The Portland daily press., 1881-03-08
TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 8.

to feel that there was nothing elastic in Cath
crime which rose against her troubles, nothing
that found for her a gain in loss, nothing that
strengthened and sweetened her nature, and
made the permanent and sole companionship
of such silly and insincere old woman as
Mrs. Penniman an impossibility to her? Why
is the dismal experience of so dead and dull a
weight of sorrow left just where it is, with
nothing to indicate why it did not sour Gather
ne? or how, in spite of her double loss OF hope
abroad and hope at home she contrived still to
live in tolerable content with herself and the
world and not to feel either crushed or bitter?
Mr. Henry James strikes us as in nothing less
humane than in the indifference with which
he treats his characters, after ne mas brought
them through such melancholy shifts in their
lot as he generally provides for them. He
seems not to care himself about the fate of such
"residuum" of the character he has created as
remains after he has treated it with the various
materials mingled in the alembic of his fiction.
In 1.-THE American" his most powerful
book, he leaves us with the wreck, as we may
say, of his hero, floating about idly "on the
abandoned sea, as the tide changes sullenly.
1t is the same here with Catherine Sloper, and
the same with the heroine of the miserable
little tale called "Two Meeting" Mr.. Henry
James seems to feel no concern himself for the
ultimate fate of his creations. All that he cares
to do is to picture to himself what they
would be and do under certain combinations of
outward circumstances, and when he has made
that out TO MS lie CdSUS Gn0I1 dSlu6
as he would vermont garment or used-up
pen. This is, in part why he succeeds better
in fragmentary sketches than in regular tales.
He has no sympathy at all with the providen-
ces of fictions; he does not care to deal out to
each character his need of final reward and
punishment, however nicely calculated to suit
the actual poetical justice or injustice of the
universe as he knows it. He has no interest
in the moral equities of life, and cares no more
in this tale, for instance, to estimate what
Catherine Sloper has gained and lost by her
dreary love story, and the enlargement from
her father which it involved. than he cares
what may result to the proprietresses of the
two pensions in his second and third pieces,
from the departure of their various guests. 1t
is impossible to give effectual illustrations
from washington Square," of the sort of &c.
MUS shown in it. There is no doubt that it is
genius, and genius of the most marked order,
genius for painting character, and genius for
conceiving unalloyed dismalness of effect with
out tragedy and without comedy. If you de-
sire consummately clever study of perfect
dreariness, you have it in "Washington
Square,"
II only Mr.. Henry James suddenly became
aware of the real existence of a moral world,
his tales would increase as much in interest for
the general reader as they probably would in
difficulty to the writer. As it is, they are lit
tie kaleidoscope arrangements of the various
hues of human nature, as seen by singularly
acute and passionless eye; but they seem to
indicate no more purpose in the arrangement
than the kaleidoscope itself, which, as you
turn it, constantly creates new combinations of
form and color, all almost equally impressive,
and all without purpose, artistic or otherwise.