tion only but other more fearful
wretchedness, we have as powerful a picture as any in his writings of
the inevitable and unfathomable consequences of sin. But, as the story
went on, it was incident to these designs that what had been
accomplished in its predecessor could hardly be attained here, in
singleness of purpose, unity of idea, or harmony of treatment; and other
defects supervened in the management of the plot. The interest with
which the tale begins has ceased to be its interest before the close;
and what has chiefly taken the reader's fancy at the outset almost
wholly disappears in the power and passion with which, in the later
chapters, the great riots are described. So admirable is this
description, however, that it would be hard to have to surrender it
even for a more perfect structure of fable.

There are few things more masterly in any of his books. From the first
low mutterings of the storm to its last terrible explosion, this frantic
outbreak of popular ignorance and rage is depicted with unabated power.
The aimlessness of idle mischief by which the ranks of the rioters are
swelled at the beginning; the recklessness induced by the monstrous
impunity allowed to the early excesses; the sudden spread of this
drunken guilt into every haunt of poverty, ignorance, or mischief in the
wicked old city, where the rich materials of crime lie festering; the
wild action of its poison on all, without scheme or plan of any kind,
who come within its reach; the horrors that are more bewildering for
this complete absence of purpose in them; and, when all is done, the
misery found to have been self-inflicted in every cranny and corner of
London, as if a plague had swept over the streets: these are features in
the picture of an actual occurrence, to which the manner of the
treatment gives extraordinary force and meaning. Nor, in the sequel, is
there anything displayed with more profitable vividness than the law's
indiscriminate cruelty at last, in contrast with its cowardly
indifference at first; while, among the casual touches lighting up the
scene with flashes of reality that illumine every part of it, may be
instanced the discovery, in the quarter from which screams for succor
are loudest when Newgate is supposed to be accidentally on fire, of four
men who were certain in any case to have perished on the drop next day.

The story, which has unusually careful writing in it, and much manly
upright thinking, has not so m