He was consul at Richmond, Virginia, from 1852 to 1856, when he was appointed to a similar post at Venice, where he died on the 9th of June 1860. James has been compared to Dumas, and the comparison holds good in respect of kind, though by no means in respect of merit. Both had a certain gift of separating from the picturesque parts of history what could without much difficulty be worked up into picturesque fiction, and both were possessed of a ready pen. Here, however, the likeness ends. Of purely literary talent James had little. His plots are poor, his descriptions weak, his dialogue often below even a fair average, and he was deplorably prone to repeat himself. The "two cavaliers" who in one form or another open most of his books have passed into a proverb, and Thackeray's good-natured but fatal parody of _Barbazure_ is likely to outlast _Richelieu_ and _Darnley_ by many a year. Nevertheless, though James cannot be allowed any very high rank among novelists, he had a genuine narrative gift, and, though his very best books fall far below _Les trois mousquetaires_ and _La reine Margot_, there is a certain even level of interest to be found in all of them. James never resorted to illegitimate methods to attract readers, and deserves such credit as may be due to a purveyor of amusement who never caters for the less creditable tastes of his guests. His best novels were published in a revised form in 21 volumes (1844-1849). JAMES, HENRY (1843- ), American author, was born in New York on the 15th of April 1843. His father was Henry James (1811-1882), a theological writer of great originality, from whom both he and his brother Professor William James derived their psychological subtlety and their idiomatic, picturesque English. Most of Henry's boyhood was spent in Europe, where he studied under tutors in England, France and Switzerland. In 1860 he returned to America, and began reading law at Harvard, only to find speedily that literature, not law, was what he most cared for. His earliest short tale, "The Story of a Year," appeared in 1865, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and frequent stories and sketches followed. In 1869 he again went to Europe, where he subsequently made his home, for the most part living in London, or at Rye in Sussex. Among his specially noteworthy works are the following: _Watch and Ward_ (1871); _Roderick Hudson_ (1875); _The American_ (1877); _Daisy Miller_ (1878); _French Poets and Novelists_ (1878); _A Life of Hawthorne_ (1879); _The Portrait of a Lady_ (1881); _Portraits of Places_ (1884); _The Bostonians_ (1886); _Partial Portraits_ (1888); _The Tragic Muse_ (1890); _Essays in London_ (1893); _The Two Magics_ (1898); _The Awkward Age_ (1898); _The Wings of the Dove_ (1902); _The Ambassadors_ (1903); _The Golden Bowl_ (1904); _English Hours_ (1905); _The American Scene_ (1907); _The High Bid_ (1909); _Italian Hours_ (1909).