wit of a gentleman. He has a becoming sense
of responsibility and self-restraint; he delights in agreeable things;
he imparts some pleasant air of his own to things not pleasant in
themselves; he is suggestive and full of matter; and he is always
improving. Into the tone as well as into the execution of what he does,
he has brought a certain elegance which is altogether new, without
involving any compromise of what is true. Popular art in England has not
had so rich an acquisition." Dickens's closing allusion was to a remark
made by Mr. Ford in a review of _Oliver Twist_ formerly referred to. "It
is eight or ten years since a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, making
mention of MR. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, commented on the absurdity of
excluding such a man from the Royal Academy, because his works were not
produced in certain materials, and did not occupy a certain space in its
annual shows. Will no Associates be found upon its books one of these
days, the labours of whose oil and brushes will have sunk into the
profoundest obscurity, when many pencil-marks of MR. CRUIKSHANK and of
MR. LEECH will be still fresh in half the houses in the land?"

Of what otherwise occupied him at Broadstairs in 1848 there is not much
to mention until the close of his holiday. He used to say that he never
went for more than a couple of days from his own home without something
befalling him that never happened to anyone else, and his Broadstairs
adventure of the present summer verged closer on tragedy than comedy.
Returning there one day in August after bringing up his boys to school,
it had been arranged that his wife should meet him at Margate; but he
had walked impatiently far beyond the place for meeting when at last he
caught sight of her, not in the small chaise but in a large carriage and
pair followed by an excited crowd, and with the youth that should have
been driving the little pony bruised and bandaged on the box behind the
two prancing horses. "You may faintly imagine my amazement at
encountering this carriage, and the strange people, and Kate, and the
crowd, and the bandaged one, and all the rest of it." And then in a line
or two I had the story. "At the top of a steep hill on the road, with a
ditch on each side, the pony bolted, upon which what does John do but
jump out! He says he was thrown out, but it cannot be. The reins
immediately became entangled in the wheels, and away went the pony down
the hill madly, with Kate inside rendi