gin-barrels for wheels, under which unhappy millions are crushed to
death. An immense black cloud of desolation covers over the country
through which the gin monster has passed, dimly looming through the
darkness whereof you see an agreeable prospect of gibbets with men
dangling, burnt houses, &c. The vast cloud comes sweeping on in the
wake of this horrible body-crusher; and you see, by way of contrast, a
distant, smiling, sunshiny tract of old English country, where gin as
yet is not known. The allegory is as good, as earnest, and as fanciful
as one of John Bunyan's, and we have often fancied there was a
similarity between the men.

The render will examine the work called "My Sketch-Book" with not a
little amusement, and may gather from it, as we fancy, a good deal
of information regarding the character of the individual man, George
Cruikshank: what points strike his eye as a painter; what move his
anger or admiration as a moralist; what classes he seems most especially
disposed to observe, and what to ridicule. There are quacks of all
kinds, to whom he has a mortal hatred; quack dandies, who assume
under his pencil, perhaps in his eye, the most grotesque appearance
possible--their hats grow larger, their legs infinitely more crooked and
lean; the tassels of their canes swell out to a most preposterous size;
the tails of their coats dwindle away, and finish where coat-tails
generally begin. Let us lay a wager that Cruikshank, a man of the people
if ever there was one, heartily hates and despises these supercilious,
swaggering young gentlemen; and his contempt is not a whit the less
laudable because there may be tant soit peu of prejudice in it. It is
right and wholesome to scorn dandies, as Nelson said it was to hate
Frenchmen; in which sentiment (as we have before said) George Cruikshank
undoubtedly shares. In the "Sunday in London,"* Monsieur the Chef is
instructing a kitchen-maid how to compound some rascally French kickshaw