meaning. Mr. Howells has produced a great deal of finely wrought tapestry;
but does not seem, as yet, to have found a hall fit to adorn it with.

And yet Mr. James and Mr. Howells have done more than all the rest of us
to make our literature respectable during the last ten years. If texture
be the object, they have brought texture to a fineness never surpassed
anywhere. They have discovered charm and grace in much that was only blank
before. They have detected and described points of human nature hitherto
unnoticed, which, if not intrinsically important, will one day be made
auxiliary to the production of pictures of broader as well as minuter
veracity than have heretofore been produced. All that seems wanting thus
far is a direction, an aim, a belief. Agnosticism has brought about a
pause for a while, and no doubt a pause is preferable to some kinds of
activity. It may enable us, when the time comes to set forward again, to
do so with better equipment and more intelligent purpose. It will not do
to be always at a prophetic heat of enthusiasm, sympathy, denunciation:
the coolly critical mood is also useful to prune extravagance and promote
a sense of responsibility. The novels of Mr. James and of Mr. Howells have
taught us that men and women are creatures of infinitely complicated
structure, and that even the least of these complications, if it is
portrayed at all, is worth portraying truthfully. But we cannot forget, on
the other hand, that honest emotion and hearty action are necessary to the
wholesomeness of society, because in their absence society is afflicted
with a lamentable sameness and triviality; the old primitive impulses
remain, but the food on which they are compelled to feed is insipid and
unsustaining; our eyes are turned inward instead of outward, and each one
of us becomes himself the Rome towards which all his roads lead. Such
books as these authors have written are not the Great American Novel,
because they take life and humanity not in their loftier, but in their
lesser manifestations. They are the side scenes and the background of a