The events of Mr. James's life-as we agree to understand events-may be told in a very few words. His race is Irish on his father's side and Scotch on his mother's, to which mingled strains the generalizer may attribute, if he likes, that union of vivid expression and dispassionate analysis which has characterized his work from the first. There are ne of those early struggles with poverty, which render the lives of so many distinguished Americans motous reading, to record in his case: the cabin hearth-fire did t light him to the youthful pursuit of literature; he had from the start all those advantages which, when they go too far, become limitations.