ABSTRACT
In 1879，twelve years after writing his famous declaration of spiritual independence to T. S. Perry，1 James, now in his mid-thirties and more committed both to his career as a novelist and to permanent exile from his native country, once again took stock of what he considered the more important national characteristics of his countrymen. In doing so, he was also tacitly setting out his own qualifications as a critic of the culture he had left behind, and contrasting them with those of his most famous predecessor, Hawthorne;
. . . the Civil War marks an era in the American mind. It introduced into the national consciousness a certain sense of proportion and relation, of the world being a more complicated place than it had hitherto seemed, the future more treacherous, success more difficult. At the rate at which things are going, it is obvious that good Americans will be more numerous than ever; but the good American, in days to come, will be a more critical person than his complacent and confident grandfather. He has eaten of the tree of knowledge.2
