fancy, leaving perhaps a score of gentlemen guests to quaff cobwebbed wines in unstinted goblets. Why isn't it pleasant to linger sometimes in these royal abodes, and to saunter in the endless lawns and forest glades of the rich and the great, where we may encounter ladies rather handsomer and gentlemen rather haughtier than they are generally made in our own circle? Let us not be captious, but agreeably appreciative. In a short sentence in one of the opening chapters of 'Sword and Gown,' our author proclaims probably the intention, certainly the result of his literary labors--to produce a string of beautiful cameos, with just thread enough of story to string them upon. This task is done, and well done. The classical allusions are numerous, and seldom can we blame one as out of place. Generally they are wrought into beautiful little pictures, complete in themselves. He manages them with wonderful dexterity, never making too much of them, nor dwelling upon them too long; but with his masterly skill in language he handles his words as a painter his colors, and now we have a bold royal sketch, cloudy outlines of gigantic proportions, shadowy scenes of indefinite grandeur, done with a few strong, words and magnificent adjectives; and now a little paragraph, charming in its exquisite daintiness, like a miniature rarely done upon the face of a costly gem. It is in this word-painting that he is surpassingly admirable. Delineation, description, portraiture are his forte. The same quality of mind which gives dreams of princely men and divine women seems to have brought also a generous endowment of warm, rich words, wherewith to do justice to the imaginings. All the beauty, dignity, and glory of English logography seem to be his: he marshals an array of adjectives and phrases which seem all of the blood royal of our munificent mother tongue. Oftentimes his page sounds like the deep-rolling anthem of a mighty cathedral organ. Might and music are in his syllables; and without sifting his sentences for a noble thought or a beautiful idea, we may be pleased by the stately tread of their succession, and their rich harmonious cadences.