The scenes are apt to be rather melodramatic. Wonderful passions work wonderfully. Eyes flash, lips are set, cheeks grow pale, quite often. Great coolness, vast powers, are continually displayed; yet they are well displayed, after the fashion of gentlemen, not of bravoes or villains or highwaymen. He handles thunder and lightning, the terrific weapons of the mighty Jove himself, in a very haughty, Jove-like manner, it must be confessed. He isn't afraid of singing his fingers with the thunderbolts, but seizes them with the familiar gripe of unquestionable authority. In a glorified language he paints glorified visions. Very little of the calm domestic sunlight of the working noonday glimmers among his pages, but a perpetual, everlasting gorgeousness of deep-colored sunset radiance. For merit of style all these novels are well worthy of commendation and of study. Education and extensive reading have preserved them from faults of gaudiness and meretricious ornament. They are chastened by good taste and regulated by gentlemanly cultivation. They are written by a scholar, and not by a scribbler; and while reading their magnificent pages we need have no misgiving that we are admiring the flashy ornaments of wordy or half-educated mediocrity. Far the best of them is also the first, 'Guy Livingstone.' The poorest is 'Sword and Gown;' this has the feeblest plot, in fact a mere apology for a story, and contains more passages which seem unfinished, and what on a second reading would scarce have satisfied their own writer. 'Guy Livingstone,' though not faultless, is a work of power, talent, and brilliancy. Guy himself is an Olympian character, sketched upon the scale and model of a Torso, a giant in his virtues and his vices and his frame--but exaggerated with such tact and ability that even the impossible hugeness charms and fascinates. The feats of the hero in the dance and carpeted salon, on his mighty hunter leading the breakneck chase, carry us away with all the heat and ardor of sympathy; nor do we stumble in our companionable excitement over any unwelcome snag of commonplace thought or vulgar daring. Constance Brandon, as we have above intimated, we consider a splendid masterpiece--a woman lovely as the imagination of man fondly likes to dream, with every winning grace of manner and amiable charm of purity. She is the finest character and the fairest face beyond all compare in the gallery; and the scenes in which she figures are the most able, the most moving, and the most unexceptionable in every point of view, of all that our author has given us. MILL ON LIBERTY.