive sin to indulge in the perusal of a romance by Scott or Lytton, devoured the pages of Mrs Stowe with an avidity the more intense from their habits of previous abstinence. It was a book much patronised by the Quakers, and greatly in favour among the Methodists. It was multiplied by countless editions; it was to be seen in the drawing-room of the noble, and in the humble home of the mechanic; and from men of all classes throughout Great Britain it met with a cordial acceptance.
Unfortunately, however, it entered into the heads of certain wiseacres, that they might produce a great moral sensation, and promote other causes besides that of emancipation, by inducing Mrs Beecher Stowe to visit this country, and by parading her as an object of interest. Far be it from us to attempt to dictate to the gentlemen and ladies who are the principal promoters of the Peace Society, and the most active in the distribution of Olive-leaves, or to those who make total abstinence a leading article of their faith. But we may be allowed, with all deference, to hint our opinion that, in inviting Mrs Stowe to undergo the ordeal of a public ovation, they were not acting altogether fairly by the lady whom they professed to honour. We trust that we have said enough, both now and previously, to testify the sincere admiration in which we regard her talents as exhibited in her famous novel, and our sympathy for the cause in which that genius was displayed. Our tribute of praise, however humble in its kind, has not been niggardly bestowed; but we demur altogether to the propriety of making a public show and spectacle of the authoress of the most popular work, upon even the best or the holiest subject. We should demur to the propriety of such an exhibition, were it even demanded by the general voice—we condemn it when it is notoriously got up for sectarian glorification. Yet such undoubtedly was the case with Mrs Stowe. At Liverpool, at Glasgow, and at Edinburgh, her self-constituted friends determined that she should be received with demonstrations which were, in the eyes of the unexcited, purely ridiculous. There were to be anti-slavery meetings, working-men’s soirées, presentation of addresses and offerings, and an immense deal of the same kind of thing which was utterly unsuited to the occasion; and the result was, that Mrs Stowe, in so far as the north of Britain was concerned, saw little of that society which gives the intellectual stamp to the country, and derived her impressions almost entirely from the conversation of a limited coterie. How could it be otherwise? Mrs Stowe was undoubtedly a very clever woman—she had written an admirable novel upon a most interesting subject—and every one was delighted both with its matter and its success. But was that any reason why town-councils should receive her at railways—why people should be urged to present addresses to her as though she had been a Boadicea, or a Joan d’Arc—or why her presence should be made an excuse for indulging in unmeasured speeches, or in violent objurgations against the legislature of America, for continuing a system which we have nationally decreed to be vile in our own dominions, and have taken every means in our power to discountenance elsewhere? Opinion in this country, in so far as it can be expressed—and it has been expressed in thousands of ways—is unanimous for the emancipation of the negro. One and all of us consider the continuance of slavery, as it exists in America, a foul blot upon the nation, which proclaims itself as peculiarly free; and we have said so in anything but undecisive terms. Still, what we have said, is the expression of an opinion only. We may object to slavery in America, as we may object to the same institution in Turkey, or to serfage in Russia, or to anything else beyond our cognisance and jurisdiction; but we are not entitled to usurp the right, which every separate nation possesses, of regulating its own laws according to its peculiar position. We say this, because, of late years, the tendency towards popular demonstrations and sympathising meetings in England, has increased to such a degree as even to embarrass our relations with foreign powers. Well-meaning, but supremely ignorant vestry-men, bustling civic magistrates, and conceited members of town-councils, consider themselves entitled to sit in judgment and give sentence upon all questions of European politics. The moment a political exile of any note arrives in this country, he is fêted, and cheered, and made a hero of by municipal dignitaries, who seize the occasion as a capital opportunity for making ungrammatical professions of their ardent adoration of liberty. Their sympathy in favour of insurgents is perfectly unbounded. They have sympathised with the Hungarians—they have sympathised with the Italians—and, until very lately, they showed great sympathy for those gentlemen who were compelled to leave France for their conspiracies against the existing government. It is not a little amusing to contrast the tone which is now assumed by the liberal press and by the municipalities of England towards Louis Napoleon, with that which was prevalent some eighteen months ago! We should like to see an ovation attempted now in honour of the French republicans. And yet what change has taken place? Ledru Rollin is as good a patriot now as ever; the title of the Emperor to the throne of France is not one whit better than it was before. We are now engaged in war; and the utmost efforts of our statesmen have been used to induce Austria to join with the Western Powers. And yet, in the face of these negotiations, we find that, in the large towns of England, Kossuth is declaring to immense and sympathising audiences that the accession of Austria to our side would be the means of riveting the chains on the oppressed nationality of Hungary! This conduct on the part of the English public, or rather that portion of it which has an inveterate itch