. but oh, how altered!--he was in every sense
of the word an old man, his body and mind were enfeebled, and second
childishness had come upon him. How often have I bent over him, vainly
endeavoring to recall to his memory the scenes we had shared together:
and how frequently, with an aching heart, have I gazed on his vacant and
lustreless eye, while he has amused himself in clapping his hands and
singing with a quavering voice a verse of a psalm." Alas! such are
the consequences of long residences in America, and of old age even in
uncles! Well, the point of this morality is, that the uncle one day in
the morning of life vowed that he would catch his two nephews and tie
them together, ay, and actually did so, for all the efforts the rogues
made to run away from him; but he was so fatigued that he declared
he never would make the attempt again, whereupon the nephew
remarks,--"Often since then, when engaged in enterprises beyond my
strength, have I called to mind the determination of my uncle."

Does it not seem impossible to make a picture out of this? And yet
George Cruikshank has produced a charming design, in which the uncles
and nephews are so prettily portrayed that one is reconciled to their
existence, with all their moralities. Many more of the mirths in
this little book are excellent, especially a great figure of a
parson entering church on horseback,--an enormous parson truly, calm,
unconscious, unwieldy. As Zeuxis had a bevy of virgins in order to make
his famous picture--his express virgin--a clerical host must have passed
under Cruikshank's eyes before he sketched this little, enormous parson
of parsons.

Being on the subject of children's books, how shall we enough praise the
delightful German nursery-tales, and Cruikshank's illustrations of
them? We coupled his name with pantomime awhile since, and sure never
pantomimes were more charming than these. Of all the artists that ever
drew, from Michael Angelo upwards and downwards, Cruikshank was the man
to illustrate these tales, and give them just the proper admixture of
the grotesque, the wonderful, and the graceful. May all Mother Bunch's
collection be similarly indebted to him; may "Jack the Giant Killer,"
may "Tom Thumb," may "Puss in Boots," be one day revivified by his
pencil. Is not Whittington sitting yet on Highgate hill, and poor
Cinderella (in that sweetest of all fairy stories) still pining in her
lonely chimney-nook? A man who has a true affecti