nd have been a man to thank God for. As it is, he is the victim of an
intellectual foppery.

Mr. W. D. Howells has something in common with Mr. James, but he is of
stronger stuff--not less essentially a gentleman, as his books reveal
him, but more essentially a man. He has a sterling courage, and has
never been afraid of his own opinions. His declaration that 'all the
stories have been told' is one of the keys to his method as a novelist
A work of fiction is something which enables him to show the impingement
of character on character, with modifying effects of environment and
circumstance. His style is clean and sober, and his method is invariably
dignified. He has deliberately allowed his critical prepossessions to
exclude him from all chance of greatness, but within his self-set
limits he moves with a certain serene mastery, and his detail is finely
accurate.

Miss Mary Wilkins, who is a very much younger writer than any of the
three here dealt with, reminds an English reader both of George Eliot
and Miss Mitford. 'Pembroke' is the best and completest of her books. So
far as pure literary charm goes it would be difficult to amend her work,
but the suggestion of character conveyed is surely too acidulated. Such
a set of stubborn, self-willed, and uncomfortable people as are gathered
together in these pages could hardly have lived in any single village in
any quarter of the world. They are drawn with an air of truth which is
not easy to resist, but if they are really as accurately studied as they
seem to be Pembroke must be a place to fly from. It is conceivable that
the members of such a congregation might be less intolerable to each
other than they seem to the foreign outsider, but the ameliorating
effects of usage must needs be strong indeed to make them fit to live
with. For the most part they are represented as well-meaning folk; but
they are exasperatingly individual, all over sore corners, eager to
be injured at their tenderest points, and implacable to the person who
hurts them. In Pembroke a soreness of egotism afflicts everybody. Every
creature in the book is over-sensitive to slight and misunderstanding,
and every creature is clumsy and careless in the infliction of pain. It
is a study in self-centred egotism. People who have an opportunity
of knowing village life in the Eastern States proclaim the book a
masterpiece of observation.

Bret Harte, studying a form of life now extinct, which once (with
certai