C. M. SEDGWICK.

PERHAPS

it is not to be wondered at that Home should

be the prominent idea on Miss Sedgwick's mind, throughout a literary career which has made her name dear to her country. Every novel, and essay, and touching story that has ever fallen from her pen-we choose our words advisedly, to express the graceful ease which characterizes her writings has the thought of Home, like a sweet undersong, beneath all the rich foliage of fancy and gleams of heroic feeling. Her heroines are rich in home qualities; her plots all revolve round the home centre; her hints touch-gently or strongly on the sacrifices and errors that make home happy or miserable. In those admirable stories that seem like letters from an observing friend-those, we mean, that have an avowed moral purpose, like "Live and let Live," the "Rich poor Man and poor Rich Man"— imagination and memory are evidently tasked for every phase of common social experience that can by example or contrast throw light upon the great problem -- how to

make a happy home under disadvantages both of fortune and character. She might be well painted as a priestess tending the domestic altar-shedding light upon it-setting its holy symbols in order due, and hanging it with votive wreaths, that may both render it proper honor, and attract the careless or the unwilling. If all lady-writers who could boast masculine understanding had possessed also the truly feminine spirit which breathes throughout Miss Sedgwick's writings, even where they are strongest and boldest for truth and virtue, some of the satire which has pursued the gentler sex when they have ventured to practise the "gentle craft," might have been spared. We are ready to say, when we read Miss Sedgwick-"True woman, true teacher," since no true teaching is accomplished without Love.

Besides this home charm, Miss Sedgwick's writings have no little value as natural pictures; and pictures, too, of a transition state, of which it will be, at no distant day, difficult to catch the features, except through the delineations of contemporary novelists. That great photograph, the newspaper, gives back the features of the time with severer accuracy; but as the portrait is to the daguerreotype, so is the novel to the newspaper. Miss Sedgwick and Mr. Cooper may be considered pioneers in this excellent work— the delineation of American life and character, with proper accompaniments of American scenery. The homely rural life of our country appears in the New England Tale under a touch as delicate as skilful, while the manes of our forefathers are shadowed forth in "Hope Leslie," with a loving truthfulness for which old chronicles vouch amply.

National feeling is strong in Miss Sedgwick, and she is neither meanly ashamed of it nor weakly inclined to parade it. It comes out because it is there, and not because it is called for. Foreign travel has not stifled it, nor much intercourse with the high civilization of older countries tinged it with sadness or made it morose. Ever kind and hopeful, it still disdains flattery, and while it loves and praises generously, it is not afraid to condemn with equal justice. Our western world is so sensible of this kindness and this firmness, that although it is prone to resent even clearer truths, especially when they grate on national vanity, it hears Miss Sedgwick always with something more than patience and respect.

In delineating individual character, it is possible to let an amiable disposition lower the contrasts which are essential to vigorous impressions. This occasions the only fault. we are disposed to find with Miss Sedgwick's novels. They lack strongly-marked character; they smooth rough points too much; they hesitate at horrors, moral ones at least. If the world were really made up of so large a proportion of pretty good people, with a sprinkling of angels, and only now and then a compunctiously half-bad man or woman, novels would never have been written, or if they had, would hardly have become one of the elixirs to so great a portion of the weary children of earth. The imagination is not satisfied with truth, it asks the stimulus of high-wrought truthunusual-distinct-startling. It will not do for a writer to be too restrictedly conscientious in this matter. If it be true that "le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable," it is also true that the "vraisemblable" does not include the entire

"vrai." With this single complaint of unnecessary "toning down," let us dismiss the ungracious task of fault-finding.

To make virtue lovely, is one of the achievements of the good. To draw such pictures of excellence as shall incite to imitation, is far less easy, if more pleasant, than to dash off vice and crime by wholesale with the intent of warning. Bugbears have little power after the bread and butter age, while self-sacrifice, tenderness and heroism possess-Heaven be praised for it—undying interest, and always find some sensitive chords even in the mind most sadly unstrung. Here we indicate Miss Sedgwick's forte-it is to touch the heart by examples of domestic goodness, not so exalted as to preclude emulation, but so exquisitely human and natural as to call up all that is best and sweetest in the heart's impulses, and throw us back upon ourselves with salutary comparisons and forward with pure resolutions. We have heard the remark from those well qualified to judge, that Miss Sedgwick's writings had done much towards prompting aspiration and high resolve in young men; how much wider must have been her influence over her own sex-over the daughters and the mothers of her country! Here is wherewithal not to boast, but to be thankful; occasion-not for pride, but for self-consecration; and as such we doubt not Miss Sedgwick looks upon her great success. Even on the wide field of our common schools, the influence of that excellent manual, "Means and Ends," is daily felt; and we can desire nothing better than that every American girl, whatever her position in life, may be prompted by it to "self-training," on the best plan and the best principles.

If it could be conceded that the character of every writer