I also feel the indefinable
charm, and of the tragedy of whose innocence I recognize the delicate
pathos. Looking back to those early stories, where Mr. James stood at
the dividing ways of the novel and the romance, I am sometimes sorry
that he declared even superficially for the former. His best efforts
seem to me those of romance; his best types have an ideal development,
like Isabel and Claire Belgarde and Bessy Alden and poor Daisy and even
Newman. But, doubtless, he has chosen wisely; perhaps the romance is
an outworn form, and would not lend itself to the reproduction of even
the ideality of modern life. I myself waver somewhat in my
preference--if it is a preference--when I think of such people as Lord
Warburton and the Touchetts, whom I take to be all decidedly of this
world. The first of these especially interested me as a probable type
of the English nobleman, who amiably accepts the existing situation
with all its possibilities of political and social change, and insists
not at all upon the surviving feudalities, but means to be a manly and
simple gentleman in any event. An American is not able to pronounce as
to the verity of the type; I only know that it seems probable and that
it is charming. It makes one wish that it were in Mr. James's way to
paint in some story the present phase of change in England. A titled
personage is still mainly an inconceivable being to us; he is like a
goblin or a fairy in a storybook. How does he comport himself in the
face of all the changes and modifications that have taken place and
that still impend? We can hardly imagine a lord taking his nobility
seriously; it is some hint of the conditional frame of Lord Warburton's
mind that makes him imaginable and delightful to us.

It is not my purpose here to review any of Mr. James's books; I like
better to speak of his people than of the conduct of his novels, and I
wish to recognize the fineness with which he has touched-in the pretty
primness of Osmond's daughter and the mild devotedness of Mr. Rosier.
A masterly hand is as often manifest in the treatment of such
subordinate figures as in that of the principal persons, and Mr. James
does them unerringly. This is felt in the more important character of
Valentin Belgarde, a fascinating character in spite of its
defects,--perhaps on account of them--and a sort of French Lord
Warburton, but wittier, and not so good. "These are my ideas," says
his sister-in-law, at the e