Mr. Howells is, perhaps, not always so well appreciated in his own country as he deserves—­and this in spite of the facts that his novels are widely read and his name is in all the magazines.  What I mean is, that in the conversation of the cultured circles of Boston or New York too much stress is apt to be laid on the prosaic and commonplace character of his materials.  There are, perhaps, unusually good reasons for this point of view.  Cromwell’s wife and daughters would probably prefer to have him painted wartless, but posterity wants him warts and all.  So those to whom the average—­the very average—­American is an every-day and all-day occurrence cannot abide him in their literature; while we who are removed by the ocean of space can enjoy these pictures of common life, as enabling us, better than any idealistic romance or study of the rare and extraordinary, to realise the life of our American cousins.  To those who can read between the lines with any discretion, I should say that novels like “Silas Lapham” and “A Modern Instance” will give a clearer idea of American character and tendencies than any other contemporary works of fiction; to those who can read between the lines—­for it is obvious that the commonplace and the slightly vulgar no more exhaust the field of society in the United States than elsewhere.  But to me Mr. Howells, even when in his most realistic and sordid vein, always suggests the ideal and the noble; the reverse of the medal proclaims loudly that it is the reverse, and that there is an obverse of a very different kind to be seen by those who will turn the coin.  It seems to me that no very great palaeontological skill is necessary to reconstruct the whole frame of the animal from the portion that Mr. Howells sets up for us.  His novels remind me of those maps of a limited area which indicate very clearly what lies beyond, by arrows on their margins.  In nothing does Mr. Howells more clearly show his “Americanism” than in his almost divinely sympathetic and tolerant attitude towards commonplace, erring, vulgar humanity.  “Ah, poor real life, which I love!” he writes somewhere; “can I make others share the delight I find in thy foolish and insipid face!” We must remember in reading him his own theory of the duty of the novelist.  “I am extremely opposed to what we call ideal characters.  I think their portrayal is mischievous; it is altogether offensive to me as an artist, and, as far as the morality goes, I believe that when an artist tries to create an ideal he mixes some truth up with a vast deal of sentimentality, and produces something that is extremely noxious as well as nauseous.  I think that no man can consistently portray a probable type of human character without being useful to his readers.  When he endeavors to create something higher than that, he plays the fool himself and tempts his readers to folly.  He tempts young men and women to try to form themselves upon models that would be detestable in life, if they were ever found there.”