dren 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
may gaze for hours, so merry and lifelike a scene does it present. What
a charming creative power is this, what a privilege--to be a god, and
create little worlds upon paper, and whole generations of smiling,
jovial men, women, and children half inch high, whose portraits are
carried abroad, and have the faculty of making us monsters of six feet
curious and happy in our turn. Now, who would imagine that an artist
could make anything of such a subject as this? The writer begins by
stating,--

"I love to go back to the days of my youth,
And to reckon my joys to the letter,
And to count o'er the friends that I have in the world,
Ay, and those who are gone to a better."

This brings him to the consideration of his uncle. "Of all the men
I have ever known," says he, "my uncle united the greatest degree of
cheerfulness with the sobriety of manhood. Though a man when I was a
boy, he was yet one of the most agreeable companions I ever possessed.
. . . He embarked for America, and nearly twenty years passed by before
he came back again; . .