The descriptions of scenery are admirable,--so admirable that we pardon the author for introducing them a little too frequently. He is evidently one of those few men who love Nature with a manly and healthy love,--by whom the outward world is not sought as a shelter against invading cares, or as balm for a wounded spirit, but who find in the sunshine, the play of the breeze, and the dance of the waves, a cheerful, enduring, and satisfying companionship. The scenery is English, and South English too: the author's pictures are drawn from memory, and not from imagination. And the whole tone and spirit of the book are thoroughly English. It represents the best aspects of English life, character, and manners as they are to-day. Whatever is most generous, heroic, tender, and true in the men and women of England is here to be seen, and not drawn in colors any more flattering than it is the right of fiction to use. We think the author carries us too much into the stable and the kennel; but this, we need not say, is also English. But we have yet to mention what we consider the highest charm of this charming book, and that is the combination which we find in it of healthiness of tone and earnestness of purpose. A healthier book we have never read. Earnestness of purpose is apt to be attended with something of excess or extravagance; but in "Ravenshoe" there is nothing morbid, nothing cynical, nothing querulous, nothing ascetic. The doctrine of the book is a reasonable enjoyment of all that is good in the world, with a firm purpose of improving the world in all possible ways. It is one of the many books which have appeared in England of late years which show the influence of the life and labors of the late Dr. Arnold. It is as inspiriting in its influence as a gallop over one of the breezy downs of Mr. Kingsley's own Devonshire. It is, in short, a delightful book, in which all defects of structure and form are atoned for by a wonderful amount of energy, geniality, freshness, poetical feeling, and moral elevation. And furthermore, we think, no one can read it without saying to himself that he would like to see and know the writer. Long may he live to write new novels! _Vanity Fair._ Volumes I.-V. New York: Louis H. Stephens, Publisher for the Proprietors.