"'Call it not accursed, my son,' said the monk. 'Oh no! remember that every drop that falls, bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility. Remember that glorious tree, and herb, and shrub, and flower, owes to those drops its life, its freshness, and its beauty. Remember that half the loveliness of the green world is all their gift; and that, without them, we should wander through a dull desert, as dusty as the grave. Take but a single drop of rain cloistered in the green fold of a blade of grass, and pour upon it one ray of the morning sun, where will you get lapidary, with his utmost skill, to cut a diamond that shall shine like that? Oh no! blessed for ever be the beautiful drops of the sky, the refreshing soothers of the seared earth--the nourishers of the flowers--that calm race of beings, which are all loveliness and tranquillity, without passion, or pain, or desire, or disappointment--whose life is beauty, and whose breath is perfume."--_Henry Masterton._ Mr James cannot be considered as a historical writer of the highest class. He gives a spirited and agreeable narrative of the events of the reign or period which he has undertaken to describe, and in many passages the descriptive powers of the romance writer are strikingly conspicuous. He is diligent and worthy in the consultation of authorities, and free from any undue bias in the drawing of characters or narrative of events. But he has neither the philosophic glance of Guizot, nor the military fire of Napier, nor the incomparable descriptive powers of Gibbon. His merit, and it is a very great one, consists in the lucid and spirited telling of the story, interspersed with interesting descriptions of the scenes of the leading incidents, and dramatic portraiture of the principal characters. His greatest fault--no trifling one--is the perplexity produced in the mind of the reader by the want of proper grouping and arrangement, and the introduction of a vast number of characters and events at once into the story, without any preparatory description, to enable him to appreciate the one or understand the other. This is a very natural error for a romance writer to fall into when he undertakes history; because, in novels, where characters are few, and the events only such as happen to them, there is no need of previous preparation of the reader's mind, of such grouping and perspective, for the simplification and illustration of events. But, in history, where the events are so numerous and complicated, and each actor in general occupies only an inconsiderable portion of the canvass, it is indispensable, if the writer would avoid prolixity of details, or achieve that object so well known to artists, which they denominate _breadth_ of effect.