though I shall neither repeat what I
said in the Introduction referred to, nor give the impression there
recorded in merely altered words. Indeed, the very purpose of the
present notice, forming part, as it should, of a connected history of
the whole department to which the book belongs, requires different
treatment, and an application of what may be called critical
"triangulation" from different stand-points.

[Sidenote: An illustrated edition of it.]

By an odd chance and counter-chance, the edition which served for this
last perusal, after threatening to disserve its text, had an exactly
contrary result. It was the handsome two-volume issue of 1841 copiously
adorned with all sorts of ingenious initial-devices, _culs-de-lampe_,
etc., and with numerous illustrative "cuts" beautifully engraved (for
the most part by English engravers, such as Orrin Smith, the Williamses,
etc.), excellently drawn and composed by French artists from Gros
downwards, but costumed in what is now perhaps the least tolerable style
of dress even to the most catholic taste--that of the Empire in France
and the Regency in England--and most comically "thought."[14] At first
sight this might seem to be a disadvantage, as calling attention to, and
aggravating, certain defects of the text itself. I found it just the
reverse. One was slightly distracted from, and half inclined to make
allowances for, Nelvil's performances in the novel when one saw him--in
a Tom-and-Jerry early chimneypot hat, a large coachman's coat flung off
his shoulders and hanging down to his heels, a swallow-tail, tight
pantaloons, and Hessian boots--extracting from his bosom his father's
portrait and expressing filial sentiments to it. One was less likely to
accuse Corinne of peevishness when one beheld the delineation of family
worship in the Edgermond household from which she fled. And the
faithful eyes remonstrated with the petulant brain for scoffing at
excessive sentiment, when they saw how everybody was always at somebody
else's feet, or supporting somebody else in a fainting condition, or
resting his or her burning brow on a hand, the elbow of which rested, in
its turn, on a pedestal like that of Mr. Poseidon Hicks in _Mrs.
Perkins's Ball_. The plates gave a safety-valve to the letterpress in a
curiously anodyne fashion which I hardly ever remember to have
experienced before. Or rather, one transferred to them part, if not the
whole, of the somewhat contemptuous amusemen