A fine conscience is more concerned
with essentials; its triumphs are more perfect, if less profitable, in a
worldly sense. There is, in short, more truth in its working for a
historian to detect and to show. It is a thing of infinite complication
and suggestion. None of these escapes the art of Mr. Henry James. He
has mastered the country, his domain, not wild indeed, but full of
romantic glimpses, of deep shadows and sunny places. There are no
secrets left within his range. He has disclosed them as they should be
disclosed--that is, beautifully. And, indeed, ugliness has but little
place in this world of his creation. Yet, it is always felt in the
truthfulness of his art; it is there, it surrounds the scene, it presses
close upon it. It is made visible, tangible, in the struggles, in the
contacts of the fine consciences, in their perplexities, in the sophism
of their mistakes. For a fine conscience is naturally a virtuous one.
What is natural about it is just its fineness, an abiding sense of the
intangible, ever-present, right. It is most visible in their ultimate
triumph, in their emergence from miracle, through an energetic act of
renunciation.
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