Whoever takes an interest, whether of mere curiosity or of critical foreboding, in the product and tendency of our younger literature, must have had his attention awakened and detained by the writings of Mr. James.  Whatever else they may be, they are not common, and have that air of good breeding which is the token of whatever is properly called literature.  They are not the overflow of a shallow talent for improvisation too full of self to be contained, but show everywhere the marks of intelligent purpose and of the graceful ease that comes only of conscientious training.  Undoubtedly there was a large capital of native endowment to start from—­a mind of singular subtlety and refinement; a faculty of rapid observation, yet patient of rectifying afterthought; senses daintily alive to every aesthetic suggestion; and a frank enthusiasm, kept within due bounds by the double-consciousness of humor.  But it is plain that Mr. James is fortunate enough to possess, or to be possessed by, that finer sixth sense which we call the artistic, and which controls, corrects, and discontents.  His felicities, therefore, are not due to a lucky turn of the dice, but to forethought and afterthought.  Accordingly, he is capable of progress, and gives renewed evidence of it from time to time, while too many of our authors show premature marks of arrested development.  They strike a happy vein of starting, perhaps, and keep on grubbing at it, with the rude helps of primitive mining, seemingly unaware that it is daily growing more and more slender.  Even should it wholly vanish, they persist in the vain hope of recovering it further on, as if in literature two successes of precisely the same kind were possible Nay, most of them have hit upon no vein at all, but picked up a nugget rather, and persevere in raking the surface of things, if haply they may chance upon another.  The moral of one of Hawthorne’s stories is that there is no element of treasure-trove in success, but that true luck lies in the deep and assiduous cultivation of our own plot of ground, be it larger or smaller.  For indeed the only estate of man that savors of the realty is in his mind.  Mr. James seems to have arrived early at an understanding of this, and to have profited by the best modern appliances of self-culture.  In conception and expression is he essentially an artist and not an irresponsible trouvere.  If he allow himself an occasional carelessness, it is not from incaution, but because he knows perfectly well what he is about.  He is quite at home in the usages of the best literary society.  In his writing there is none of that hit-or-miss playing at snapdragon with language, of that clownish bearing-on in what should be the light strokes, as if mere emphasis were meaning, and naturally none of the slovenliness that offends a trained judgment in the work of so many of our writers later, unmistakably clever as they are.  In short, he has tone, the last result and surest evidence of an intellect