“Tom gave a rear like a wild horse, his protruding muzzle went up sky-high, then was seen no more, and a ring of old iron and a clatter of fragments were heard on the top of the bastion.  Long Tom was dismounted.  Oh, the roar of laughter and triumph from one end to another of the trenches, and the clapping of forty thousand hands, that went on for full five minutes! then the Prussians, either through a burst of generous praise for an act so chivalrous and so brilliant, or because they would not be crowed over, clapped their ten thousand hands as loudly, and thundering heart-thrilling salvo of applause answered salvo on both sides that terrible arena.”

If all this was melodramatic, it should be remembered that the time was melodramatic itself; it is, however, saved from such accusation by the truthfulness of the handling; and the homeliness of a portion of it recalls the ballad of “Up at the villa, down in the city,” with its speeches of drum and fife.  Nevertheless, here are combined the true elements of modern sensational writing:  there are the broad canvas, the vivid colors, the abrupt contrast, all the dramatic and startling effects that weekly fiction affords, the supernatural heroine, the more than mortal hero.  What, then, rescues it?  It would be hard to reply.  Perhaps the reckless, rollicking wit:  we cannot censure one who makes us laugh with him.  Perhaps nothing but the writer’s exuberant and superabundant vitality, which through such warp shoots a golden woof till it is filled and interwoven with the true glance and gleam of genius.  The difference between these pages and that of the previously mentioned style is the same as exists between any coarse scene-curtain and some glorious painting, be it Church, with his tropical lushness, or Gifford, with his shaking, shining mists,—­

                    “mist
  Like a vaporous amethyst,
  Or an air-dissolved star
  Mingling light and fragrance far
  As the curved horizon’s bound,”—­

some canvas that seems to palpitate and live and tremble with the breathing being confided to it by the painter.  Indeed, Charles Reade has a great deal of this pictorial power.  A single sentence will sometimes give not only the sketch, but all its tints.  Take, for instance, the paragraph in which, speaking of the Newhaven fish-wives, he says, “It is a race of women that the Northern sun peachifies instead of rosewoodizing”; and it is as good as that picture of the “Two Grandmothers,” where the rosy woman with her rosy troop is confronted by the tawny sunburnt gypsy and her swarthy group of dancing-girl and tambourine-tosser.