for meddling with what it does not and cannot understand, is not only silly, but positively dangerous. If the people of every State were to act in this way, war would not be the exception, but a perpetually existing calamity; and nation would rise against nation, not on account of acts of positive aggression, but because each objected to the mode in which the other administered its own affairs. We have no scruple in expressing our conviction that, since this sympathising mania commenced, Great Britain has lost much of her influence as a first-rate European power. It has the effect of placing, apparently at least, the Government and the people in antagonism—of detracting from the power of the one, and unduly adding to that of the other. And—what we regret most deeply to see—it has raised and fostered the impression that we are collectively a nation of braggarts. It is most natural that it should be so, for we are perpetually vaunting about the force of public opinion in this country, and declaring that nothing can stand against it. On the Continent the voice of the towns is considered as the sure index of public opinion; and if that voice had been taken, not very long ago, we should ere now have been engaged in liberating crusades in behalf of Hungary and Italy. The Government, of course, and the vast bulk of the educated and thinking classes throughout Great Britain, estimate these ridiculous exhibitions at their proper value, and treat them with silent contempt;—not so foreigners; who, being assured that in the principal towns of England immense meetings have been held and resolutions passed in favour of insurgency, conclude, naturally enough, that these are demonstrations of that public opinion of which they have heard so much, and that the British Government cannot do otherwise than yield to the pressure from without. Perhaps the most absurd commentary upon this exceedingly reprehensible system of sympathising may be found in the fact, that while our mayors, provosts, aldermen, bailies, and other civic small-deer, are sympathising with the oppressed nationalities of Europe, various of their Transatlantic brethren are doing the same in behalf of Ireland and the Irish, and holding up the people of England to the scorn and detestation of the universe, as the cold-blooded, fiendish, and systematic torturers of the oppressed Celtic nationality!
But we must not diverge too much from our immediate subject. It seems to us that there really was no occasion for holding public meetings to show that the sympathy of this country was decidedly in favour of the cause of emancipation, or to irritate the Americans by a vain-glorious comparison of our own conduct contrasted with theirs. We ought, in common decency, to remember that no very great tract of time has elapsed since slavery was abolished in the British colonies; and as, in matters of this kind, interest is always a ruling motive, we should also bear in mind that the prosperity of those colonies has not been increased by the substitution of free for forced labour. Very few of us, on this side of the Atlantic, are able to give a competent opinion as to what effect immediate and unconditional emancipation might produce upon the slave-holding States of America; and therefore we are hardly entitled to do more than to assert the general principle, which condemns the absolute property of man in man. How entire emancipation, which we trust, before long, every State in America will adopt, can be carried out, must be left to the wisdom and discretion of the local legislatures. No change so great as this can be wrought suddenly. Christianity itself must be inculcated, not coerced, for violence never yet made converts; nor was the blood-red baptism of Valverde, who held the cross in the one hand and the sword in the other, equal in efficacy to the calm expositions of Xavier. Now, it is very plain to us that, in her own way, Mrs Beecher Stowe is a zealot. She has been writing and working at this subject of emancipation, until she has ceased to see any practical difficulty between her vision and its realisation, and wants to persuade all others that no practical difficulty exists. We agree with her so far, that we contemplate not only as desirable, but as necessary for the political existence of the United States of America, a measure for the ultimate and entire emancipation of the negro; but we cannot take upon ourselves the responsibility of urging an immediate change, which might have the effect, in many important respects, of deteriorating instead of bettering the condition of the black population. What more, by any possible effort, can the people of Great Britain do than they have done? Every man in America knows that we detest the system of slavery. We have shown that by a long series of legislative measures, and by national grants to purchase the freedom of our slaves in the colonies; and very few names, indeed, are held in greater honour in this country than those of Clarkson and Wilberforce. But most assuredly we have no right to dictate to other nations, or to insist that they shall adopt our views in the regulation of their internal policy. We might just as well attempt to coerce them in matters of religion, and, founding upon our belief in the purity of Protestantism, insist that the Catholic states shall renounce the authority of Rome. Certainly we shall not improve the cause of the American negro by indulging in bitter terms and unlimited objurgation against the States which do not, as yet, see their way to immediate emancipation. All the great reforms of the world have been progressive. To hasten them unduly, and until men are fit to receive them, is the mere work of anarchy; and the world-history of the last sixty years, whilst it conveys a terrible warning against the neglect of a despised population, shows us that, in order to be permanent, all social ameliorations must be carefully and cautiously introduced.
