things.

gloomy-looking inn, is at no time an object of | enthusiast, who believed in Boston and enlivening suggestion; and the spectable is not its superfine citizens above all earthly at its best when the mouldy tombstones and funeral umbrage have received the ineffectual refreshment of a dull, moist snowfall. This fact was keenly felt on a certain 12th of May, upwards of thirty years since, by a lady who stood looking out of the windows of the best hotel in the ancient city of Boston.

Finally, my dear child [so her uncle wrote to his favorite] I want you to remember that in Boston you are not only in the birthplace of American liberty, but the yet holier scene of its resurrection. There everything that is noble and grand and liberal has originated, and I cannot doubt that you will find the character of its people marked by every attribute If I could of a magnanimous democracy. envy you anything, my dear girl, I should envy you this privilege of seeing a city where man is valued simply and solely for what he is in himself, and where color, wealth, family occu⚫ pation, and other vulgar and meretricious distinctions are wholly lost sight of in the con

sideration of individual excellence.

Read by the sarcastic lights that are subsequently flashed upon an average specimen of the élite of the "magnanimous democracy," that is a very pretty piece of irony. As Mr. Howells presents Mr. Arbuton to us :

traits that would have fitted him very well for had even made some preliminary studies for the career he had once contemplated, and he the ministry. But the very generosity of his creed perplexed him, his mislikers said; contending that he never could have got on with the mob of the redeemed. It was long ago that he had abandoned the thought of the ministry, and he had since travelled and read law and become a man of society and the clubs; but he still kept the traits that had other hand, he kept the prejudices that were seemed to make his vocation clear. On the imagined to have disqualified him. He was an exclusive by training and by instinct.

Mr. William D. Howells has many qualities in common with Mr. James, although distinctly his inferior in descriptive power, in incisive discrimination of character, and in literary execution generally. He has the same faculty of quick observation, and far from being blind to the shortcomings of his country-people, In many things he was an excellent person, he is always on the lookout to make artis- and greatly to be respected for certain qualitic capital of them. If he is not a Bos- ties. He was very sincere: his mind had a tonian by birth, he is evidently familiar singular purity and rectitude; he was a scrupuwith the city, and has written an enter-lously just person as far as he knew. He had taining and instructive volume of "Suburban Sketches." Like Mr. James, too, he is fond of laying his scenes abroad, but decidedly one of his best novels is "A Chance Acquaintance." The chance acquaintance is a well educated, wellmannered, and well-dressed gentleman from Boston, who has attached himself in the course of a visit to Canada to a party of tourists from one of the Western States. The portrait of this Mr. Arbuton is excessively satirical, yet it strikes us as exceedingly lifelike. He is one of those superior persons, so thoroughly commonplace that we can easily believe him to be Arbuton's love passages with the unsoessentially representative. A prig from phisticated but rather romantic Western the crown of the stove-pipe hat to the girl are described with a good deal of thin soles of the polished boots, only too quiet humor. Starched and sober-minded well-dressed and too correctly-mannered, as he is, there is what Sam Slick would he is the very man to impose on an inex- call "considerable human natur" in him; perienced maiden. He is attracted to his and he catches the reflection of Kitty travelling companions, first by force of Ellison's brightness and is thawed to some circumstances, afterwards by the piquancy extent in the warmth of her smiles. But of a very pretty girl. The enthusiastic if he brings himself to condescend to her Kitty Ellison was ready to be prepos-in her emotional moods with tolerant gensessed in his favor, and to welcome a pol-iality, it is chiefly because he " respects ished Bostonian as an angel in disguise rather than a mere mortal. Arbuton had been bred in Boston; he had moved familiarly from boyhood in those ethereal spheres; and she had been brought up at the feet of a simple-minded, intellectual

what he thought the good sense running through her transports," and "wonders at the culture she had somewhere, somehow got." He is oppressed by the sense of his responsibilities to himself and to his society. In reality, he is absolutely

