“That such a condition as is therein described does exist in the lower strata of New York society, which may be termed swelldom, composed largely of “newrich” who swarm from other parts of the country to exploit their newly acquired wealth in showy equipages, wondrous wardrobes, and loud manners to the disgust of refined people, cannot be denied; but why a lady who has the entrée into the best society should elect to open the sewers of its lowest strata and allow its fœtid airs to escape through the medium of her pen is beyond the ken of your contributor.” T. R. W. For our part, we prefer to depend upon the octogenarian who has just spoken, and who asserts his membership in one of the oldest families in New York, for an opinion upon the accuracy of “The House of Mirth” as a Society novel. As a novel pure and simple it seems to us to be radically defective in imaginative power, slow and cumbrous in construction, and wholly ineffective to impose an illusion. We say this with regret because we have read a good many of the author’s short stories from the time the first volume of them was issued; and the impression conveyed by her work in the short story field, as contrasted by the impression of this novel, makes clearer to us than ever the conviction that to write a short story a short-story writer is required, and to write a novel a novelist, and they have always been two persons from Mr. Kipling down and across. The author’s style is clear, sharp, refined, as before; but the gross defect of “The House of Mirth” is that the characters are pushed here and there by the author like so many wooden soldiers on a cardboard field of battle. They have no more volition than marionettes. In fact they are merely described names except in the instances of the three chief characters. One could have borne with the waxlike fibre of the attendant persons if the figure of _Lily Bart_, the heroine, would stand the gaze of the naked eye during even half the book. _Lily_ is described by the author as possessing a fine sense of diplomacy in intercourse with the people of her set, yet her whole register of action from the first page reveals her as moving through the comedy without prudence, yet without conscience, with maneuver, yet without skill; with an under-appeal to the reader’s sympathy, yet exasperating the reader until in the moment of tragedy he feels that the heroine deserved all she got and ought to have got it sooner. But, when one gets away from the book, one feels that the fault is not the fault of the character, but of the author who has paltered by trying to make literary academics and psychology square with life itself and a good story.