Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), April 5, 1845, vol. 1, no. 14, p. ???-???

[page 211, column 1, continued:]

LOOK TO THE END; or The Bennetts Abroad. By Mrs. Ellis, author of the Women of England. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The fine abilities of Mrs. Ellis have been long appreciated, and we need say nothing about them in general. In “The Bennetts Abroad” she has imagined a plain English family emerging from the utmost common-places of a London life into all that is beautiful in continental travel. The elder members of the party serve only as make-weights to the true design, which is that of depicting the influence to be exercised over a youthful and highly sensitive mind by the beautiful in itself — and with this object a lovely girl is supposed to be the youngest member of the family. The danger to be apprehended from too habitual an indulgence even in the sentiment of Beauty — that is of physical Beauty — is imagined to be counteracted by encouraging an appreciation of moral loveliness.

In all this there is much to be disputed — but no one can dispute the interest which is excited in the reader's mind by the author's endeavor to develope her theory.