Soon after his arrival in Paris, Lambert Strether finds himself sitting on a penny chair in the Luxembourg Gardens, mulling over his correspondence from Woollett and the complexities of his task, while Paris hangs before him, ‘a jewel brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be discriminated nor differences comfortably marked. It twinkled and trembled and melted together, and what seemed all surface one moment seemed all depth the next.’ Such an image suggests the sort of challenge which The Ambassadors presents to the reader, except that the novel, for all its teasing intricacy, has both a delicately textured surface, and the energy and vitality of a living organism. Whether or not it is the ‘best “all round” ‘ of James's works is arguable, but it certainly is beautifully proportioned (see The Art of the Novel, pp. 308–9). It displays to great advantage the subtle articulation of his later, strongly philosophical method, for it dramatizes the evolution of an entire process of judging. It shows a new scheme of evaluation growing steadily out of a willingness to respond and assimilate, together with an equally active willingness to set aside accepted conventions and to pass beyond established opinions - yet without losing sight of the original background and its unique strengths. There is discovery as much through rediscovering the familiar as through fresh initiations. All these characteristics of the novel invite a comprehensive analysis in phenomenological terms, one which will extend and complement the interpretation of What Maisie Knew in relation to the practice of the phenomenological reduction.