straps to their tight pantaloons in lieu of pegtops; that
their vests are too short and their coat-collars too high; that they
wear bell-crowned hats, and carry gold-knobbed canes with long tassels;
and that they are dressed, in short, after the fashion of the year one,
when Brummell or Pea-Green Haynes commanded the _ton_. It is obvious
that the works of an artist who has refused to be indoctrinated with the
perpetual changes of a capricious code of dress would never be very
popular with the readers of "Punch,"--a periodical which, pictorially,
owes its very existence to the readiness and skill displayed by its
draughtsmen in shooting folly as it flies and catching the manners
living as they rise, and pillorying the madness of the moment. Were
George Cruikshank called upon, for instance, to depict a lady fording a
puddle on a rainy day, and were he averse (for he is the modestest of
artists) to displaying too much of her ankle, he would assuredly make
manifest, beneath her upraised skirts, some antediluvian pantalet,
bordered by a pre-Adamite frill. But the keen-eyed Mr. Leech would be
guilty of no such anachronism. He would discover that the mysterious
garments in question were ofttimes encircled by open-worked embroidery.
_He would find out that the ladies sometimes wore Knickerbockers._ And
this is what the ladies like. Exaggerate their follies as much as you
please; but woe be to you, if you wrongfully accuse them! You may sneer
at, you may censure, you may castigate them for what they really do, but
beware of reprehending them for that which they have never done. Even
Sir John Falstaff revolted at the imputation of having kissed the
keeper's daughter. A sermon against crinoline, be it ever so
fulminating, finds ever an attentive and smiling congregation; but
venture to preach against coal-scuttle bonnets--until the ladies have
really taken to wearing them--and your hearers would pull down the
pulpit and hang the preacher.

Thus, although foreigners may express wonder that a designer, who for so
many years has been in the front rank of English humorous artists,
should never have contributed to the pages of our leading humorous
periodical, astonishment may be abated, when the real state of the case,
as I have endeavored to put it, is known. George Cruikshank is at once
too good for, and not quite up to the mark of "Punch." His best works
have always been his etchings on steel and copper; and wonderful
examples of c