lake-district in the west of Massachusets, to Lenox, where also Miss Sedgewick resides. They have kindly invited me to their house, and I shall be glad to become better acquainted with the author of the “Great stone face.”
Cooper and Washington Irving (the former lives on his own property west of New York) have already by their works introduced us to a nearer acquaintance with a part of the world of which we before knew little more than the names—Niagara and Washington. After these poets in prose, several ladies of the Northern States have distinguished themselves as the authors of novels and tales. Foremost and best of these are,—Miss Catherine Sedgewick, whose excellent characteristic descriptions and delineations of American scenes even we in Sweden are acquainted with, in her “Redwood” and “Hope Leslie;”—Mrs. Maria Child, who in her pictures of the life of antiquity as well as that of the present time, expresses her love for the ideal beauty of life, for everything which is good, noble and harmonious, and who in all objects, in mankind, in flowers, stars, institutions, the sciences, art, and in human events, endeavours to find the point or the tone wherein they respond to the eternal harmonies; a restless seeking after eternal repose in the music of the spheres, a Christian Platonic thinker, a Christian in heart and deed;—Mrs. Caroline Kirkland, witty, humourous and sarcastic, but based upon a large heart and a fine understanding, as we also saw by her delicious book, “A New Home in the West;”—Miss Maria M‘Intosh, whom we also know by her novel, “To seem or to be,” and whose everyday life is her most beautiful novel. (But that one might also say of the others.) Of Mrs. Sigourney I have already spoken. Mrs. L. Hall, the author of a great dramatic poem called “Miriam,” I know as yet merely by report. Of the lesser authoresses and poetesses I say nothing, for they are legion. The latter
