Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Short studies of American authors

[37] forces in action. He can philosophize well enough on the subject, as where he points out that hereditary wealth in America as yet represents “nothing in the world, no great culture, no political influence, no civic aspiration, not even a pecuniary force, nothing but a social set, an alien club life, a tradition of dining.” ¹ But he is not at heart a philosopher; he is a novelist, which is better, and his dramatic situations recur again and again to the essential point.

It is this constant purpose which gives dignity and weight to his American delineations, even where he almost wantonly checks himself and disappoints us. Were he merely, as some suppose, a skilful miniature-painter of young girls at watering-places, his sphere would be very circumscribed. At times he seems tempted to yield to this limitation-during his brief foray into the path of short dramatic sketches, for instance. These sketches provoked comparison with innumerable French trifles, which they could not rival in execution. “Private Theatricals” offers the same thing on a larger scale, and under still greater disadvantages. Mrs. Farrell reveals herself, at the first glance, as a coquette too shallow and vulgar to be really interesting; and she never rises above that level until