New York Literary Correspondence.

Prose Fictions-Purpose of their Authors-The Religious Novel-Adam Bede-Beulah-Fool of Quality-From Dawn to Daylight-Impulse vs. Principle-The Samaritan-Prison Sketches-Centenary of Methodism - New Books for Methodism-Our Sunday School Secretary-Irving and De Quincy.

ONE of the characteristics of the literature of the present time is the prominent position occupied by prose fictions, and the extension of its designs beyond mere amusement to practical and partisan purposes. Both Dickens and Thackeray, the rival masters of the English novel, write with an ulterior purpose to give direction to the public thought, and to quietly saturate the mind of the British nation with their own peculiar opinions and sentiments. To some extent the same was the case with Eugene Sue, though probably he wrote rather from the fullness of his own dark and impassioned soul than with any definite purpose as to the effects likely to be produced by his utterances. The greatest of our native novelists, Mrs. Stowe, very evidently purposes something more than to tell a good story when she arouses her genius to frame those fictions that the whole world makes haste to read. That must be a very dull reader, indeed, who finds in "Uncle Tom" or "Dred" only a well-told negro story; or that does not find in the "Minister's Wooing" a Beecherish dash against the traditional but much-abused theology of the Puritans. Fiction has become a great power in the world, and accordingly its aid is sought for the furtherance of social purposes and the realization of the writer's variant theories of society. It is also quite evident that nearly always this agency has been in the hands of neither the truly wise nor good; yet even those who have deprecated its ill-effects have been compelled to confess its vast capabilities, and so have been led to inquire whether it may not be made to serve a better cause.

The bad use to which fiction has been chiefly applied has occasioned a widely-prevalent dislike toward that form of writing among those who have been especially careful of the public morality, and all fictions have been denounced as of pernicious tendency. But it is a hopeless attempt to endeavor in a reading age to shut out from our libraries, public or domestic, all works of fiction, or if they are there to prevent their being read. We accordingly find our Tract Society and Sunday School literature largely made up of stories professedly "founded on facts," though as really fictions as any thing written since Robinson Crusoe. The religious novel which seems just now to be coming into favor is a decided improvement upon these; for while the former designedly give only partial, and, therefore, somewhat untruthful, views of things, the latter surveys the whole field of vision, and considers whatever occurs in its range. It begins to be understood, that though our world is full of things that one had better never be acquainted with, yet these things can not be success

fully ignored; and, since they must be confronted, it is best to be instructed as to their real character before one comes to learn it from experience. Still, the didactic purposes of the novel, and especially the religious one, should be only incidental, though not, therefore, subordinate or secondary. All, or any one, of Mrs. Stowe's novels, will illustrate this remark; for, while in each of them the story is comparatively unimportant, their great excellence consists of certain successful illustrations of several phases of religious character, and of the operation of deep religious emotions, and the indomitable energy of religious principles. The phenomena of religious life present a field for the exercise of the novelist's powers at once the richest and the least cultivated in all the range of his subjects.

In the comprehensive class of religious novels I would assign a distinguished place to Adam Bede; for, after all that has been said to the contrary, I persist in not only classing it among religious novels, but also in commending it as a book of healthful moral tendencies. I might not, indeed, go so far as some who have placed it in Sunday school libraries, and recommended it for the reading of girls in their teens; but with those for whom such books are designed, its influence can not fail to be good. And while the religious elements of the book appear to come up incidentally, and others than the more decidedly-religious characters to occupy the foreground of the picture, yet the strongest light falls upon the characters and actions which go to illustrate the beauty and strength of religious principles. A book of the same class, though of a very different character, just now occupies the notable position of " the last novel ""BEULAH, by Augusta J. Evans." The writer is said to be a very young woman, of Mobilea Methodist, by the way-and I see the book is dedicated to a former valued friend of your correspondent, Mrs. Seaborn Jones, of Columbus, whom the fair authoress calls "my aunt." The book, as I received it from the publishers-Derby & Jackson-is accompanied with a letter sheet of recommendations, chiefly from southern pens, who praise it largely, though not without discrimination. Marian Harlan, herself a popular novelist, compares it with Adam Bede, and styles the pair "the two best works of fiction recently written," noticing the further accidental coincidence that each is the work of a Miss Evans. Rev. W. H. Milburn, who was once the writer's pastor, declares that "the reading of it can not fail to do great good." Mr. "Sparrowgrass" Cozzens makes it, on account of its southern origin, the occasion for a regular fire-eater's onslaught against ali who do not swear by the "peculiar institution;" and Hon. W. H. Hilliard declares himself "charmed with the book," and also exults that "the south" could produce so much excellence. All this sectionalism seems to me to be alike uncalled for and unworthy of its subject, for literary excellence has no peculiar

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location, nor is it confined by sectional metes and
bounds.