his own master, and might have married | be the turn of his tastes, he is very apt to the young lady out of hand. "But he cease to be a patriot. Either he falls had a fortune to which he owed much, morbidly in love with the memories and and a conscience that would not leave him mouldering remains of the past, and at rest." He should have to gravitate steeps his soul in the aesthetic sensualism back to Boston sooner or later, and his of art galleries, or he abandons himself free will is fettered by conscious thoughts to the seductive influences of a gay, polof what the best society there might think ished, and lettered society, and draws of his wife. Kitty had an inconvenient comparisons greatly to the disadvantage grandfather, moreover, who had been shot of his country-people. We meet him in Missouri not from any fault of his constantly in Mr. James's most effective own; and though the fact of the murder novels and there also Mr. Howells has might perhaps be suppressed, if revealed trodden in Mr. James's steps. It is true it could not be decently extenuated. that "the American," par excellence, who However, the travelling ties that might may be considered as Mr. James's masterhave changed into the chains of wedlock piece of national portraiture, is in some are snapped in a scene in which Arbuton measure an exception. It is true that so absolutely betrays his nature, that even that gentleman takes kindly to Frenchthe eyes of the partial Kitty are opened. men; that he sets himself with characLuckily for her, she happens to be in a teristic energy, and to his bitter disapsomewhat shabby travelling-dress, when pointment as it proves, to marry a Arbuton meets two ladies who move in French woman of noble family, and that, the upper Boston circles. He treats her had he not been betrayed into a most as a disreputable acquaintance, hesitates unlucky love-chase, he would undoubtedly to present her, decides to ignore her alto have had "a good time of it" in Paris, gether for the time, and afterwards re- and might have probably ended by makceives with real regret, but with unim-ing it his residence. But Newman, alpaired civility, the dismissal that is given though "a strong man," as he prides with passionate bluntness, yet with much himself on being, and a sensible man, is maidenly dignity. anything rather than intellectual. knows nothing of books; he buys his pictures by the square foot or for the color

He

If Mr. Hannibal Chollop was "a splendid example of our native raw material," we fancy we may take Arbuton as a fairing, or because he is taken with the pretty sample of the shoddy of a false culture, shaped by a fashionable tailor, according to fixed rules. We must remember that he belongs to a class which lends itself to the ridicule in which clever American novelists love to indulge. For the rollicking drollery of the unconventional West, though it still influences the more polished authors of the older States, is toned down into subtler forms of humor; and the very dullest of American novels, so far as our experience goes, is enlivened by occasional flickers of fun. The Arbutons know nothing of any world but their own, and their narrow minds have never been expanded by acquaintance with foreign men and manners. If we look for the highest type of the intellectual American, we must seek it not in Washington as we might assume from European analogies, but in novels the scenes of which are laid either in England or on the Continent. It is natural enough that the intellectual American should incline to become a vagabond, for the Old World with its associations offers irresistible temptations to enquiring and earnest youth in the golden age of sentiment. The misfortune is, that whatever

face of a copyist; his "talk is of bullocks," or what is tantamount to that. While Mr. James's favorite heroes are for the most part refined, æsthetic, and sentimental. Though moulded after a well-marked pattern of his own, they remind us of Paul Flemming in "Hyperion." We find them loitering among the churches and ruins of famous cities, gazing dreamily at the eternal Alps on the distant horizon. They are infinitely better read than any educated Englishman of their age and standing; they have cultivated good pow ers of observation with shrewd independence, and they extend their critical and somewhat cynical admiration for the beautiful to any graceful young girl who may cross their path. Before Mr. James's works had familiarized us with them, and notwithstanding our recollections of Paul Flemming, there was novelty in their very conception. They were so different from popular notions of the American abroad, as confirmed by every-day experience. For they as little resemble the Philistine doing the grand tour at a hand-gallop, confiding blindly in personal conductors, couriers, ana laquais de place, and knocking off his dozen of churches before a

