are more exalted heights still above them, in the
shape of certain snow-clothed mountain-tops
which are altogether detached from earth by the
low-lying mists about their bases, and which
seem to hang aloft in the clouds, suspended in
the firmament as by a miracle.

Examples of more obvious and extreme
effects which are got by the juxta-position of
violent lights and shadows, are plentiful in this
as in every other collection of drawings by
M. Doré. Some are good, though it must
be admitted that they are always more common
and less delicate than those which have
been mentioned. In the illustration which
shows Don Quixote holding forth to the
goatherds on the glories of the golden age, one
of these violent effects is very well rendered.
It is a night-scene, and the wild figures of the
goatherds, grouped in a circle round the knight,
are lighted, as are the Don and Sancho, by
firelight only. The glare is on the faces of the
men, on the more salient points of their
costume, and on Don Quixote's armour. It
shines upon the trunks of the trees, and on
the boughs and leaves which are near enough
to catch its rays. The rest of the picture is
as black as Erebus. And this is a very true
effect; the blackness of landscape and sky at
night when contrasted with a small patch of
brilliant artificial illumination, being always a
remarkable thing. The same contrast is exhibited
in another illustration nearer the end of the
book, which represents the Procession of the
Chariot of Death. Here again the figures, and
some portion of the surrounding foliage, are
brilliantly lighted up against a distance so dark
that no single object can be detected in it.

But perhaps one of the best of these strong
effects — so called in contradistinction to the
delicate studies of dawn and morning light
described above — is the drawing illustrative of
Altisidora's Mock Serenade. This is one of
the best illustrations in the book. The
moonlight is like moonlight, pale and spectral. It
falls softly on the architectural details of the
duke's castle, repeating the outline of each little
pinnacle and moulding, vaguely — as shadows do
— and glitters sharply on the glass of the window-
panes. The building itself seems to be a sort
of low pavilion among trees, and on its walls the
fantastic shadows of the great boughs and of
the massed foliage, are thrown with such true
effect that they seem to wave and sway from
side to side. The figure of the sprightly
Altisidora is in shadow, and is thrown out dark
against the door of the pavilion, on which the
moonlight falls in a blaze of silver.

Still among the strong effects, there is, in
this collection, a most ghastly drawing of the
scene between Don Quixote and the duenna
when the latter visits the knight in his bed-
chamber, and finds him, suspicious that it is the
love-sick Altisidora who is approaching, alert
and vigilant, standing on his bed, and majestically
draped in the voluminous folds of a yellow
counterpane. The figure of the knight is
preternaturally tall as he stands up in ghostly drapery,
and it is made to appear much taller by means
of his shadow, which is thrown upward on the
wall above his head. The only light comes from
the dim taper carried by the duenna, and one feels
that her exclamation of "Bless me! — what is
this?" is more than justified.

These effect-studies are good and striking.
But by far the larger portion of those
drawings in which the production of a
strong contrast of light and shadow has
been aimed at, strike one as being both common
and — if the expression may be allowed
— dodgy; the artist producing his results
by means which are entirely conventional and
common-place, such as the introduction of great
masses of a dark monotonous tint, with here
and there a few specks of light catching on the
edges of the different objects represented in the
design, whether figures, or architectural details,
or masses of foliage. The mechanical nature of
the engraving has been already alluded to, and
this, though excusable when the effect produced
is new and truthful, is, in other cases where
the effect is conventional and common-place,
exceedingly wearisome. The truth is, that
Gustave Doré is rather too much a man of
dodges. He has certain recipes, so to speak,
which he uses on particular occasions, and
which, but that he is really their original
inventor, would make one at times a little
impatient. The use of figures in the sky, the
clouds being twisted into all sorts of fantastic
shapes of men and horses, and the like, is one of
these. An allowable thing to do once, but once
only. In one of the illustrations to Don
Quixote, that which shows the knight watching
his armour in the court-yard of the inn, the
moon has been made to do comic duty, the
shadows on its surface being distorted into the
semblance of a human face— an ancient and
feeble joke, and altogether unworthy to be
used by an artist of Monsieur Doré's pretensions.
The idea of turning clouds and trees
into shapes resembling human figures, angels,
and demons, was a good one originally, but it
does not bear repeating.

M. Doré is "nothing if not" startling. When
he chooses subjects in which strong effect is not
admissible — plain daylight scenes, where caricature
has no place, and where there is no opening
for what is exaggerated or fantastic — he is seldom
successful. In designs of the plainer and less
dramatic sort — just those in which our own
artists excel — there is always strong evidence of
impatience, of deficient study, of neglect of
nature. His drawing, too, is defective; he is
conventional; and the costumes in which his
figures are dressed, are common and theatrical.
Such a drawing as that of Dorothea bathing her
feet in the stream, is not only bad in every way
in which a work of pictorial art can be bad, but
is un-original. The same may be said of the
study of Dorothea struggling in the arms of her
lover; of the scene between the knight and
the supposed Princess Micomicona; and of a
dozen others.

It has been, remarked that M. Gustave Doré