Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

It is a satisfaction to observe that the instinctive movement which is establishing American fiction, not in one locality alone, but on a field broad as the continent, unconsciously recognizes this one principle,--the essential dignity and worth of the individual man. This is what enables it to dispense with the mechanism of separate classes, and to reach human nature itself. When we look at the masters of English fiction, Scott and Jane Austen, we notice that in scarcely one of their novels does one person ever swerve on the closing page from the precise social position he has held from the beginning. Society in their hands is fixed, not fluid. Of course, there are a few concealed heirs, a few revealed strawberry leaves, but never any essential change. I can recall no real social promotion in all the Waverley novels except where Halbert Glendenning weds the maid of Avenel, and there the tutelary genius disappears singing,--

The churl is lord, the maid is bride ;