The fireside shows a vacant chair."


Yet, however splendid the galaxy of literary stars may be, which illumine
our Annuals, they owe no little of their lustre to _the engravings_.
It fortuitously happens that we have not "a connoisseuring eye," or
we should swell this paper beyond the limits prescribed by editorial
complaisance, in the pages of "THE MIRROR." We are not ignorant, however,
of the incomparable advancement which the science of engraving has made in
the lapse of the last ten years; or how far it has left behind those mere
scratches of the graver which lit up our young admiration when a boy.
Two of these we will be impertinent enough to criticise, in spite of the
affection with which we cherish the visionary recollection of the pictures
of grandmother's parlour. The subjects were "courtship," and "matrimony."
In the former, the Chesterfieldian lover was seen handing his _chere
amie_ (a lusty wench, with red ochre cheeks) over a remarkably low
stile: whether the subject, or the manner of its execution had inspired
the muse, is no matter; but beneath was the following:--


"In _courtship_, Strephon careful hands his lass
Over a stile a child with ease might pass"


The next was "matrimony;" but, oh! "look on _this_ picture and on
_this!_" The careless husband, forgetting his capacious spouse, leaves
her to scramble over a stile of alarming altitude, whilst his attention
seems absorbed in the quarrel of two snarling terriers. Such conjugal
uncourtliness elicits its merited censure in the cool satire of the
accompanying motto:--