dent at that time, had the honor of giving
him the _coup de grace_, and finishing the sentence of the law." This
remarkable anecdote, which seemed to imply that all the gentlemen in the
dissecting-room were amateurs of our class, struck me a good deal; and I
was repeating it one day to a Lancashire lady, who thereupon informed me,
that she had herself lived in the neighborhood of that highwayman, and well
remembered two circumstances, which combined, in the opinion of all his
neighbors, to fix upon him the credit of Mrs. Ruscombe's affair. One was,
the fact of his absence for a whole fortnight at the period of that murder:
the other, that, within a very little time after, the neighborhood of this
highwayman was deluged with dollars: now Mrs. Ruscombe was known to have
hoarded about two thousand of that coin. Be the artist, however, who he
might, the affair remains a durable monument of his genius; for such was
the impression of awe, and the sense of power left behind, by the strength
of conception manifested in this murder, that no tenant (as I was told in
1810) had been found up to that time for Mrs. Ruscombe's house.

But, whilst I thus eulogize the Ruscombian case, let me not be supposed to
overlook the many other specimens of extraordinary merit spread over the
face of this century. Such cases, indeed, as that of Miss Bland, or of
Captain Donnellan, and Sir Theophilus Boughton, shall never have any
countenance from me. Fie on these dealers in poison, say I: can they not
keep to the old honest way of cutting throats, without introducing such
abominable innovations from Italy? I consider all these poisoning cases,
compared with the legitimate style, as no better than wax-work by the side
of sculpture, or a lithographic print by the side of a fine Volpato. But,
dismissing these, there remain many excellent works of art in a pure style,
such as nobody need be ashamed to own, as every candid connoisseur will
admit. _Candid_, observe, I say; for great allowances must be made in
these cases; no artist can ever be sure of carrying through his own fine
preconception. Awkward disturbances will arise; people will not submit to
have their throats cut quietly; they will run, they will kick, they will
bite; and whilst the portrait painter often has to complain of too much
torpor in his subject, the artist, in our line, is generally embarrassed by
too much animation. At the same time, however disagreeable to the artist,
this tendenc