Henry James, the son of an American theological writer, acquired, like Hawthorne, an inside knowledge of Puritanism, and in his early novels he took the New England point of view toward intrigues and improprieties. Thus Daisy Miller is innocent and free, and the dark, wicked Italian misunderstands her freedom, and thinks she is what a girl with such manners would be in Europe. Madame de Mauves, a loyal wife, is married to a Frenchman of no morals, and when she loves a true and good American, she scorns to sin, for the reason that she would be imitating the Frenchman, she would be doing what the Frenchman expects her to do. “The American” is a novel about a “man from home,” who has made money, and seeks a cultured wife among the French nobility, and gradually finds that he is in a nest of murders. All regulation hundred percent patriotic stuff! But Europe grew upon Henry James, and America faded, and the aesthetic sensibilities became less Puritanical and more cosmopolitan. So we have “The Ambassadors,” the world’s great international novel. Something over twenty years ago I went with a friend on a canoeing trip in the far Northern wilds, and for six weeks we saw only one white man, the keeper of a Hudson Bay trading post. Baggage had to be limited on such a trip, and I took only one book. Evening after evening I would read it, a few pages at a time, lying in a tent by candle light. So I had plenty of time to note every subtlety, and before I got through I was talking Henry James in my sleep. Now the twenty years are as a day, and the characters and their story are as vivid as ever in my mind. A young New Englander, son of a wealthy family, has come to Paris and settled there, refusing to go home. His family send an elderly friend as ambassador to bring back the prodigal. This ambassador, whose name is Strether, discovers that a crude young barbarian has been changed by his Parisian life into a cultured and self-possessed man of the world. Strether is duly impressed by the change, and attributes it to the influence of a middle-aged French lady, who has been the young man’s good angel. He writes about the situation, but the family is not satisfied, and another ambassador comes, this time the young man’s elder sister, the incarnation of the acidulous propriety of New England. This sister is not in the least impressed by the French lady, but on the contrary suspects the very worst between the lady and her brother. Strether is shocked by her crude ideas; but then comes the climax of the drama--a scene wherein it is accidentally revealed to Strether that the acidulous sister is right; a part of the process whereby the charming French lady has civilized the young barbarian has been to take him as her lover. So two civilizations meet, and in the clash between them we see the hearts of both revealed.