The Ambassadors

Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of "The Ambassadors," which first appeared intwelve numbers of The North American Review (1903) and was published as a whole the sameyear.

The situation involved is gathered up betimes, that is in the second chapter of Book Fifth,for the reader's benefit, into as few words as possible-planted or "sunk," stiffly and saliently, inthe centre of the current, almost perhaps to the obstruction of traffic.

Never can a composition ofthis sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of suggestion, and never can that grain,developed, overgrown and smothered, have yet lurked more in the mass as an independentparticle.

The whole case, in fine, is in Lambert Strether's irrepressible outbreak to little Bilhamon the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani's garden, the candour with which he yields, for his youngfriend's enlightenment, to the charming admonition of that crisis.