the Comic Almanac, have gained for it a sale, as we hear, of nearly
twenty thousand copies. The idea of the work was novel; there was,
in the first number especially, a great deal of comic power, and
Cruikshank's designs were so admirable that the Almanac at once became a
vast favorite with the public, and has so remained ever since.

Besides the twelve plates, this almanac contains a prophetic woodcut,
accompanying an awful Blarneyhum Astrologicum that appears in this and
other almanacs. There is one that hints in pretty clear terms that with
the Reform of Municipal Corporations the ruin of the great Lord Mayor of
London is at hand. His lordship is meekly going to dine at an eightpenny
ordinary, his giants in pawn, his men in armor dwindled to "one poor
knight," his carriage to be sold, his stalwart aldermen vanished, his
sheriffs, alas! and alas! in gaol! Another design shows that Rigdum, if
a true, is also a moral and instructive prophet. John Bull is asleep, or
rather in a vision; the cunning demon, Speculation, blowing a thousand
bright bubbles about him. Meanwhile the rooks are busy at his fob, a
knave has cut a cruel hole in his pocket, a rattlesnake has coiled safe
round his feet, and will in a trice swallow Bull, chair, money and all;
the rats are at his corn-bags (as if, poor devil, he had corn to spare);
his faithful dog is bolting his leg-of-mutton--nay, a thief has gotten
hold of his very candle, and there, by way of moral, is his ale-pot,
which looks and winks in his face, and seems to say, O Bull, all this is
froth, and a cruel satirical picture of a certain rustic who had a
goose that laid certain golden eggs, which goose the rustic slew in
expectation of finding all the eggs at once. This is goose and sage too,
to borrow the pun of "learned Doctor Gill;" but we shrewdly suspect that
Mr. Cruikshank is becoming a little conservative in his notions.

We love these pictures so that it is hard to part us, and we still