Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

To the same.

I have been reading “Guy Mannering.” I admire it for its originality. Dominie Sampson is certainly a character that never had a precedent. Meg Merrilies has something of that wild enthusiasm which characterizes the wife of MacGregor; and there is a nameless something in her character which corresponds with the awful grandeur of Highland scenery.

Don't you think that the spells of the gypsy and the astrology of Mannering might have considerable [3] effect upon the superstitious mind by being left entirely unaccounted for? I should be almost tempted to leave sober history, and repair to these Scottish novels for instruction, as well as amusement, were not the historical views which they afford almost entirely confined to Scotland. The author seems to possess great versatility of talent. Almost all the sciences seem to have had a share of his attention; and his observations on human nature seem to be peculiarly accurate. I think I shall go to Scotland (you see that my head is full of rocks and crags and dark blue lakes; however, you know that I mean Portsmouth) very soon. I always preferred the impetuous grandeur of the cataract to the gentle meanderings of the rill, and spite of all that is said about gentleness, modesty, and timidity in the heroine of a novel or poem, give me the mixture of pathos and grandeur exhibited in the character of Meg Merrilies; or the wild dignity of Diana Vernon, with all the freedom of a Highland maiden in her step and in her eye; or the ethereal figure Annot Lyle,--“the lightest and most fairy figure that ever trod the turf by moonlight;” or even the lofty contempt of life and danger which, though not unmixed with ferocity, throws such a peculiar interest around Helen Mac-Gregor.

In life I am aware that gentleness and modesty form the distinguished ornaments of our sex. But in description they cannot captivate the imagination, nor rivet the attention.

Do you know you have a great many questions to answer me? Do not forget that I asked you about the “flaming cherubims,” the effects of distance, horizontal or perpendicular, “Orlando Furioso,” and Lord Byron.