on firmer ground, being based on the reality of
forms and the observation of social phenomena, whereas history is based
on documents, and the reading of print and handwriting--on second-hand
impression. Thus fiction is nearer truth. But let that pass. A
historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the
preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience. As is meet
for a man of his descent and tradition, Mr. Henry James is the historian
of fine consciences.

Of course, this is a general statement; but I don't think its truth will
be, or can be questioned. Its fault is that it leaves so much out; and,
besides, Mr. Henry James is much too considerable to be put into the
nutshell of a phrase. The fact remains that he has made his choice, and
that his choice is justified up to the hilt by the success of his art. He
has taken for himself the greater part. The range of a fine conscience
covers more good and evil than the range of conscience which may be
called, roughly, not fine; a conscience, less troubled by the nice
discrimination of shades of conduct. A fine conscience is more concerned
with essentials; its triumphs are more perfect, if less profitable, in a
worldly sense. There is, in short, more truth in its working for a
historian to detect and to show. It is a thing of infinite complication
and suggestion. None of these escapes the art of Mr. Henry James. He
has mastered the country, his domain, not wild indeed, but full of
romantic glimpses, of deep shadows and sunny places. There are no
secrets left within his range. He has disclosed them as they should be
disclosed--that is, beautifully. And, indeed, ugliness has but little
place in this world of his creation. Yet, it is always felt in the
truthfulness of his art; it is there, it surrounds the scene, it presses
close upon it. It is made visible, tangible, in the struggles, in the
contacts of the fine consciences, in their perplexities, in the sophism
of their mistakes. For a fine conscience is naturally a virtuous one.
What is natural about it is just its fineness, an abiding sense of the
intangible, ever-present, right. It is most visible in their ultimate
triumph, in their emergence from miracle, through an energetic act of
renunciation. Energetic, not violent: the distinction is wide, enormous,
like that between substance and shadow.

Through it all Mr. Henry James keeps a firm hold of the substance, of
what is worth