his independent tendencies been rather more judiciously indulged. There is, however, one character of loveliness and purity almost sufficient to leaven the whole mass and to dash our entire reprehension. In all the scope of our novel reading, nowhere do we remember to have met a more exquisitely charming character than that of fair Constance Brandon. Every charm of spirit and of person is lavished upon her. At the same time she is conceived with faultless taste. No feeble extravagance offends our feelings; no tinsel or affectation thwarts our admiration. The execution is worthy of the thought, which is simply beautiful. The portrait is like Raphael's divinest Madonna, with the changing radiance and velvety warmth of life thrown into the matchless face. Why could we not have had more such, instead of such indifferent domesticities as La Mignonne? When we say that none of these three novels are destined to pass into the eternal literature of the language, we pass no very harsh or damning judgment. Men of the highest powers must bow to the same decree. Our author, though his thews and sinews are stalwart, is yet hardly cast in the mould to indicate such excessive vitality. He can hardly trouble the stride of those lordly veterans of the turf, Scott or Thackeray; yet without exertion spurning the rearward turf, he clicks his galloping hoofs in the faces of the throng of the ordinary purveyors of fiction. His fancy is exuberant; his imagination brilliant, florid, verging at times almost upon the apoplectic. But the cognate mental member, invention, is most sadly destitute of free and sweeping action. His plots are of the simplest, and betray indubitably a numbness or imperfect development of the inventive faculties of the brain. People who read novels for the denouement, who ride a steeple chase through them, leaping a five-page fence here, a ditch of a chapter there, and anon clearing at a mighty bound a rasper of some score or more paragraphs, resolute simply to be in at the death in the last chapter, anxious to see the wedding torches extinguished, and the printer setting up 'Finis'--such would find little satisfaction in 'Barren Honor,' almost none in 'Sword and Gown.' Reading these works is like passing through a wondrously beautiful country. But it is not the indolent beauty of southern climes, to lounge through sleepily in a slow-rolling travelling carriage. You must ride through it on the proud back of a blooded steed. Canter, run, if you like, when the ground is fit and the spirit moves, as often enough it may; but do not fix your eyes upon any distant gaol, and time your arrival thereat. Enjoy what is close at hand. Admire now the blue glories of the proud hills, recumbent in careless grace of majesty in the indolent sunlit atmosphere; gaze then into the sombre depths of solemn retreating forest; tremble anon in the black shadow of the fierce rock beetling over your bridle way; and fill