prodigiously occupied all the while. There was an artist in Paris, an
artist hairdresser, who used to be fatigued and take restoratives after
inventing a new coiffure. By no such gentle operation of head-dressing
has Cruikshank lived: time was (we are told so in print) when for a
picture with thirty heads in it he was paid three guineas--a poor week's
pittance truly, and a dire week's labor. We make no doubt that the same
labor would at present bring him twenty times the sum; but whether it
be ill paid or well, what labor has Mr. Cruikshank's been! Week by week,
for thirty years, to produce something new; some smiling offspring of
painful labor, quite independent and distinct from its ten thousand
jovial brethren; in what hours of sorrow and ill-health to be told by
the world, "Make us laugh or you starve--Give us fresh fun; we have
eaten up the old and are hungry." And all this has he been obliged to
do--to wring laughter day by day, sometimes, perhaps, out of want, often
certainly from ill-health or depression--to keep the fire of his brain
perpetually alight: for the greedy public will give it no leisure to
cool. This he has done and done well. He has told a thousand truths in
as many strange and fascinating ways; he has given a thousand new and
pleasant thoughts to millions of people; he has never used his wit
dishonestly; he has never, in all the exuberance of his frolicsome
humor, caused a single painful or guilty blush: how little do we think
of the extraordinary power of this man, and how ungrateful we are to
him!

Here, as we are come round to the charge of ingratitude, the
starting-post from which we set out, perhaps we had better conclude. The
reader will perhaps wonder at the high-flown tone in which we speak of
the services and merits of an individual, whom he considers a humble
scraper on steel, that is wonderfully popular already. But none of us
remember all the benefits we owe him; they have come one by one, one