business man, the
aesthetic feebling from Boston, and the Europeanized or would-be
denationalized American campaigners in the Old World, and has set forth
the ludicrous incongruities, perplexities, and misunderstandings which
result from contradictory standards of conventional morality and
behavior. In the _Europeans_, 1879, and an {588} _International
Episode_, 1878, he has reversed the process, bringing Old Word
[Transcriber's note: World?] standards to the test of American ideas by
transferring his _dramatis personae_ to republican soil. The last-named
of these illustrates how slender a plot realism requires for its
purposes. It is nothing more than the history of an English girl of good
family who marries an American gentleman and undertakes to live in
America, but finds herself so uncomfortable in strange social conditions
that she returns to England for life, while, contrariwise, the heroine's
sister is so taken with the freedom of these very conditions that she
elopes with another American and "goes West." James is a keen observer
of the physiognomy of cities as well as of men, and his _Portraits of
Places_, 1884, is among the most delightful contributions to the
literature of foreign travel.

Mr. Howells's writings are not without "international" touches. In _A
Foregone Conclusion_ and the _Lady of the Aroostook_, and others of his
novels, the contrasted points of view in American and European life are
introduced, and especially those variations in feeling, custom, dialect,
etc., which make the modern Englishman and the modern American such
objects of curiosity to each other, and which have been dwelt upon of
late even unto satiety. But in general he finds his subjects at home,
and if he does not know his own countrymen and countrywomen more
intimately than Mr. James, at least {589} he loves them better. There is
a warmer sentiment in his fictions, too; his men are better fellows and
his women are more lovable. Howells was born in Ohio. His early life
was that of a western country editor. In 1860 he published, jointly with
his friend Piatt, a book of verse--_Poems of Two Friends_. In 1861 he
was sent as consul to Venice, and the literary results of his sojourn
there appeared in his sketches _Venetian Life_, 1865, and _Italian
Journeys_, 1867. In 1871 he became editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, and
in the same year published his _Suburban Sketches_. All of these early
volumes showed a quick eye for