your rejoicing being with the fresh-distilled vigor of the springy step of your charger on the turf. It will put bounding manliness into your sluggish civilian blood. Read each page, each chapter for itself; or regard it as one handsome marble square in the tesselated pavement of a haughty palace, not as a useful brick in the domestic sidewalk, which is to carry you straight to a homely destination. Observe the description of scenes, how powerful! the delineation of character, how fascinating! and be pleased with the luxuriance of the style and the gorgeous drapery of language wherewith so royally the thoughts are robed. Our author is not true to nature--he is extravagant, high-wrought. Nobody ever met his heroes or his heroines in real life, nor lived the scenes told of in his poetry. His men and women are the men and women of an enthusiastic fancy; his scenes and incidents are the scenes and incidents of our romantic dreams. We know none so lovely as ethereal Constance Brandon; we never gazed into the violet-flashing eyes of a Cecil Tresilyan; none of our friends are quite prototypes of the omnipotent 'Cool Captain;' they betray neither the athletic chivalry of Livingstone nor the winning beauty and high-souled nobility of generous Alan Wyverne. We never saw such models, for such never quitted their ideal essences to become incarnate in the flesh. But why need this be an insuperable objection? We don't find Achilles any the less interesting because we doubt the ability of any degenerate modern to calmly destroy such outnumbering hosts of his fellow beings, and send such a throng of warrior souls to hades without scath or scar to his invulnerable self. Ivanhoe got out of some very awkward scrapes by the exertion of a prowess quite exceptional in such a 'light-weight.' The extravagance is not glaring enough to discompose us. Surely a tolerable proximate approach to possible existence ought to satisfy a not viciously captious critic. We are reading of shadowy beings: why should not the facile mists be permeated with a somewhat subtler light, and melt into somewhat airier forms of perfection than we have been accustomed to catch imprisoned in the substantial dulness of the flesh? If we will only choose, we may revel in the company of somewhat glorified mortals. It may be a luxury to us, if we will not be jealously illiberal and envious. It is pleasant to emerge from our little chintz-furnished parlor, and lounge in castles of dimly magnificent extent, where we are sure to meet the choicest society; where some order their mighty hunters from the capacious stables, and others go out to drop a stag, or run a fox, or bag a few pheasants in the preserves, just to get an appetite for dinner, from which stupendous meal, tended by hosts of velvet-footed menials and florid old-family butlers, resplendent ladies rise to retire to gorgeous drawing rooms of any draperied dimensions we may choose to