University of Virginia Library

No admirer of Mrs. Holmes' writings will thank us for a “critical” opinion of this,
her latest and best work. The time for such a thing has gone by. But surely they will
pardon us if we dwell lingeringly and lovingly over one or two of her characters:—the
angel-like Jessie, the rightly-named Angel of the Pines, who, though a child, went
about like a ministering angel, when all others had fled the pestilence that walked at
noonday, and at last fell before its withering stroke. Surely, if a tear falls here, it falls
in the right place. And then Rosa:—Rosa at thirteen the schoolmistress and in love.
One year after, Rosa the governess was again in love. How we are interested in the
tangled web of her life-experience, and how we rejoice when at last the orange-flowers
crown her brow, and the storm-tossed barque reaches the sure haven of repose:

Ada, the deceiving, merits our scorn; Ada, the dissipated, somewhat of our pity, Dr.
Clayton we despise for his fickleness, honor for his after-manliness, and congratulate for
his eventual happiness.

We have read this book with no little satisfaction, for it has a reality about it that
touches a spot not always sensitive to descriptions written with more pretence and literary
style. It is particularly attrative to one with a New-England experience, as its
earlier chapters are drawn from life in the country portions of that region, and those
immediately following are laid in Boston. We do not mean to intimate that the book
is carelessly written, but that it is “the touch of nature that makes all men kin” that is
its especial charm. It does not read like a romance, but like a calm narration by some
friend of events occurring in a circle of one's old friends, and the intense interest with
which we follow the narrative seems to be rather from personal feeling than from the
usual false excitement of the overstrained sentimentalities of most of the modern works
of fiction which “read like a book.”

Our friends in the novel-reading line will gladly hall a new work called “Meadow
Brook,” by Mrs. Mary J. Holmes, author of “Tempest and Sunshine,” and several other
well-known and popular works. “Meadow Brook” is an exceedingly attractive book,
and one that will alternately call forth smiles and tears. The chapters delineating the
life of the youthful “school-ma'am,” and her experience in “boarding round,” may be
termed “rich” in every sense of the word. We doubt if their equal can be met with in
any of the novels of the present day. The after-life of Rosa Lee, the heroine of Meadow
Brook, will be found to be of equal, if not of superior interest to the earlier part, so
graphically delineated in the first half-dozen chapters.

Many of her characters might be, if they are not, drawn from life. We have met a
little Jessie whose bright, sweet face, winning ways, and sunny, happy temper, made
her a favorite with all who knew her. Jessie Lansing vividly recalls our little Jessie
who, we hope, is still the sunbeam of her own sweet Southern home. Mrs. Holmes
draws her pictures from the deep welling fountain of her own heart and life, reaching
our hearts as well as our imaginations, and will always meet a cordial reception whenever
she appears.

“Meadow Brook” is a plain story of American life and American people, with capital
illustrations of American habits and manners... The story is a well-written common-sense
affair, containing much that will please the reader. Nothing is distorted or overdrawn,
but all is calculated to impress the reader with a belief in the writer—that is
that she is telling a true tale.