liation is established between Macbeth and
Macduff, who chink glasses by way of cementing their friendship; Sir
John Falstaff lights his pipe at Bardolph's nose; whilst Romeo hands up
a glass of something short and strong to his Juliet in the balcony. 1842
gives us the celebrated etching of "_Gone!_" an auctioneer "knocking
down" a bust of Socrates; at the word "_gone_" the flooring gives way,
and auctioneer, buyers, and Socrates, with all their surroundings,
descend with a simultaneous crash into the cellars below. Drowning men
catch at straws, and the spectacled visage of the auctioneer, as he
clings wildly to his rostrum, is a perfect study of terrified
imbecility.

In looking at these quaint designs, the mind of any one possessed of any
imagination at all cannot fail to be impressed with a sense of the
original train of thought which must have characterized the man who
could conceive and realize them. How appropriately and admirably, even
in trivial matters, the details of the design are worked out! If the
reader will refer to the etching in "St. James'," where the sergeant
places the boot of his master, the Duke of Marlborough, on a map of
Flanders, he will at once see what we mean. The action is accidental;
and yet where could the boot have been placed with greater propriety?
for surely if any country was under the heel of the great English
captain, it was Flanders. Nothing to equal these designs are ever seen
in these days, perhaps nothing like them will ever be seen again. There
are many excellent comic designs produced by our artists of to-day; but
with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Caldicott and Colonel Seccombe, they
lack _character_. You pass them by, and straightway forget them. Not so
with these admirable little designs; you turn to them again and again,
and each time with a refreshing sense of pleasure. Herein seems to lie
the power of true genius--that its productions give not only a sense of
freshness and delight, but that the sensation so conveyed will not die.
There are people, I believe, on whom they produce no such impression;
such people, as regards comic art, are for all practical purposes "dry
bones," and to dry bones such as these the pencil of "honest George"
will appeal in vain.

Some writers on the subject of Cruikshank and his work would have us
believe that he developed his highest powers of imagination and fancy,
and achieved his highest reputation, when depicting subjects of a fairy
or