enormous proportion of American writers are to this day of New
England origin or descent.

Among living American writers the two whose names occur most
spontaneously to the mind as typical examples are, perhaps, Henry
James and W.D. Howells. Of these the former has identified himself so
much with European life and has devoted himself so largely to European
subjects that we, perhaps, miss to some extent the American atmosphere
in his works, though he undoubtedly possesses the American quality of
workmanship in a very high degree. Or, to put it in another way, his
touch is indisputably American, while his accessories, his _staffage_,
are cosmopolitan. His American hand has become dyed to that it works
in. This, however, is more true of his later than of his earlier
works. That imperishable little classic "Daisy Miller" is a very
exquisite and typical specimen of the American suggestiveness of
style; indeed, as I have hinted (Chapter IV.), its suggestiveness
almost overshot the mark and required the explanation of a dramatic
key. His dislike of the obvious and the commonplace sometimes leads
Mr. James to become artificial and even obscure,[21] but at its best
his style is as perspicuous as it is distinguished, dainty, and
subtle; there is, perhaps, no other living artist in words who can
give his admirers so rare a literary pleasure in mere exquisiteness of
workmanship.

Mr. Howells, unlike Mr. James, is purely and exclusively American, in
his style as in his subject, in his main themes as in his incidental
illustrations, in his spirit, his temperament, his point of view. No
one has written more pleasantly of Venice; but just as surely there is
a something in his Venetian sketches which no one but an American
could have put there. Mr. James may be as patriotic a citizen of the
Great Republic, but there is not so much tangible evidence of the fact
in his writings; Mr. Howells may be as cosmopolitan in his sympathies
as Mr. James, but his writings alone would hardly justify the
inference. Mr. Howells also possesses a _bonhomie_, a geniality, a
good-nature veiled by a slight mask of cynicism, that may be personal,
but which strikes one as also a characteristic American trait. Mr.
James is not, I hasten to say, the reverse of this, but he shows a
coolness in his treatment, a lordly indifference to the fate of his
creations, an almost pitiless keenness of analysis, which savour a
little more of an end-of-the-century European