I have been here about four weeks. I don't

scrambling breakfast, as the sporting these passages from the babble of the sybarite, who, settling in France, divides beautiful Miss Blanche Evers, in the Kurthe year between Paris, Pau, and Trou- saal gardens at Baden? Miss Evers was ville. Like Bernard Longueville and Gor- simply the American pretty girl whom he don Wright, as described in "Confi- had seen a thousand times." dence," they are generally "highly civilized young Americans, born to an easy fortune and a tranquil destiny, and unfamiliar with the glitter of golden opportunities." If they show a lack of energy that seems inconsistent with the nature of their countrymen, they are merely the victims of affluence, and not by any means com monplace. They can act with decision under a sufficing stimulus; they are even capable of concentrated resolution of purpose, and their conversation, like their opinion of things in general, is characterized by a quaint originality which is often epigrammatically suggestive. In short, in them the American genius for progress has run to waste, in place of being elevated in its direction by their better opportunities.

know whether you call that long. It doesn't seem long to me; I have had such a lovely know-every day some one turns up. Now time. I have met ever so many people here I you have turned up to-day. . . . I think you know a great friend of mine, Miss Ella Maclane of Baltimore. She's travelling in Europe now. She's far too lovely. I have often heard her speak of you. I think you know her sister rather better than you know her. She has not been out very long. She is just as interesting as she can be. Her hair comes down to her feet. She's travelling in Norway. She she's going to finish off with Finland. You has been everywhere you can think of, and can't go any further than that, can you? That's one comfort; she will have to turn round and come back.

The young ladies who captivate their The class of Americans abroad with fancies or excite a chivalrous admiration which Englishmen familiar with the Conare likewise original. If they had not tinent are best acquainted does not figure soul, sentiment, or something of the kind, conspicuously in fiction. In fact, they as well as beauty, they could hardly have present few distinctive features: their antorn themselves away for any length of gularities have been smoothed away; they time from balls in the cities at home or are well-nigh denationalized; they detest picnics in the watering-places. They republics as they delight in French cookavail themselves liberally of the license ery; not a few of them have very nearly permitted to young unmarried women in got rid of their native accent; they are America, if they never abuse it; although sociable, hospitable, and superficially retheir unconventionality and their indiscre- fined. And our introduction to that bright tions may scandalize Europeans. They bird of passage, the volatile Miss Evers, keep their brothers in leading-strings, snub naturally suggests a return to the society their admirers, and although their passing of which she was undoubtedly a brilliant flirtations may be tinged by romance, they ornament. We find an admirable and generally marry for satisfactory settle- entertaining guide to the very miscelments. Yet the most piquant feminine laneous society of New York in “A Gensketches in Mr. James's Continental sto- tleman of Leisure," by Mr. Fawcett. The ries are of such girls as we may meet gentleman of leisure forms a connecting every day in American novels or ball-link between the civilizations of the Old rooms. Nothing has entertained us more in that way than his "Daisy Millar"

66

a study;" although poor Daisy carries her independence to almost impossible lengths; and her fate is made gratuitously sad, since she is cut off in her follies by Roman fever. In her case, Mr. James seems to have determined to atone for an unusually playful outbreak of unadulterated humor by a dénouement as depressing as that of Hamlet or "The Bride of Lammermoor." And if he does not condescend as a rule to the giddy coquettes whose idiosyncrasies lie scarcely more than skin deep, it is not that he cannot hit them off to the life when he pleases. What can be better, for example, than

and the New Worlds. Mr. Clinton Wainwright, an Anglicized American, has crossed the Atlantic on urgent business. He expects to be a little amused and intensely bored. His first encounter in New York is with Mr. Townsend Spring, a bustling stock-jobber of boisterous manners, who freely backs his luck, and lives extravagantly on principle. Wainwright had made the gentleman's acquaintance in Switzerland, where Spring had jarred with the poetry of the Alps and the gla ciers. In New York he still considers him "quite a dreadful creature," but sadly admits that he is in happy "harmony with the raw smartness of an American thoroughfare." For Wainwright is prepared

