Complete and Unabridged - Two Volumes in One


In "North and South" may easily be traced the effects of a perfect union of tastes as well as of affections, which made the companionship of her husband and daughters the greatest happiness of Mrs. Gaskell's life, and helped to mature in her the knowledge of men's and women's hearts-the supreme gift of the writer who undertakes to interpret to others the best, though they may not be the least common, experiences of human life. This book has much to tell of sorrow and suffering; and Miss Edgeworth, had she lived to criticise it, might have been excused for complaining of the number of its death-beds -including those of Mrs. Hale and Mr. Hale, Mr. Bell, Margaret's generous guardian, and Bessy, her humble friend and admirer. Yet the work is, notwithstanding, the product of a happy mind in a happy mood—and at times this happiness finds expression in passages radiant with beauty, and glorious as testifying to the service of Love the Conqueror. Thus the force and charm of the personal sentiment with which the story is instinct correspond to what may be called its chief purpose (since a novel with a purpose it remains)-the endeavor to commend reconciliation through sympathy; and this is the solution applied by it to the problems suggested by the nature of the plot and the course of the story.