outward world, they call forth the verdure and bloom of the inner life in all those whom they thus enfold.
It may be objected that we assign too great an influence, too prominent a position, to these creations of the imagination, presented to us on the pages of fiction. But fiction, in its action on the mind, has all the effect of history; it has even an advantage over history. Since the one gives but the outward and apparent life, while the other enters the secret recesses of the heart, unveils the hidden springs of motive and of action, and lays open to our view, what no history and no confessions ever do, the secret workings of the human soul, that most mysterious and complicated of all the works of God. Into these “beings of the mind,” the writer of fiction, like the sculptor of old, breathes life, thought, and immortality, and they become to us positive existences. Lear and Cordelia, Othello and Desdemona, Ivanhoe and Kebecca, are as much realities as if they had dwelt upon the earth, and their lives had come down to us beside those of the heroes and heroines of history. So it is with the characters Miss Bremer has drawn. We are as familiar with Bear and his little wife, as if we had dwelt with them at their cottage-home of Rosenvik. We shrink before the iron will and the imperious commands of Ma chère mère, and shudder to encounter the dark form and the lowering glance of the fierce Bruno.
If, then, fiction in its effects is to be regarded as possessing equal power with history, it becomes a more important feature, not only in literature, but in morals, and should occupy a higher place than has been assigned to it, and those who people the world with these airy yet actual beings, and present to us in them ideals to contem plate and to imitate, should be regarded as the benefactors of men. And so, indeed, it has been with her who is the subject of this brief sketch. Her works have gone abroad on their message of peace and love over the civilized world, and her fame has resounded far and wide, till its echo returned to her native land. Fame, as it is generally understood, however, is but a poor expression of the relation that exists between Miss Bremer and her world of readers; it is but the outward fact of the deep, spiritual relation she bears
