and quickened by an abundance of such contacts as are provided only by alert and delicate sensibility, that faculty so impossible to the temperamentally inert. How much the reader discovers in. the psychology of Mrs. Wharton's characters of the instantaneous, the non-logical; one finds them intuitive minded, whether he consider the native readiness of Mattie Silver or Ethan Frome, or the infallible trained insight of Mrs. Ansell: they see the matter at a glance or they do not see it ever! The social talent of the great Miss Bart is here worth remembering for the sake of the prominence which a delicate sensibility played in her tactical triumphs; her perceptions were "fine threadlike feelers" that went out to her opponents in the great game she was playing and made her knowledge of their minds and characters almost divination. Indeed by her eminence and excellence—she is the foremost and most typically clever of Mrs. Wharton's characters—she demonstrates the fact that her creator's best insight is her insight into the feminine character, and the feminine side of the masculine character, that her best art appears in the portrayal of the eternal feminine, the most eternal part of which is temperament.
Mrs. Wharton's characters, however, are superior not so much by abundance as by differentiation of temperament; for where the consideration is of such cleverness as they possess, it is evident that mere native sensibility is not a sufficient explanation: there must be a large element of discrimination present. The zenith of cleverness, in fact, is to be reached—and they do reach that rather than any other zenith—only through the intellectualizing of temperament; in which process the intellect has the visible primacy, though feeling is the really urgent power. Two stages in this progress of cleverness can be seen in the artless fervor of Mattie Silver and the fastidiousness of Justine Brent. The difference between these two was really of degree alone: they were alike in that they both felt abundantly; different, in that Justine, as her author said, "felt with her mind." Feeling with their minds is indeed the culmination of their cleverness, the best thing Mrs. Wharton's characters do; it is a more delicate spectacle than simple thinking and a far finer material to the hand of the artist. And thus seen, the sober cleverness of these emancipated young women and poised young men is really their most human quality; it is a real refinement of the most fundamental thing about humanity, namely, its emotions.
