The scene is laid in Syria, instead of New England, and the
"village" known to New Yorkers as Boston gives way to "El Fureidis,"
a village in the valley of Lebanon. But while so swift a transition
from the West to the East may disappoint that "Expectation" which
Fletcher tells us "sits i' the air," and which we all know is not to
be balked with impunity, there can be no doubt, that, in shifting the
scene, the authoress has enabled us to judge her essential talent
with more accuracy. Possessing none of the elements which are thought
essential to the production of a sensation, "The Lamplighter" forced
itself into notice as a "sensation book." The writer was innocent of
all the grave literary crimes implied in such a distinction. The
first hundred and fifty pages were as simple, and as true to ordinary
nature, as the daisies and buttercups of the common fields; the
remaining two hundred pages repeated the stereotyped traditions and
customary hearsays which make up the capital of every professional
story-teller. The book began in the spirit of Jane Austen, and ended
in that of Jane Porter.
In "El Fureidis" everything really native to the sentiment and
experience of Miss Cummins is exhibited in its last perfection, with
the addition of a positive, though not creative, faculty of
imagination.
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