It
is by delicate touches and hints that his effects are produced. The
reader is called upon to do his share, and will find his reward in it,
for Mr. James, as we cannot too often insist, is first and always an
artist. Nowhere does he show his fine instinct more to the purpose than
in leaving the tragic element of tales (dealing as they do with
contemporary life, and that mainly in the drawing-room) to take care of
itself, and in confining the outward expression of passion within the
limits of a decorous amenity. Those who must have their intellectual
gullets tingled with the fiery draught of coarse sensation must go
elsewhere for their dram; but whoever is capable of the aroma of the
more delicate vintages will find it here. In the volume before us
"Madame de Mauves" will illustrate what we mean. There is no space for
detailed analysis, even if that were ever adequate to give the true
impression of stories so carefully worked out and depending so much for
their effect on a gradual cumulation of particulars each in itself
unemphatic. We have said that Mr. James shows promise as well as
accomplishment, gaining always in mastery of his material. It is but a
natural inference from this that his "Roderick Hudson" is the fullest
and most finished proof of his power as a story-teller. Indeed, we may
say frankly that it pleases us the more because the characters are drawn
with a bolder hand and in more determined outline, for if Mr.
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