of the
question.

Mr. James's tales, if without any obvious moral, are sure to have a
clearly defined artistic purpose. They are careful studies of character
thrown into dramatic action, and the undercurrent of motive is, as it
should be, not in the circumstances but in the characters themselves. It
is by delicate touches and hints that his effects are produced. The
reader is called upon to do his share, and will find his reward in it,
for Mr. James, as we cannot too often insist, is first and always an
artist. Nowhere does he show his fine instinct more to the purpose than
in leaving the tragic element of tales (dealing as they do with
contemporary life, and that mainly in the drawing-room) to take care of
itself, and in confining the outward expression of passion within the
limits of a decorous amenity. Those who must have their intellectual
gullets tingled with the fiery draught of coarse sensation must go
elsewhere for their dram; but whoever is capable of the aroma of the
more delicate vintages will find it here. In the volume before us
"Madame de Mauves" will illustrate what we mean. There is no space for
detailed analysis, even if that were ever adequate to give the true
impression of stories so carefully worked out and depending so much for
their effect on a gradual cumulation of particulars each in itself
unemphatic. We have said that Mr. James shows promise as well as
accomplishment, gaining always in mastery of his material. It is but a
natural inference from this that his "Roderick Hudson" is the fullest
and most finished proof of his power as a story-teller. Indeed, we may
say frankly that it pleases us the more because the characters are drawn
with a bolder hand and in more determined outline, for if Mr. James need
any friendly caution, it is against over-delicacy of handling.

LONGFELLOW

THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH

The introduction and acclimatization of the _hexameter_ upon English
soil has been an affair of more than two centuries. The attempt was
first systematically made during the reign of Elizabeth, but the metre
remained a feeble exotic that scarcely burgeoned under glass. Gabriel
Harvey,--a kind of Don Adriano de Armado,--whose chief claim to
remembrance is, that he was the friend of Spenser, boasts that he was
the first to whom the notion of transplantation occurred. In his "Foure
Letters" (1592) he says, "If I never deserve anye better remembraunce,
let mee rather be Epitaphe