General Anthony St. Leger, and married Richard Aldworth, Esq, of New Market.
STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER.
Perhaps in the whole of the annals of female authorship there is nothing so extraordinary as the success of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," A work which, we believe, has been sold by millions, and translated into nearly all the European languages. Previous to its appearance, in 1852, its author, although known in America as a writer of tales and sketches suitable for magazines, had not achieved there a high literary reputation, and in this country was almost unknown as a writer. It is not necessary for us here to enter at all deeply into the causes which led to such an instant and amazing popularity for this tale of "Life Among the Lowly," a tale which has placed Mrs. Stowe in the first rank of modern fictionists, and given such an impetus to the anti-slavery movement as it never before received from a single hand at a single effort. What other friends of the negro have done by years of patient labour, and earnest devotion of energies and talents, this lady effected at once. Both hemispheres thrilled with horror and indignation at the wrongs and sufferings of those held in the thraldom of an iniquitous system. But it is to the author of this book, wherein we know not which most to admire, its bold reprobation of wrong-doing, its exhibition of Christian fortitude, and love, and charity under injury and suffering, its graphic power of description, its exquisite pathos, or irresistible drollery, or masterly exhibition of human character, especially that of the negro,—to her whose name has become a household word in America and England, and in many other countries, that our attention must be for the present turned.
The name of her father was Lyman Beecher, a New Englander by birth, who first practised his father's craft, that of a blacksmith, and then, by dint of perseverance, aided, no doubt, by natural talent, went through a course of collegiate studies at Yale, in Newhaven, and finally became Dr. Beecher, one of the first pulpit orators of America, and Principal of a Theological Seminary instituted by the Presbyterian body at Lane, near Cincinnati. Harriet was his second daughter, always remarkable for her great depth of character; she was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, about the year 1812, and enjoyed the best educational advantages of Boston, that Athens of the West. At an early age she began to assist her elder sister Catharine in the management of a flourishing female school which she had herself established at Litchfield; and this she continued to do when, the family removing to Cincinnati, another institution of the kind was there opened. This sister, Catharine Esther Beecher, was altogether a remarkable woman, as is shown by the notice of her given in a former part of this volume. Harriet was married when about twenty-one years old to the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, professor of biblical literature in the seminary of which her father was president, and for seventeen years after this event her life seems to have flowed on with great evenness and serenity; she became the mother of a numerous offspring, of whom five are now living. She was a most exemplary mother, educating her children with great care, and yet finding time occasionally to indulge her taste for literary composition; her short tales and sketches, which found their way into the periodicals,
