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.