A very striking evidence of this prejudice was furnished by the reception given to the works of two female writers not many years since. The one, Miss Harriett Beecher, later Mrs. Stowe, wrote a work of fiction called "Uncle Tom's Cabin," containing misrepresentations of slavery and slanders upon Southern society. Drawing upon a fertile imagination and pandering to the prejudices of the uninformed, she published the book, which had a great run in Europe as well as America, and was translated into almost all of the continental languages. The incidents contained in the book were either erroneous in point of fact or greatly exaggerated, but the book itself was still more untrue as a picture of Southern society and slavery, and would have been a misrepresentation if every fact contained in it had been true in isolated cases. But the book was received as a true and faithful picture of society and slavery in the South, not merely by the agitators of abolition, but by that very considerable class of persons in the world who allow others to do their thinking, and when the authoress visited Great Britain, she was treated with great attention and extensively feted by the nobility, gentry and others. The view of Southern slavery which she drew is perhaps accepted by nine-tenths of the otherwise well informed persons in Europe. In remarkable contrast to Miss Beecher's case, was that of Miss Murray, a lady of talents and refinement, who held the position of maid of honor to Queen Victoria. Miss Murray visited the United States as a tourist with all of her predilections against slavery, but she happened to be one of those persons who, not satisfied with hearsay report, took the necessary trouble to inform herself intelligently upon the subject. In the course of her travels, she went into the Southern states, where she remained for some time as a guest on some of the plantations. She had the opportunity of observing the workings of domestic slavery as it actually existed and in all of its details, and she availed herself of that opportunity to make her own reflections. In letters to friends at home she gave the result of her actual observations and upon her return to England was induced to publish her letters. These letters represented slavery in the Southern states in a very different light from that in which it was accustomed to be presented to the British public, and the consequence was that Miss Murray was notified by the ministry that it was not desirable that she should longer occupy the relation she held to the Queen, as the views she expressed in regard to slavery were not consonant with the policy of the British government; so she was retired. This illustrates the difference in the reception of two works on the subject of slavery given by the British public: one a work of fiction from a prejudiced writer, the other a matter-of-fact account of an eye witness of what she undertook to describe.