Miss Evans; St. Elmo [pp. 268-273]

MISS EVANS -ST. ELMO.
teenth century gather to test their ratiocinative skill, and bear off the crown
of bay on the point of a syllogism or the wings of an audacious hypothesis."
What wonder then that this gifted young female projects a
book, which in its scope and erudition rivals any production that
has electrified the world for eighteen hundred years, and "muid night often found her groping in the classic dust of extinct sys tems." Disdaining the frivolities of youth, she devotes herself to
this work, and Miss Evans adds:
"The vastness of the cosmic field she was now compelled to traverse, the
innumerable ramifications of polytheistic and monotheistic creeds, necessi tated-unwearied research as she rent asunder the superstitious vails which
various nations and successive epochs had woven before the shining features
of truth. Having once grappled with her theme, she wrestled as Jacob for
the blessing of a successful solution, and in order to popularize a subject
bristling withl recondite archaisms and philologic problems, she cast it in the
mould of fiction! Verily! an ambitious literary programme for a girl over
whose head scarcely eighteen years had hung their dripping, drab, wintry
skies and peaily summer clouds."
Happy printer, publisher and reader, that such a "literary programme" figures only in the mental kaleidoscope of the writer!
Pursued by the addresses of St. Elmo, who rules her heart, but
against whom her judgment rebels, Edna starts forth again on her
travels, and is safely landed in New York, where she becomes a
governess, and at the same time obtains great notoriety by her
writings for a popular magazine. The best drawn character ill
the book is here introduced, Mr. Douglas G. Manning, an editor,
who talks sensibly and frames his ideas in comprehensible language. HIis advent is the signal for a decided improvement in
the tone of the book; the style loses some of its verbosity, the
scenes become more natural, the conversations less weighty. The
heroine descends firom her jaded steed, and, walking along the
path of every-day life, shows us the sunny side of her character.
By her devotion to a little invalid boy, and consistency of purpose
in following the dictates of conscience rather than passion, she
wins a higher place in our esteem than while burning the midnight taper to write unreadable books, or launchbing at the devoted
heads of the patient listeners quotations from Burke, Buckle, Mill
and Buskin, with plentiful libations of Anthon's Classical Dictionary.
By these remarks we do not wish to be understood as denying
woman " her right to erudition," so far from it, we agree with
Miss Evans that in "this nineteenth century it is her privilege to
be as learned as Cuvier or Sir William Hamilton or Humboldt,"
provided she has the capacity to digest the material. But let such
knowledge serve to develop her own ideas so that her conversation may not be but a continual advertisement of the contents of
her library, and if she have wit enough to write a book, let it
emanate from the native mint, and be stamped with the author's
seal.
272