ription of actual scenes, their powers fail, their ardour is
weakened, their fire is lost. A mind comparatively prosaic, subject to
such burdens, speedily out-strips them even on their own element; and the
scholar with his authorities kindles the imagination to an extent which
the poet with his verses can hardly excel. Witness Livy's pictured
pages--Gibbon's historical descriptions. Yet minds of the most elevated
cast have occasionally, though at long intervals from each other,
succeeded in uniting the historic and romantic arts. Homer's Iliad is the
annals of the Siege of Troy in verse; his Odyssey, the versified Travels
of Ulysses; and in the recent "Histoire des Girondins" by Lamartine, we
have convincing proof that it is possible to unite the most ardent and
enthusiastic poetical mind with the research, knowledge of character, and
dramatic power, requisite to make the most interesting tragic annals.

As a romance writer, Mr James unquestionably is entitled to a high place.
He has great historical information, especially of the olden times and
their leading characters; an accurate personal knowledge of various
countries, more particularly France, Flanders, and England; great
acquaintance with the dress, manners, arms, and accoutrements of former
days; and a very remarkable power of describing as well the ever-changing
events of ancient story as the varied scenes of inanimate nature. His best
novels, "Attila," "Philip Augustus," "Mary of Burgundy," "The Robbers,"
"The Smugglers," "Morley Ernstein," "Henry Masterton," are happy specimens
of the historical romance. The great and deserved success which has
attended the uniform edition of his novels now in course of publication,
sufficiently proves that his reputation rests on a broader and securer
basis than the fleeting patronage of fashion or the transient interest of
individual satire. The great risk which he runs, is from the _number_ of
his works. It is dangerous to write thirty books. The most prolific
imagination runs into repetition, when repeatedly tasked with invention.
Homer himself could not have written twenty Iliads; Shakspeare's fame has
been not a little enhanced by his having left only twenty-seven plays;
that of Sophocles, by only seven of his having come down to modern times.
Perhaps the best thing that a good fairy could do for James's fame--as was
said of Dryden--would be to withdraw two-thirds of his productions from
subsequent times.

One of the gr