ABSTRACT
Agnes Repplier was a self-conscious little girl, independent and occasionally rebellious. History is the best fare for one's imagination; it also provides for a thoughtful conservatism whose absence, especially in America, she regretted. "Political conservatism may be a lost cause in modern democracy; but temperamental conservatism dates from the birth of man's reasoning powers, and will survive the clamour and chaos of revolutions." When Henry James came to Philadelphia in 1904, Agnes Repplier was asked to introduce him. The lecture was a muffled disaster, James mumbling for an hour and shuffling his papers. The introduction was a small triumph: perfectly minted, witty, engaging, modest, and short. She was a moraliste in the French tradition—something different from what "moralist" in English means. She liked Sainte-Beuve; and Sainte-Beuve "was spared by the kindly hand of death from the sight of countless novels attached to philosophical ideas.
