the human creature that uttered it--the word that Turguenieff's people are
constantly uttering--is another. Moreover, in the dearth of commanding
traits and stirring events, there is a continual temptation to magnify
those which are petty and insignificant. Instead of a telescope to sweep
the heavens, we are furnished with a microscope to detect infusoria. We
want a description of a mountain; and, instead of receiving an outline,
naked and severe, perhaps, but true and impressive, we are introduced to a
tiny field on its immeasurable side, and we go botanizing and insect-
hunting there. This is realism; but it is the realism of texture, not of
form and relation. It encourages our glance to be near-sighted instead of
comprehensive. Above all, there is a misgiving that we do not touch the
writer's true quality, and that these scenes of his, so elaborately and
conscientiously prepared, have cost him much thought and pains, but not
one throb of the heart or throe of the spirit. The experiences that he
depicts have not, one fancies, marked wrinkles on his forehead or turned
his hair gray. There are two kinds of reserve--the reserve which feels
that its message is too mighty for it, and the reserve which feels that it
is too mighty for its message. Our new school of writers is reserved, but
its reserve does not strike one as being of the former kind. It cannot be
said of any one of Mr. James's stories, "This is his best," or "This is
his worst," because no one of them is all one way. They have their phases
of strength and veracity, and, also, phases that are neither veracious nor
strong. The cause may either lie in a lack of experience in a certain
direction on the writer's part; or else in his reluctance to write up to
the experience he has. The experience in question is not of the ways of
the world,--concerning which Mr. James has every sign of being politely
familiar,--nor of men and women in their every-day aspect; still less of
literary ways and means, for of these, in his own line, he is a master.
The experience referred to is experience of passion. If Mr. James be not
incapable of describing passion, at all events he has still to show that