The details of the crime are simply horrible, without one touch of even that sort of romance which sometimes gives a little dignity to murder.

As such they precisely suited Mr.
Thackeray's purpose at the time--which was to show the real manners and customs of the Sheppards and Turpins who were then the popular heroes of fiction.

But nowadays there is no such purpose to serve, and therefore these too literal details are omitted.
***** Ring, ding, ding! the gloomy green curtain drops, the dramatis personae are duly disposed of, the nimble candle snuffers put out the lights, and the audience goeth pondering home.

If the critic take the pains to ask why the author, who hath been so diffuse in describing the early and fabulous acts of Mrs.Catherine's existence, should so hurry off the catastrophe where a deal of the very finest writing might have been employed, Solomons replies that the "ordinary" narrative is far more emphatic than any composition of his own could be, with all the rhetorical graces which he might employ.

Mr.Aram's trial, as taken by the penny-a-liners of those days, had always interested him more than the lengthened and poetical report which an eminent novelist has given of the same.