nd of a number of inanities. "Ah, you call
them ideas!" he returns, which is delicious and makes you love him.
He, too, has his moments of misgiving, apparently in regard to his
nobility, and his acceptance of Newman on the basis of something like
"manhood suffrage" is very charming. It is of course difficult for a
remote plebeian to verify the pictures of legitimist society in "The
American," but there is the probable suggestion in them of conditions
and principles, and want of principles, of which we get glimpses in our
travels abroad; at any rate, they reveal another and not impossible
world, and it is fine to have Newman discover that the opinions and
criticisms of our world are so absolutely valueless in that sphere that
his knowledge of the infamous crime of the mother and brother of his
betrothed will have no effect whatever upon them in their own circle if
he explodes it there. This seems like aristocracy indeed! and one
admires, almost respects, its survival in our day. But I always
regretted that Newman's discovery seemed the precursor of his
magnanimous resolution not to avenge himself; it weakened the effect of
this, with which it had really nothing to do. Upon the whole, however,
Newman is an adequate and satisfying representative of Americanism,
with his generous matrimonial ambition, his vast good-nature, and his
thorough good sense and right feeling. We must be very hard to please
if we are not pleased with him. He is not the "cultivated American"
who redeems us from time to time in the eyes of Europe; but he is
unquestionably more national, and it is observable that his unaffected
fellow-countrymen and women fare very well at Mr. James's hand always;
it is the Europeanizing sort like the critical little Bostonian in the
"Bundle of Letters," the ladies shocked at Daisy Miller, the mother in
the "Pension Beaurepas" who goes about trying to be of the "native"
world everywhere, Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond, Miss Light and her
mother, who have reason to complain, if any one has. Doubtless Mr.
James does not mean to satirize such Americans, but it is interesting
to note how they strike such a keen observer. We are certainly not
allowed to like them, and the other sort find somehow a place in our
affections along with his good Europeans. It is a little odd, by the
way, that in all the printed talk about Mr. James--and there has been
no end of it--his power of engaging your preference for certain of