_Uncle Tom's Cabin_ is the title of an American work, respecting which it is alleged that fifty thousand copies, weighing fifty-five tons, were disposed of in the short period of eight weeks. So high a degree of popularity could not rest on an insufficient foundation.[2] The book is a species of novel or story, designed to portray in vivid colours negro-life in the slave states of America; and such is the graphic and truth-like way in which the authoress, Harriet Beecher Stowe, has strung the whole together, that the production has not only enlisted the sympathy of the Abolitionists, but roused something like a sense of shame in the holders of slaves--hitherto impervious to all remonstrance on the subject. A cheap London reprint of this somewhat interesting book enables us to give a slight sketch of its character. Uncle Tom is a middle-aged negro slave, on the farm of a Mr Shelby, in Kentucky; he has learned to read, is pious and exemplary, and his hut is resorted to for edification by old and young in the neighbourhood. Tom is married, has several children, and is highly trustworthy. Between his family and that of his owner there is an agreeable intercourse, and to all appearance he is likely to live and die on the estate; but his master falls into pecuniary difficulties; becomes indebted to a wretch, Haley, a dealer in slaves from the south; and he is obliged to part with so much live property to wipe out his obligations. It is arranged that Tom must go, and along with him a young female slave, Eliza, almost white, who is married, and has hitherto acted as lady's-maid to Mrs Shelby. Eliza's pretty boy, Harry, makes up the lot. The first point of interest in the narrative turns on Eliza and her child; and we cannot do better than allow the authoress to enter on the history of this unfortunate female slave and her husband. It is said to be drawn from the life. 'Eliza had been brought up by her mistress from girlhood as a petted and indulged favourite. The traveller in the south must often have remarked that peculiar air of refinement, that softness of voice and manner, which seems in many cases to be a particular gift to the quadroon and mulatto women. These natural graces in the quadroon are often united with beauty of the most dazzling kind, and in almost every case with a personal appearance prepossessing and agreeable. Eliza, such as we have described her, is not a fancy sketch, but taken from remembrance, as we saw her years ago in Kentucky. Safe under the protecting care of her mistress, Eliza had reached maturity without those temptations which make beauty so fatal an inheritance to a slave. She had been married to a bright and talented young mulatto man, who was a slave on a neighbouring estate, and bore the name of George Harris.