an, with the approval of the lady's connections, who are gathered around his sumptuous board. Wainwright finds himself seated next a certain Miss Spuytenduyvil, and she enlightens and startles him with the unexpectedness of her remarks. She makes it clear to him that there are characters who are not commonplace. Knowing more of his pedigree than he does himself, she treats him at once as an equal, and is flatteringly frank. She almost angrily disputes the unwel come truth, that wealth has become almost omnipotent in New York city. She argues with feminine logic that, if it is allpowerful, at all events it ought not to be so; though her presence at the table of her relative and hostess rather clashes with her theory. And catching at some observation of her companion's, she says:

to shudder or to sneer at everything the pristine purity of the idea does not American. The story of his experiences begin to get a little mixed; Bodenstein, is characteristically told so as vividly to the self-made host, of doubtful nationality, bring out his first impressions. Nothing had married a long-descended Dutch womshort of what he sees and hears all around him would have overcome his prepossessions and converted the cynic. But his slumbering patriotism is stirred into life by the spirit of opposition when he finds his prejudices given expression to with grotesque exaggeration. He,had expected to meet adventurers like Spring, who live on the chances of the morrow's speculations, who relieve the hours of business with coarse dissipation, and who naturally could have no ideas in common with him. They irritate him, they disgust him; but he accepts them with resignation. The men he cannot away with are those who ape European manners; who, after all, are ludicrous travesties of the people on whom they industriously model them selves; who in their supercilious self-satisfaction are absurdly unconscious of the ridicule their affectations provoke from the initiated; and who apparently hold it a point of honor to close their eyes to all that makes the grandeur of their country. Wainwright is as much alive as anybody can be to the follies bred of ignorance and ostentation; shocks and surprises await him at every turn in the course of his "travels in town" from clubs to hotels, from dinners to dances: there are few of the men and women of fashion whom he does not judge severely and unfavorably. Yet the truth is forced upon him, that there are many sterling people among those who are most likely to elude observation. He is drawn into love with a pure-minded young girl in spite of her highly undeniable connections, and he finally arrives at the conclusion, which at first would have appeared extravagant, that it may be possible to live happily under the star-spangled flag.

He is fortunate in finding a guide and philosopher in a Mr. Binghampton, who knows everybody and goes everywhere. Binghampton is a half-Americanized Englishman who gets a living by writing for the newspapers, and who amuses his leisure with the study of human nature. And Mr. Binghampton's incisive remarks come in as a running commentary, which is the chorus to the incidents in this transatlantic drama. Launching out on the life of New York at a great dinner given by his banker, Wainwright discovers that there is a fastidious American aristocracy, as vain of illustrious descent as any Spanish grandee of his sangre azul. Not that

So

Oh, now you are sneering at this country. Well, you will be in the fashion there. many people do it. For my part, I never do it. I am too proud of having ancestors who have helped to make the country what it is.

Binghampton explains that Miss Spuytenduyvil is the poor relation of a great family.

"It seems rather strange," said Wainwright, "to hear of a great American family." "But they exist, I assure you. Not politically great as in Europe, of course. The Ambut they are a great and powerful race notsterdams have no seat in any House of Peers, withstanding. They go straight back through the Revolution to the time when New York was a Dutch village. And every day this influence of family becomes a stronger force here. New people with big fortunes and no descent look with envious eyes at certain doors that remain coldly closed against them.

The American social scheme, in nearly

all its chief cities at least, is often a most amusing satire upon itself. All the people of their positions' (judged relatively of course) whom you've met to-night think quite as much as the haughtiest vieille noblesse in Europe."

The first gentleman presented to the new arrival is Mr. Carroll Gansevoort. From Mr. Gansevoort's patronymic we might infer that he too was an offshoot of a family tree transplanted centuries before from the soil of the Netherlands. But if so, he was very different from Miss Spuytenduyvil; like old Mr. Weller, "he took no pride out of it," and probably regarded his name as an unmitigated misfortune. He is an Anglo-maniac. At first sight he

British Peerage. I happen to know that the club has ordered a new one."

A curious look crossed Wainwright's face. He had set his eyes quite fixedly upon Mr. Binghampton. "I thought you told me that they didn't read," he said.