Beulah is the early life-history of an orphan girl.
The story is laid in the city of Mobile-its time the
present decade. Its dramatis persona belong chiefly
to the upper class of society as found in the southern
cities-mammon-worshiping men and frivolous, fash-
ionable women; cultivated and thoughtful men, mov-
ing easily in society with which they have no sym-
pathy, and God-fearing women living among the
abominations of desolation, yet having their gar-
ments undefiled; young men, gay, dissolute, and
abandoned; and young women, vain, selfish, and
worthless. Among these "Beulah" lives, labors,
and suffers a strange compound of qualities-good,
and not wholly good-gifted, self-reliant-too proud,
too vain-with more of intellect than of heart-and
yet enough of the latter to render its possessor most
miserable in the self-imposed desolation of sympathy
to whom she doomed herself. From beginning to
almost the end it is a panorama of scenes of sorrow,
unrelieved by a single green spot in the desert wastes
of pain. Its religious character is rather of the neg-
ative kind; the emptiness of fashionable religion is
exhibited in grim caricatures, while the "eclipse of
faith" is most horribly illustrated in the mind his-
tory of the gifted orphan, yet in her teens, led away
by German and New England sophists. Still the
book is one of great power, and valuable, especially
as promising better things from the same gifted hand.
Most opportunely for the illustration of my posi-
tion as to the religious novel, and for my defense, if
any of your more scrupulous readers should suspect
that your correspondent is in danger of going too far,
is the appearance just at this time-from the press
of Derby & Jackson-of an edition of Brooke's
"Fool of Quality," first printed in England nearly a
hundred years ago, and afterward issued in a some-
what abridged form by John Wesley, as a part of his
"Christian Library," and commended by him "as
the most excellent work of the kind that he had
seen." To prepare novels for the reading of his
people seems strangely inconsistent with the charac-
ter of Wesley, as compared with the nature and
tendency of that kind of literature, as generally es-
timated by religious persons; and even during the
life-time of that great evangelist many of his fol-
lowers were not well pleased that he had done so.
Dr. Adam Clarke tells us that when he read the work,
it "sometimes made me laugh and sometimes cry,
and sometimes made me ready to go upon my knees;"
but then with a forced philosophy he adds, "the
thought that was a fiction, made me angry with
myself," as though a fiction could not be quite as
truthful in its representations and teachings as the
most literal records of-facts. For a long time the
"Fool of Quality" has been out of print and almost
entirely forgotten, and most likely its immunity from
complete oblivion and its late resuscitation is chiefly
owing to the fact that it found favor with the apostle
of Methodism. Recently the erratic Rev. Charles
Kingsley, of London, procured its republication, with
a long appreciative and commendatory preface from
his own gifted hand; and from that edition the pres-
ent one is made-Americanized, perhaps, too, still

farther Methodized by an "Introduction" by the recognized hierophant of exoteric Methodistical litRev. Dr. Strickland, who seems to have become the of Quality-Henry, Earl of Moreland," comes before erature. Thus heralded and presented, "The Fool the American public in a becoming dress-of types and paper-with a good prospect of a favorable reception, and a wider range than was accorded to him after his former advent. The appearance of this work just now is only one of the many concurrent indications of the direction in which the popular thought and taste are drifting.

Dawn to Daylight, by a Minister's Wife."
In my "pile" I find a new volume entitled, "From
confessed but not proclaimed production of Mrs.
It is the
Henry Ward Beecher, a book of the Sunnyside-
Shadyside family, which had such a run some years
"played out.'
ago, and was supposed to have been long since
The story is located in your great

west, and like all its class, it is a tale of joys and sorrows-of empty purses and ill-supplied stores, compensated by opportunities to do good, and to be blessed by blessing. Though written as the record of "a friend" of the author, and published as the work of "a minister's wife," it is quite evident that the minister himself saw the manuscript before it went to the printer. If not, the "wife" has very happily succeeded in rivaling the "minister" himself. There

is often a pleasure in looking back at departed hardships, over which present sunshines cast a joyous radiance, and one gratifies a venial personal pride improved condition of things appears as the results when in contrasting the past with the present the of one's own cleverness. Besides the pleasure it will afford its readers, this book will also aid in pleading the cause of the poorly-fed and still more inadequately-appreciated ministers.

It is sometimes found that the contemplation of human wretchedness and suffering, with the purpose to afford the needed relief, has a strange attractiveness for many minds. A disposition to succor the distressed is an instinct of human nature so strong and active that when exercised it presently becomes a passion, which at length subordinates all others to enjoining its exercise as a high duty, and promising itself. Christianity gives it her most sacred sanction, in return the most glorious recompense; while in it pleasure and most complete development. In conthe inborn chivalry of the soul finds its highest sidering the life and character of Howard the philanthropist, I have often thought that passion as certainly as religious principle impelled him in his career of benevolence; and the same remark will apply with equal fitness to nearly all of his class. Nor does this at all detract from their merits; for surely it can painfully and against strongly-opposing impulses. not increase the merits of doing good to perform it They who have most effectively administered to the poor and suffering have not usually been distinguishthough all levity or even moderate hilarity would be ed for an unusual share of painful sympathy; and incongruous in such a work, yet cheerfulness and a good condition of the nerves are valuable requisites, both as to himself and the objects of his beneficence, for one who seeks to alleviate human wretchedness.

Editor's Table.