The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Tour in France, by Henry James

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Title: A Little Tour in France

Author: Henry James

Illustrator: Joseph Pennell

Release Date: February 4, 2009 [EBook #28004]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE

[Illustration]

Novels by

HENRY JAMES

_Six Shillings each_

THE AWKWARD AGE

THE TWO MAGICS

WHAT MAISIE KNEW

THE OTHER HOUSE

THE SPOILS OF POYNTON

EMBARRASSMENTS TERMINATIONS

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 21 Bedford Street, W.C.

[Illustration]

A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE

By HENRY JAMES

[Illustration]

WITH NINETY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH PENNELL

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1900

[Illustration]

Preface

_The notes presented in this volume were gathered, as will easily be
perceived, a number of years ago and on an expectation not at that time
answered by the event, and were then published in the United States. The
expectation had been that they should accompany a series of drawings,
and they themselves were altogether governed by the pictorial spirit.
They made, and they make in appearing now, after a considerable interval
and for the first time, in England, no pretension to any other; they are
impressions, immediate, easy, and consciously limited; if the written
word may ever play the part of brush or pencil, they are sketches on
"drawing-paper" and nothing more. From the moment the principle of
selection and expression, with a tourist, is not the delight of the eyes
and the play of fancy, it should be an energy in every way much larger;
there is no happy mean, in other words, I hold, between the sense and
the quest of the picture, and the surrender to it, and the sense and
the quest of the constitution, the inner springs of the subject--springs
and connections social, economic, historic._

_One must really choose