The long life and broad mind of Mr. Justice Holmes --Origin of a hero -- Emily Dickinson: the private publication -- Marcel Proust: the autobiography in the novel -- The styles of Mr. Justice Cardozo -- The Roman empire of Pierre Corneille -- Jane Austen and the good life -- Two conversation pieces -- The Astors and the Vanderbilts -- The late Jamesing of early James -- Swann, male chauvinist and Albertine, boy-girl -- Nancy Mitford's Versailles -- Dreiser's love of America -- Racine and Port-Royal -- In search of innocence: Henry Adams and John La Farge in the South Sea -- Lytton Strachey: the last Elizabethan -- Saint-Simon: novelist or historian? -- The clergy of Barchester -- Thackeray's "struggling genius".