time to time compelled to design them, he never sketches one without
a certain pity for it, and imparting to the figure a certain grotesque
grace. In happy schoolboys he revels; plum-pudding and holidays his
needle has engraved over and over again; there is a design in one of the
comic almanacs of some young gentlemen who are employed in administering
to a schoolfellow the correction of the pump, which is as graceful
and elegant as a drawing of Stothard. Dull books about children George
Cruikshank makes bright with illustrations--there is one published by
the ingenious and opulent Mr. Tegg. It is entitled "Mirth and Morality,"
the mirth being, for the most part, on the side of the designer--the
morality, unexceptionable certainly, the author's capital. Here are
then, to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied by George
Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a common!
Such a light, brisk, airy, gentleman-like drawing was never made upon
such a theme. Who, cries the author--

"Who has not chased the butterfly,
And crushed its slender legs and wings,
And heaved a moralizing sigh:
Alas! how frail are human things!"

A very unexceptionable morality truly; but it would have puzzled another
than George Cruikshank to make mirth out of it as he has done. Away,
surely not on the wings of these verses, Cruikshank's imagination begins
to soar; and he makes us three darling little men on a green common,
backed by old farmhouses, somewhere about May. A great mixture of blue
and clouds in the air, a strong fresh breeze stirring, Tom's jacket
flapping in the same, in order to bring down the insect queen or king
of spring that is fluttering above him,--he renders all this with a few
strokes on a little block of wood not two inches square, upon which one