Roderick Hudson. By Henry James, junior. (Boston, U.S., .1. R.
Osgood ; London, Triibner.)—American novels have mostly something characteristic about them. The personages are distinctive, though it often happens that their distinctiveness lips in the opposition to rather than the harmony with national character. Roderick Hudson is a young artist, born in Virginia, but living under circumstances quite adverse to his developement in a New England village ; Rowland Mallet is a young American, who has inherited a fortune, and never made an attempt to enlarge it. Rowland discovers the genius of the artist, and takes him to study in Italy. After this, the story takes the course which such stories commonly do. The pr•otkgd is unsatisfactory, if not ungrateful ; he is desultory at his work, dissipated, and gives a vast amount of trouble to everybody who has to do with him, most of all, to the patron, who finds himself burdened with responsibilities of the most annoying and perplexing kind. The tale is well told, and the picture of Roderick, as well as that of the beautiful adventuress, Christina Light, whose fate is associated with his, is drawn with dis- tinctness and power.
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