the character and mind. But the language in which such
ideas will be usually clothed, must necessarily partake of their
narrowness; and art is systematically incognizant of them, having only
strength under the conditions which awake them to express itself in an
irregular and gross grotesque, fit only for external architectural
decoration.

130. The illustrations of this volume are almost the only exceptions I
know to the general rule. They are of quite sterling and admirable art,
in a class precisely parallel in elevation to the character of the tales
which they illustrate; and the original etchings, as I have before said
in the Appendix to my "Elements of Drawing," were quite unrivaled in
masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt (in some qualities of delineation
unrivaled even by him). These copies have been so carefully executed,
that at first I was deceived by them, and supposed them to be late
impressions from the plates (and what is more, I believe the master
himself was deceived by them, and supposed them to be his own); and
although on careful comparison with the first proofs they will be found
no exception to the terrible law that literal repetition of entirely
fine work shall be, even to the hand that produced it,--much more to any
other,--forever impossible, they still represent, with sufficient
fidelity to be in the highest degree instructive, the harmonious light
and shade, the manly simplicity of execution, and the easy, unincumbered
fancy, of designs which belonged to the best period of Cruikshank's
genius. To make somewhat enlarged copies of them, looking at them
through a magnifying glass, and never putting two lines where Cruikshank
has put only one, would be an exercise in decision and severe drawing
which would leave afterwards little to be learnt in schools, I would
gladly also say much in their praise as imaginative designs; but the
power of genuine imaginative work, and its difference from that which is
compounded and patched together from borrowed sources, is of all
qualities of art the most difficult to explain; and I must be content
with the simple assertions of it.

And so I trust the good old book, and the honest work that adorns it, to
such favor as they may find with children of open hearts and lowly
lives.

DENMARK HILL, _Easter_, 1868.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 110: This paper forms the introduction to a volume entitled
"German Popular Stories, with Illustrations after the original d