But we feel that we owe an apology to Mrs Stowe for this digression. It was no fault of hers that she had to run the gauntlet through so many soirées, or to appear perpetually in the disagreeable character of a lionne. The whole programme was arranged before she set foot in this country; and she had nothing else for it than to go through her allotted part with patience and equanimity. We must admit that she was sorely tried during her sojourn in the north. She seems to have been under the custody of a special dissenting body-guard, with about as little liberty of action as the unfortunate Lady Grange. No wonder that Scotland appeared to her a very different country from the land of her imagination. Not one of those by whom she was surrounded possessed a spark of romantic enthusiasm, or cared about the associations which have shed the light of poetry over the land. “One thing,” says Mrs Stowe, “has surprised, and rather disappointed us. Our enthusiasm for Walter Scott does not apparently meet a response in the popular breast.” Very little indeed does the lady know of the beating of the national heart of Scotland, or the veneration in which the memory of our greatest poet is held by his countrymen. But it is not at soirées, or meetings such as she witnessed or attended, that the national feeling finds a voice; nor have the writings of Sir Walter Scott been ever favourably regarded by the rigid sectarians among whom she moved. His thoughts were not as their thoughts are, nor would it be possible that any sympathy should exist between minds so differently constituted. We cannot expect Mr Sturge to take much delight in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” or a sleek member of the Peace Society to feel his spirit moved by the chaunt of the “Field of Flodden.” What has amused us most in the perusal of this book is, the evident influence which the dislike of her friends to the martial strains of Scott produced at length upon herself. She seems to have entered Scotland in a sort of fever of enthusiasm, as is testified by the perpetual quotations from Sir Walter’s poetry—rather common, by the way, for they are to be found in all the guide-books—in which she indulges. By-and-by she begins to find that her raptures are coldly listened to by the society in which she moves; and ultimately she seems to have adopted the view that in some respects her friends were right. The following is a very pretty morçeau of criticism: “The most objectionable thing, perhaps, about his influence is its sympathy with the war spirit. A person Christianly educated can hardly read some of his descriptions in the Lady of the Lake and Marmion without an emotion of disgust, like what is excited by the same things in Homer: and as the world comes more and more under the influence of Christ, it will recede more and more from this kind of literature.” We marvel that Mrs Stowe, who is a clever woman, does not perceive that the people of a country in which the spirit which she pleases to reprehend becomes extinct, must necessarily be in time succeeded by a race of unresisting slaves. The remark, too, comes with a peculiarly bad grace from a lady who is not only proud of the independence of her country, but affects intense enthusiasm for the struggles of the Puritans and Covenanters in Great Britain. However, we suppose she thought it polite to the members of the Peace Society, among whom she was moving, to give this little jog to their principles; and it may be that, after all, her intimacy with the writings of Scott is considerably less than one would conclude from the quantity of quotation. Certainly we were surprised to find it stated by a lady of so much literary pretension and apparent acquaintance with the personal history of Sir Walter, that Abbotsford “is at present the property of Scott’s only surviving daughter;” and we must also confess that some of her quotations unsettle our ancient ideas as to the limits of the Border. For example, she says with reference to a visit paid at the Earl of Carlisle’s—“I was also interested in a portrait of an ancestor of the family, the identical “Belted Will” who figures in Scott’s “Lay.””
“‘Belted Will Howard shall come with speed,
And William of Deloraine, good at need.’”
Possibly Lord Carlisle was not previously aware that his ancestor was a Scotsman, and a retainer of the house of Buccleuch. With equal propriety might Omer Pasha be described as a hetman of the Cossacks, rushing to the rescue of Gortschakoff.