"Oh, bless my soul, they read the Peerage. Why we wear out a new one every year or so at the Metropolitan."

Before taking leave of the "Gentleman of Leisure," we must quote some remarks of Mr. Binghampton, on the occasion of his accompanying Wainwright to an "at home," given in an antiquated mansion, with uncomfortable old-fashioned furni ture, in the Faubourg St. Germain of New York. The entertainment is exceptional, and celebrates a family event: nothing can be duller or more formal; there are no flowers, but meagre fare, and no costly presents to be distributed at "the German," which is American for the French cotillon. Yet all "the nabobs" fortunate enough to be invited flock to it through unfamiliar thoroughfares. Bing hampton, preparing Wainwright for what he may expect, talks glibly of "people as opposed to "aristocracy," and of the imperious creeds of caste and pride aired in those perfumed rooms." Wainwright exclaims against such words, when uttered under transatlantic skies.

is exceedingly like an Englishman, although it strikes Wainwright on second thoughts that he is too palpably a spurious imitation. Unlike Miss Spuytenduyvil, too, there is nothing in any way orig. inal about him; but on one point he has very decided opinions, and he courteously addresses Wainwright with what he means for a gratifying speech: "England's such an enormously jolly place. This country is a beastly hole in comparison. I've no doubt you think so already, don't you, now?" Wainwright meets Gansevoort continually, and, notwithstanding his contempt, comes to dislike him more and more. Moreover, Gansevoort represents a class, and a large class, of rich and brainless youths, who devote themselves to tailors and horseflesh; who will talk of nothing but teams, trotters, and matches, and even profess to be blasé upon balls. Finally, in an unguarded moment, such a remark as he has heard many times before, provokes Wainwright to give Gansevoort a piece of his mind, at the risk of having to answer for it on the field of honor. At the Metropolitan Club, Gansevoort had remarked of an evening party, with the silent assent of a circle of listeners, "I thought the whole affair vulgar. It is difficult to tell just what it lacked, but it was" (here the speaker paused in his even drawl and looked My dear Wainwright, if a man wants to see directly at Wainwright)-"well, I can't social distinctions expressed in their most say worse than to call it horridly Ameri- aggravated form, let him come to America to It is significant that such a remark find them. . . . You are even more British should be supposed to pass unchallenged than I at first suspected you. You have never in a gathering of Americans. Mr. Bing- moved in those gaver ranks of English society, hampton had been discussing that class where Americans find such easy ingress. Had of gay young gentlemen when showing you done so, you must have seen, long before his friend for the first time over the club and push while in London to gain the heed of coming to these shores, how Americans strive premises. "It is a class that is fast in- titled leaders, how often they succeed, and creasing," he says. "It reads even far how both their efforts and their successes less than the fathers who have been toil-prove the absurdly unrepublican spirit which ing to give it its broughams and drags. tradition has accredited them with. NothIt takes no interest in public affairs." ing on earth is easier than for any sort of And yet, as Wainwright muses aloud, American, provided he have money and a "these are the men who call themselves decent personality, to get himself recognized Miss Smith, of Topeka, can our best. It is all very strange to me." in England. . . Binghampton wonders at his companion's go to London and be received, if she possess wonder. "What did you expect to find?" to New York, and she might languish for years wit, wealth, and good looks. Let her come he asked; "not surely an America full of before she got a card to the Bodensteins'Americans." When their talk is inter- the Grosvenors', where we are now going. rupted by a suggestive little incident, Wainwright abstractedly takes down a book from a shelf in the library. The cover comes off in his hands, and some of the leaves fall fluttering to the carpet.

can."

very

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Wainwright, "what mischief have I been committing?"

"Oh! don't bother about it. That's the

...

-or

Let it be remembered that these remarks, though put in the mouth of an Englishman, are really the ideas of an American novelist, who is evidently familiar with the society he is describing. And neither the much-abused Mrs. Trollope, nor Dickens in his "Martin Chuzzlewit" or "American Notes," ever wrote