The tempest in David Copperfield combines Dickens’s dramatic tragedy of narrative with his wonderful sense of sea and land.  But here are landscapes in quietness:  “There has been rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes among the little pools in the cracked, uneven flag-stones. . .  Some of the leaves, in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low-arched cathedral door; but two men coming out resist them, and cast them out with their feet:”  The autumn leaves fall thick, “but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness.”  Again, “Now the woods settle into great masses as if they were one profound tree.”  And yet again, “I held my mother in my embrace, and she held me in hers; and among the still woods in the silence of the summer day there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled minds that was not at peace.”  Yet, with a thousand great felicities of diction, Dickens had no body of style.

Dickens, having the single and simple heart of a moralist, had also the simple eyes of a free intelligence, and the light heart.  He gave his senses their way, and well did they serve him.  Thus his eyes—­and no more modern man in anxious search of “impressions” was ever so simple and so masterly:  “Mr. Vholes gauntly stalked to the fire, and warmed his funereal gloves.” “‘I thank you,’ said Mr. Vholes, putting out his long black sleeve, to check the ringing of the bell, ‘not any.’” Mr. and Mrs. Tope “are daintily sticking sprigs of holly into the carvings and sconces of the cathedral stalls, as if they were sticking them into the button-holes of the Dean & Chapter.”  The two young Eurasians, brother and sister, “had a certain air upon them of hunter and huntress; yet withal a certain air of being the objects of the chase rather than the followers.”  This phrase lacks elegance—­and Dickens is not often inelegant, as those who do not read him may be surprised to learn—­but the impression is admirable; so is that which follows:  “An indefinable kind of pause coming and going on their whole expression, both of face and form.”  Here is pure, mere impression again:  “Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing-desk, gave me her cold finger-nails.”  Lady Tippins’s hand is “rich in knuckles.”  And here is vision with great dignity:  “All beyond his figure was a vast dark curtain, in solemn movement towards one quarter of the heavens.”

With that singleness of sight—­and his whole body was full of the light of it—­he had also the single hearing; the scene is in the Court of Chancery on a London November day:  “Leaving this address ringing in the rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops, and the fog knows him no more.”  “Mr. Vholes emerged into the silence he could scarcely be said to have broken, so stifled was his tone.”  “Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted loomingly by the fast-darkening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble voice, rising and