Hawthorne and George Eliot rather than any others; but it studies
human nature much more in its wonted aspects, and finds its
ethical and dramatic examples in the operation of lighter but not
really less vital motives. The moving accident is certainly not
its trade; and it prefers to avoid all manner of dire
catastrophes. it is largely influenced by French fiction in
form; but it is the realism of Daudet rather than the realism of
Zola that prevails with it, and it has a soul of its own which is
above the business of recording the rather brutish pursuit of a
woman by a man, which seems to be the chief end of the French
novelist. This school, which is so largely of the future as well
as the present, finds its chief exemplar in Mr. James; it is he
who is shaping and directing American fiction, at least. It is
the ambition of the younger contributors to write like him; he
has his following more distinctly recognizable than that of any
other English-writing novelist. Whether he will so far control
this following as to decide the nature of the novel with us
remains to be seen. Will the reader be content to accept a novel
which is an analytic study rather than a story, which is apt to
leave him arbiter of the destiny of the author's creations? Will
he find his account in the unflagging interest of their
development? Mr. James's growing popularity seems to suggest
that this may be the case; but the work of Mr. James's imitators
will have much to do with the final result.

In the meantime it is not surprising that he has his imitators.
Whatever exceptions we take to his methods or his results, we
cannot deny him a very great literary genius. To me there is a
perpetual delight in his way of saying things, and I cannot
wonder that younger men try to catch the trick of it. The