the face of the dumbfounded villain, who feels himself
absolutely powerless in the hands of the scornful, resolute woman, are
powerfully depicted. A more perfect realization of Edith Dombey it seems
to us could scarcely be imagined. Leech, _perhaps_, might have reached
the idea. He would certainly have put more breadth and solidity into the
figure of Carker; but the woman he could scarcely have improved upon--I
doubt if he could have matched her. As for Cruikshank, he would have
given her an impossible waist, a puffy face surmounted with bandeaux of
raven hair scrupulously plastered to each side of her lofty forehead;
whilst Carker would have been presented to us in an uncomfortable
coat, hair parted and dressed after the Cruikshankian fashion, and a
pair of boots at least half a yard in length.

[Illustration:
PHIZ. "_Master Humphrey's Clock_," 1840-1.

THE RIOTERS.

_Face p. 346._]

"BLEAK HOUSE" AND "ROLAND CASHEL."

"Bleak House" (1852-3) has been described as the most successful of
"Phiz's" illustrated work; but although it contains some of the best
etchings he ever designed for Charles Dickens, the rest are in truth of
unequal merit. Among the best may be mentioned _Consecrated Ground_;
_The Old Man of the name of Tulkinghorn_; _Morning_; _Tom All Alone's_;
and the sunset scene in the _Long Drawing-room at Chesney Wold_. In the
dreary twilight of the _Ghost's Walk_ and of the room in which the
murder was consummated we have a pair of drawings unsurpassed by any of
the illustrations he executed for Charles Lever's "Roland Cashel," which
last contains unquestionably the finest of his designs.

Of all his illustrators, Hablot Knight Browne was the one who best
suited the requirements of Charles Dickens. A man of talent without a
single idea of his own, he was found more malleable and manageable than
Cruikshank, who, as we have seen, would have had a hand (if he could)
not only in the illustrations, but also in the management of the story.
The conditions under which "Phiz" illustrated "Pickwick" were wholly
different from those which poor Seymour had endeavoured to impose upon
his author. "It is due to the gentleman," says Dickens, in his preface
to the "Pickwick Papers," "It is due to the gentleman whose designs
accompany the letterpress, to state that the interval has been so short
between the production of each number in manuscript and its appearance
in print, that the greater portion of the illus