es one with all the hideous
family: they have all something of the mother in them--something kind,
and generous, and tender.

Knight's, in Sweeting's Alley; Fairburn's, in a court off Ludgate
Hill; Hone's, in Fleet Street--bright, enchanted palaces, which George
Cruikshank used to people with grinning, fantastical imps, and merry,
harmless sprites,--where are they? Fairburn's shop knows him no more;
not only has Knight disappeared from Sweeting's Alley, but, as we are
given to understand, Sweetings Alley has disappeared from the face of
the globe. Slop, the atrocious Castlereagh, the sainted Caroline (in
a tight pelisse, with feathers in her head), the "Dandy of sixty," who
used to glance at us from Hone's friendly windows--where are they? Mr.
Cruikshank may have drawn a thousand better things since the days when
these were; but they are to us a thousand times more pleasing than
anything else he has done. How we used to believe in them! to stray
miles out of the way on holidays, in order to ponder for an hour before
that delightful window in Sweeting's Alley! in walks through Fleet
Street, to vanish abruptly down Fairburn's passage, and there make one
at his "charming gratis" exhibition. There used to be a crowd round the
window in those days, of grinning, good-natured mechanics, who spelt
the songs, and spoke them out for the benefit of the company, and who
received the points of humor with a general sympathizing roar. Where are
these people now? You never hear any laughing at HB.; his pictures are a
great deal too genteel for that--polite points of wit, which strike one
as exceedingly clever and pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet,
gentleman-like kind of way.

There must be no smiling with Cruikshank. A man who does not laugh
outright is a dullard, and has no heart; even the old dandy of sixty
must have laughed at his own wondrous grotesque image, as they say Louis
Philippe did, who saw all the caricatures that were made of himself. And
there are some of Cruikshank's designs which have the blessed faculty of
creating laughter as often as you see them. As Diggory says in the play,
who is bidden by his master not to laugh while waiting at table--"Don't
tell the story of Grouse in the Gun-room, master, or I can't help
laughing." Repeat that history ever so often, and at the proper moment,
honest Diggory is sure to explode. Every man, no doubt, who loves
Cruikshank has his "Grouse in the Gun-room." There is a fello