From the True Wesleyan

  I am again on the great moral battlefield of the South. Rev. John G. Fee and myself are going out to the encounter, "two by two."

  We have a series of protracted meetings on hand, stretching over several counties, and still the cry is, from new quarters, [illegible] I was as much surprised as pained, on a recent occasion to hear a particular preacher—one who has taken his [illegible] on virtue's side, in most of the movements of the day, and who has been especially ardent in advocating the cause of "prohibition" —denounce unsparingly and unnecessarily a well-known book and its author. In speaking of the viciousness of our popular amusements, and more immediately of theatrical performances, he took occasion to name "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and pronounce the work a "bad" one, "a vile libel on our country;" and say sneeringly, that "it must have required a very brilliant effort of Mrs. Stowe's imagination to picture a woman leaping from one mass of floating ice to another, across a river in mid-winter." Now, it so happens that Mrs. S. had a bona fide flesh and blood original for this picture, as well as many, very many others in her book, as may be seen by referring to her "Key." And it only argued a sad lack of information, on the part of the speaker, to pounce so eagerly on a "thing which he understood not." I doubt (on pretty good authority,) whether the Rev. gentleman has read either "Cabin" or "Key." Surely he might have expended his indignation on the stage representation, without involving the innocent writer of the simple well-told tale who is, doubtless, as guiltless of its being dramatized as the preacher himself. The impression left on any candid mind by a perusal of a work, whether such can endorse its sentiments or not, must be I think, that it was written in the spirit of fairness, and its author's motives were good, and only good from the beginning to the end.— [illegible]. Phil. Register.