On the whole, we are inclined to think that the American public will not derive much enlightenment on the subject of Scotland and the Scots from the revelations of Mrs Stowe. We can assure them that the general aspect, tone, and sentiments of society here do not at all correspond with what is represented in her pages. It is not the fact that the greater part of our time is occupied by delivering or listening to wish-washy platform speeches, or even to such as have “the promising fault of too much elaboration or ornament,” on the subjects of tee-totalism, olive-leavery, or any of the other mild absurdities of the day. It is not the fact that we have lost all grateful memory for the warlike deeds of our ancestors, or for the poets who have worthily recorded them. And, above all, it is not the fact that Mrs Stowe had a fair opportunity of forming a judgment, on almost any point, of the views entertained by the bulk of the more educated classes of society. We do not say this at all in disparagement of the parties among whom she moved, and by whom she was so hospitably entertained. We have every respect for their worth, position, and acquirements; and we are well aware that among the ministers of various denominations to whom she was introduced, and of whom she speaks affectionately, there are many whose talent, learning, and devotion have made their names known beyond the waters of the Atlantic. It must have been peculiarly gratifying to her to receive the congratulations of the late venerable Dr Wardlaw of Glasgow, of Dr John Brown of Edinburgh, whom she rightly calls “one of the best exegetical scholars in Europe,” and other lights of the United Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches. In Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen she received much civic kindness and attention; but we are at a loss, after reading her book, to discover much trace of her intercourse with general society beyond a very limited coterie. True, she refers to some persons “from ancient families, distinguished in Scottish history both for rank and piety,”—and especially to a “Lady Carstairs,” of whose corporeal existence we can find no trace in any Book of Dignity within our reach. All that, however, is of little moment; and we never should have thought of alluding to such circumstances, were it not that, so very much having been said in America on the subject of Mrs Stowe’s reception in Scotland, her account of what she saw may naturally be received as an accurate picture of the country. We have no doubt whatever of her general accuracy in describing what she saw. We are very proud to think that she was received with much enthusiasm and cordiality; and nothing could be more genuine than the expression of feeling on the part of the working-classes. Her book undoubtedly struck most deeply in the popular mind; producing a sensation which we have never seen equalled, inasmuch as it extended through every grade of society. And we can very well understand the intensity of the feeling which must have thrilled Mrs Stowe, when she found that even in sequestered villages in Scotland her work had been moistened with tears, and that the people, on the announcement of her approach, thronged to welcome the woman who had exercised so mighty a spell over their intellect and their passions. There was, really, no delusion in the matter, in so far as admiration of her talent and respect for her intrepidity were concerned; but we may, at the same time, be allowed to regret that she was made part of a premeditated pageant. The utter want of delicacy which marked the whole arrangements was most extraordinary. We are sure that Mrs Stowe must have been surprised, if not disgusted, at finding herself announced as ready to receive deputations and addresses at certain stated hours, and at the invitation of crowds to attend in order to cheer her at railway stations. There is something elevating in spontaneous enthusiasm, even when it is carried beyond the limits of strict propriety; but demonstrations such as those to which we have alluded, are not only unfair to the party paraded, but border closely on the ludicrous. No quackery of the kind was required to insure Mrs Stowe a cordial reception in Scotland; and we fear that in some respects it operated rather to her disadvantage than otherwise.
We confess to have been greatly disappointed in the perusal of her northern tour. We had expected to derive some amusement, if not edification, from the remarks of a lady whose previous publications had manifested considerable power in the depiction of character, not unmixed with occasional glimpses of humour; the more especially as there is much in the northern idiosyncrasy which must appear peculiar in the eyes of a stranger. Nothing of the sort, however, is to be found in the pages of Mrs Stowe. Read her work, omitting the familiar names of places, and one would be utterly at a loss to suppose that she is describing Scotland and its inhabitants either outwardly or inwardly. Saunders, as she depicts him, is a sort of sentimental Treddles, minding every body’s business more than his own, intoning peace speeches on a platform with a strong nasal twang, and refreshing himself, after his labours, with oceans of the weakest and the worst of tea. It is ten thousand pities that Mrs Stowe should not have witnessed either a Lowland kirn or a regular Highland meeting. Possibly the sounds either of fiddle or of bagpipe might have grated harshly on her ear; and the “twasome” reel or that of Houlakin been regarded as forbidden vanities; still she would have been infinitely the better of some more diversified experience, which might at least have caused her to avoid the error of depicting us as a nation of Mucklewraths, Hammeryaws, and Kettledrummles. As for her outward sketches, we must say that we greatly prefer the ordinary guide-books. They have at least the merit of being concise, and do not usually confound localities and historical events, as Mrs Stowe certainly does when she indicates Glammis Castle as the scene of the tragedy in Macbeth.