of sound.”  That is to say, he imitated the noise of thunder by shaking one of the lower corners of a large thin sheet of copper suspended by a chain; the distant firing of signals of distress from the doomed vessel he counterfeited by suddenly striking a large tambourine with a sponge affixed to a whalebone spring, the reverberations of the sponge producing a peculiar echo as from cloud to cloud dying away in the distance.  The rushing washing sound of the waves was simulated by turning round and round an octagonal pasteboard box, fitted with shelves, and containing small shells, peas, and shot; while two discs of tightly-strained silk, suddenly pressed together, produced a hollow whistling sound in imitation of loud and fitful gusts of wind.  Cylinders, loosely charged with seed and small shot, lifted now at one end, now at the other, so us to allow the contents to fall in a pattering stream, effectually reproduced the noise of hail and rain.  The moon was formed by a circular aperture cut in a tin box containing a powerful argand lamp, which was placed at the back of the scene, and brought near or removed from the canvas as the luminary was supposed to be shining brightly or to be obscured by clouds.  These contrivances of Mr. de Loutherbourg may now, perhaps, be deemed to be of rather a commonplace description—­they have figured so frequently, and in such amplified and amended forms, upon the modern stage; but they were calculated to impress the painter’s patrons very considerably; they were then distinctly innovations due to his curiously inventive genius, and the result of much labour and heedful ingenuity.  If the theatrical entertainments of the present time manifest little progress in histrionic art, there has been, at any rate, marked advance in the matter of scenic illusions and mechanical effects.  The thunder of our modern stage storms may no more proceed from mustard-bowls, or from “troughs of wood with stops in them,” but it is, at any rate, sufficiently formidable and uproarious, sometimes exciting, indeed, the anxiety of the audience, lest it should crash through the roof of the theatre, and visit them bodily in the pit; while for our magnesium or lime-light flashes of lightning, they are beyond anything that “spirit of right Nantz brandy” could effect in the way of lambent flames, have a vividness that equals reality, and, moreover, leave behind them a pungent and sulphurous odour that may be described as even supernaturally noxious.  The stage storm still bursts upon the drama from time to time; the theatre is still visited in due course by its rainy and tempestuous season; and thunder and lightning are, as much as in Addison’s time, among the favourite devices of our playwrights, “put in practice to fill the minds of an audience with terror.”  The terror may not be quite of the old kind, but still it does well enough.

CHAPTER XXVI.

“DOUBLES.”