Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/164

THE AMERICAN man of ordinary good parts. But he attained his best values by instinct rather than by theory, and the amiability of his character was so great that certain of the aristocratic virtues lost, at his touch, their rigour without losing, as it were, their temper. In his younger years he had been suspected of low tastes, and his mother had greatly feared from him some such slip in the common mire as might bespatter the family shield. He had been treated therefore to more than his share of schooling and drilling, but his instructors had not succeeded in mounting him upon stilts. They had never troubled his deepest depths of serenity, and he had remained somehow as fortunate as he was rash. He had long been tied with so short a rope, however, that he had now a mortal grudge against family discipline. He had been known to say within the limits of the family that, featherhead though he might be, the honour of the name was safer in his hands than in those of some of its other members, and that if a day ever came to try it they would see. He had missed no secret for making high spirits consort with good manners, and he seemed to Newman, as afterwards young members of the Latin races often seemed to him, now almost infantile and now appallingly mature. In America, Newman reflected, "growing" men had old heads and young hearts, or at least young morals; here they had young heads and very aged hearts, morals the most grizzled and wrinkled.

"What I envy you is your liberty," Count Valentin found occasion to observe; "your wide range, your freedom to come and go, your not having a lot of 134