not to kick up a row.

Such a troop of lawless ruffians let loose upon a populous city would
play sad havoc in it; and we fancy the massacres of Birmingham renewed,
or at least of Badajoz, which, though not quite so dreadful, if we
may believe his Grace the Duke of Wellington, as the former scenes of
slaughter, were nevertheless severe enough: but we must not venture upon
any ill-timed pleasantries in presence of the disturbed King Arthur and
the awful ghost of Gaffer Thumb.

We are thus carried at once into the supernatural, and here we find
Cruikshank reigning supreme. He has invented in his time a little comic
pandemonium, peopled with the most droll, good-natured fiends possible.
We have before us Chamisso's "Peter Schlemihl," with Cruikshank's
designs translated into German, and gaining nothing by the change.
The "Kinder und Hans-Maerchen" of Grimm are likewise ornamented with a
frontispiece copied from that one which appeared to the amusing version
of the English work. The books on Phrenology and Time have been imitated
by the same nation; and even in France, whither reputation travels
slower than to any country except China, we have seen copies of the
works of George Cruikshank.

He in return has complimented the French by illustrating a couple of
Lives of Napoleon, and the "Life in Paris" before mentioned. He has also
made designs for Victor Hugo's "Hans of Iceland." Strange, wild etchings
were those, on a strange, mad subject; not so good in our notion as the
designs for the German books, the peculiar humor of which latter seemed
to suit the artist exactly. There is a mixture of the awful and the
ridiculous in these, which perpetually excites and keeps awake the
reader's attention; the German writer and the English artist seem to
have an entire faith in their subject. The reader, no doubt, remembers
the awful passage in "Peter Schlemihl," where the little gentleman
purchases the shadow of that hero--"Have the kindness, noble sir, to
examine and try this bag." "He put his hand into his pocket, and drew
thence a tolerably large bag of Cordovan leather, to which a couple of
thongs were fixed. I took it from him, and immediately counted out ten
gold pieces, and ten more, and ten more, and still other ten, whereupon
I held out my hand to him. Done, said I, it is a bargain; you shall have
my shadow for your bag. The bargain was concluded; he knelt down before
me, and I saw him with a wonderful neatness take my shad