of the Tuscan palaces that “in their large dependence on pure symmetry for beauty of effect, [they] reproduce more than other modern styles the simple nobleness of Greek architecture.”  And we would note also what he says of the Albani Antinoues.  It must be a nimble wit that can keep pace with Mr. James’s logic in his aesthetic criticism.  It is apt to spring airily over the middle term to the conclusion, leaving something in the likeness of a ditch across the path of our slower intelligences, which look about them and think twice before taking the leap.  Courage! there are always fresh woods and pastures new on the other side.  A curious reflection has more than once flashed upon our minds as we lingered with Mr. James over his complex and refined sensations:  we mean the very striking contrast between the ancient and modern traveller.  The former saw with his bodily eyes, and reported accordingly, catering for the curiosity of homely wits as to the outsides and appearances of things.  Even Montaigne, habitually introspective as he was, sticks to the old method in his travels.  The modern traveller, on the other hand, superseded by the guide-book, travels in himself, and records for us the scenery of his own mind as it is affected by change of sky and the various weather of temperament.

Mr. James, in his sketches, frankly acknowledges his preference of the Old World.  Life—­which here seems all drab to him, without due lights and shades of social contrast, without that indefinable suggestion of immemorial antiquity which has so large a share in picturesque impression—­is there a dome of many-colored glass irradiating both senses and imagination.  We shall not blame him too gravely for this, as if an American had not as good a right as any ancient of them all to say, Ubi libertas, ibi patria.  It is no real paradox to affirm that a man’s love of his country may often be gauged by his disgust at it.  But we think it might fairly be argued against him that the very absence of that distracting complexity of associations might help to produce that solitude which is the main feeder of imagination.  Certainly, Hawthorne, with whom no modern European can be matched for the subtlety and power of this marvellous quality, is a strong case on the American side 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,