PERSONAL SKETCH OF MRS. BEECHER STOWE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 139, 3 September 1853, Page 8

PERSONAL SKETCH OF MRS. BEECHER STOWE.

All the portraits of Mrs. Stowe which are exhibited iv the shop windows are little better than caricatures. Instead of the ha rd, frigid, look which they bear, her countenance wears a soft and gentle expression, quite in accordance with her affable and pleasing manners. When in repose, her face is of a quiet, observant, thoughtful character, but in conversation, especially on the subject with which her name is now and will for ever be identified, those soft blue eyes light up with brilliant animation, betokening the strong emotional feelings at work within. She is quite ready to converse, and promptly responds with a confidence that manifests intelligence, and not dogmatism, to every enquiry and all objections. The terrible facts of American slavery she has at her fingers' ends, and with facile readiness she marshals them to the entire destruction of the clever sophisms which the apologists of slavery know so well how to weave; and yet the feeling always in the ascendant with regard to the slaveholder is that of pity and commiseration. She holds the scales with an even hand, and no indignation at the atrocities of slavery leads her to forget that to have been born amid slave institutions is a dire calamity to the "owner" and the owned. A great .Jrial awaits Mrs. Stows in this country. In America, notwithstanding the great popularity of her book, and the great response it has called forth in the hearts of tens of thousands, she has had to bear the denunciations which never fail to be poured out there on the head of every true friend of the slave. But here she will everywhere have the plaudits of the crowd, and the patronage of the great and powerful of the land. Opposition to slavery is, thank God, a popular thing in England, and from the peer to the peasant all will delight to do honour to one who has so nobly pleaded the cause of down-trodden humanity. Had Mrs. Stowe only been known from her writings, we should have felt sure that she was too strong and able a woman for such plaudits and homage to disturb the balance of her mind, or sully the purity of her purpose; but to those who have had personal intercourse with her, she has given an unbounded faith, in her moral magnanimity, and single-hearted devotedness, to the cause of the unfortunate slave. No consciousness of her fame, ever by any chance, obtrudes itself; and as^ far as her manners and bearing go, she might be only an intelligent American lady, who had never been previously heard of out of her own native Litchfield. The same simple, genuine naturalness, that gave such power to herbook, belongs in an eminent degree to the character of the author, and will confirm the golden opinions which her pen has already won for her wherever she goes. No amount of unexpected fame will lead such a woman to look with a less pure and single eye to the righteous object of her labours, the emancipation of 3,000 human beings now held as chattels in the Southern states of America. Professor Stowe in answer to Dr. M'Meile's commendations of the Christian and Scriptural character of Mrs. Stowe's book, stated that for writing " Uncle Tom's cabin," the author had been classed by many religious newspapers in America, with disorganisers and infidels. In this we regret to know that she has but shared the fate of all true abolitionists. The leading Christian denominations —even i n the free states, with' a few inconsiderable exceptions—welcome slave-hold-ing ministers to their pulpits, support the Fugitive Slave Act, and denounce the abolitionists, because of their faithful rebukes of these inconsistencies and practical denials of the Christian religion, as infidels and revolutionists. That Mrs. Stowe, therefore, should have been so classed will be a passport of recommendation to all Christian friends of the slave in this contry, who are well informed as to the state of parties in America. It is evidence that she is too sincere a Christian ever to desecrate religion by perverting it is to the support of slavery. As a specimen of the kind of treatment .lie received from a portion of the American press, we quote the following, preservwg the italics and small capitals, from a recent number of Graham's Magazine, a periodical of high repute and circulation : "Mrs.Stowe s 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is a bad book. It is badly constructed, badly time(l> aQd made up for a bad purpose. The work has been successful pecuniarily ; but there ib such a thing as blood money speedily gained for nefarious doings ! The work is a mere distortion of facts, a stupendous lie ; and, therefore, we cannot admit its

merits, and join its mob of admirers." This is a voice from the north. We will now let the south speak, in an extract from a letter by a lady to her sister in the north which lately appeared in the Jfew Orleans Picayune. The editor introduces the letter by saying that" The views it expresses are the genuine sentiments of the southern ladies in regard to the influence of the work, and the false mission of its author." " The truth is, dear M." says the writer of the letter, " tho work is a powerful, coarse, vulgar, overwrought, deliberate misstatement—a tissue of wicked, willful lies, from begining to end. The woman has unsexed herself. The reading of the work has had one good effect on my mind—it has given me a horror for what we call clear strong-minded women. Before I was somewhat inclined to sympathise with some of the supposed wrongs of women —to advocate a little more freedom for them, &c.; hut I would rather be a bondwoman on one of the southern estates than be Harriet Beecher Stowe. I tell my 'lordly half,' I would promise to ' obey' now more loudly were we to be married over again. I think when I look back every evil act of my life had its origin in false pride and independence of spirit; and thank the man Harriet for opening my eyes to the perils surrounding a woman who believes herself sufficient unto herself. I thank the man Harriet for making more of a true woman of me : for creating in me a greater distaste for the appearance of the untrue and the false.''— Glasgow Chronicle.