of them there were in the wild, coarse, reckless, ribald, generous book
of old English humor!

How savage the satire was--how fierce the assault--what garbage hurled
at opponents--what foul blows were hit--what language of Billingsgate
flung! Fancy a party in a country-house now looking over Woodward's
facetiae or some of the Gilray comicalities, or the slatternly
Saturnalia of Rowlandson! Whilst we live we must laugh, and have folks
to make us laugh. We cannot afford to lose Satyr with his pipe and
dances and gambols. But we have washed, combed, clothed, and taught the
rogue good manners: or rather, let us say, he has learned them himself;
for he is of nature soft and kindly, and he has put aside his mad
pranks and tipsy habits; and, frolicsome always, has become gentle and
harmless, smitten into shame by he pure presence of our women and the
sweet confiding smiles of our children. Among the veterans, the old
pictorial satirists, we have mentioned the famous name of one humorous
designer who is still alive and at work. Did we not see, by his own
hand, his own portrait of his own famous face, and whiskers, in the
Illustrated London News the other day? There was a print in that paper
of an assemblage of Teetotalers in "Sadler's Wells Theatre," and we
straightway recognized the old Roman hand--the old Roman's of the time
of Plancus--George Cruikshank's. There were the old bonnets and droll
faces and shoes, and short trousers, and figures of 1820 sure enough.
And there was George (who has taken to the water-doctrine, as all the
world knows) handing some teetotal cresses over a plank to the table
where the pledge was being administered. How often has George drawn that
picture of Cruikshank! Where haven't we seen it? How fine it was,
facing the effigy of Mr. Ainsworth in Ainsworth's Magazine when George
illustrated that periodical! How grand and severe he stands in that
design in G. C.'s "Omnibus," where he represents himself tonged like