ge Cruikshank's pictures. The storm in
the Thames, for instance: all the author's labored description of that
event has passed clean away--we have only before the mind's eye the fine
plates of Cruikshank: the poor wretch cowering under the bridge arch, as
the waves come rushing in, and the boats are whirling away in the drift
of the great swollen black waters. And let any man look at that second
plate of the murder on the Thames, and he must acknowledge how much more
brilliant the artist's description is than the writer's, and what a real
genius for the terrible as well as for the ridiculous the former has;
how awful is the gloom of the old bridge, a few lights glimmering from
the houses here and there, but not so as to be reflected on the water at
all, which is too turbid and raging: a great heavy rack of clouds goes
sweeping over the bridge, and men with flaring torches, the murderers,
are borne away with the stream.

The author requires many pages to describe the fury of the storm, which
Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, he has to prepare you with
the something inexpressibly melancholy in sailing on a dark night upon
the Thames: "the ripple of the water," "the darkling current," "the
indistinctively seen craft," "the solemn shadows" and other phenomena
visible on rivers at night are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric)
in order to bring the reader into a proper frame of mind for the deeper
gloom and horror which is to ensue. Then follow pages of description.
"As Rowland sprang to the helm, and gave the signal for pursuit, a war
like a volley of ordnance was heard aloft, and the wind again burst its
bondage. A moment before the surface of the stream was as black as ink.
It was now whitening, hissing, and seething, like an enormous caldron.
The blast once more swept over the agitated river, whirled off the
sheets of foam, scattered them far and wide in rain-drops, and left the
raging torrent blacker than before. Destruction everywhere marked the
course of the gale. Steeples toppled and towers reeled beneath its fury.
All was darkness, horror, confusion, ruin. Men fled from their tottering
habitations and returned to them, scared by greater danger. The end
of the world seemed at hand. . . . The hurricane had now reached its
climax. The blast shrieked, as if exulting in its wrathful mission.
Stunning and continuous, the din seemed almost to take away the power of
hearing. He who had faced the gale WOULD HAVE