As a romance writer, Mr James unquestionably is entitled to a high place. He has great historical information, especially of the olden times and their leading characters; an accurate personal knowledge of various countries, more particularly France, Flanders, and England; great acquaintance with the dress, manners, arms, and accoutrements of former days; and a very remarkable power of describing as well the ever-changing events of ancient story as the varied scenes of inanimate nature. His best novels, "Attila," "Philip Augustus," "Mary of Burgundy," "The Robbers," "The Smugglers," "Morley Ernstein," "Henry Masterton," are happy specimens of the historical romance. The great and deserved success which has attended the uniform edition of his novels now in course of publication, sufficiently proves that his reputation rests on a broader and securer basis than the fleeting patronage of fashion or the transient interest of individual satire. The great risk which he runs, is from the _number_ of his works. It is dangerous to write thirty books. The most prolific imagination runs into repetition, when repeatedly tasked with invention. Homer himself could not have written twenty Iliads; Shakspeare's fame has been not a little enhanced by his having left only twenty-seven plays; that of Sophocles, by only seven of his having come down to modern times. Perhaps the best thing that a good fairy could do for James's fame--as was said of Dryden--would be to withdraw two-thirds of his productions from subsequent times. One of the greatest charms of Mr James's writings is the beautiful ideas, clothed in felicitous language, which are to be found profusely scattered over them. It is not the general opinion that he excels in this respect; on the contrary, nothing is more common in conversation than to hear it remarked, that it is in depth of thought, and knowledge of the human heart, that he is deficient. But this opinion arises from the frequency, sometimes, perhaps, redundancy of his pictures of nature, and the brilliant colours in which he never fails to array her finest scenes. Thoughts the most beautiful are frequently concealed amidst profusion of description, as fruit sometimes amidst luxuriance of leaves. Take for example the following, on one of the most familiar objects in nature--a drop of rain. "We spoke of the rain, and I foolishly enough, in mentioning all the annoyance it had occasioned me, loaded it with maledictions.