first picture, which is called "The Point of Honour," illustrates the old story of the officer who, on being accused of cowardice for refusing to fight a duel, came among his brother officers and flung a lighted grenade down upon the floor, before which his comrades fled ignominiously. This design is capital, and the outward rush of heroes, walking, trampling, twisting, scuffling at the door, is in the best style of the grotesque. You see but the back of most of these gentlemen; into which, nevertheless, the artist has managed to throw an expression of ludicrous agony that one could scarcely have expected to find in such a part of the human figure. The next plate is not less good. It represents a couple who, having been found one night tipsy, and lying in the same gutter, were, by a charitable though misguided gentleman, supposed to be man and wife, and put comfortably to bed together. The morning came; fancy the surprise of this interesting pair when they awoke and discovered their situation. Fancy the manner, too, in which Cruikshank has depicted them, to which words cannot do justice. It is needless to state that this fortuitous and temporary union was followed by one more lasting and sentimental, and that these two worthy persons were married, and lived happily ever after.

We should like to go through every one of these prints. There is the jolly miller, who, returning home at night, calls upon his wife to get him a supper, and falls to upon rashers of bacon and ale. How he gormandises, that jolly miller! rasher after rasher, how they pass away frizzling and smoking from the gridiron down that immense grinning gulf of a mouth. Poor wife! how she pines and frets, at that untimely hour of midnight to be obliged to fry, fry, fry perpetually, and minister to the monster's appetite. And yonder in the clock: what agonised face is that we see? By heavens, it is the

squire of the parish. What business has he there? Let us not ask. Suffice it to say, that he has, in the hurry of the moment, left upstairs his br; his-psha! a part of his dress, in short, with a number of banknotes in the pockets. Look in the next page, and you will see the ferocious, bacon-devouring ruffian of a miller is actually causing this garment to be carried through the village and cried by the town-crier. And we blush to be obliged to say that the demoralised miller never offered to return the bank-notes, although he was so mighty scrupulous in endeavouring to find an owner for the corduroy portfolio in which he had found them.

Passing from this painful subject, we come, we regret to state, to a series of prints representing personages not a whit more moral. Burns's famous "Jolly Beggars have all had their portraits drawn by Cruikshank. There is the lovely "hempen widow," quite as interesting and romantic as the famous Mrs. Sheppard, who has at the lamented demise of her husband adopted the very same consolation.

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My curse upon them every one,

They've hanged my braw John Highlandman;

And now a widow I must mourn

Departed joys that ne'er returned;
No comfort but a hearty can

When I think on John Highlandman."

Sweet "raucle carlin," she has none of the sentimentality of the English highwayman's lady; but being wooed by a tinker and

"A pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle

Wha us'd to trystes and fairs to driddle,"

prefers the practical to the merely musical man. The tinker sings with a noble candour, worthy of a fellow of his strength of body and station in life

"My bonnie lass, I work in brass,

A tinker is my station;

I've travell'd round all Christian ground

In this my occupation.

I've ta'en the gold, I've been enroll'd

In many a noble squadron;

But vain they search'd when off I march'd
To go an' clout the caudron."

It was his ruling passion. What was military glory to him, forsooth? He had the greatest contempt for it, and loved freedom and his copper kettle a thousand times better a kind of hardware Diogenes. Of fiddling he has no better opinion. The picture represents the "sturdy caird" taking "poor gut-scraper" by the beard, drawing his "roosty rapier," and swearing to "speet him like a pliver" unless he would relinquish the bonnie lassie for ever

"Wi' ghastly ee, poor tweedle-dee

Upon his hunkers bended,

An' pray'd for grace wi' ruefu' face,
An' so the quarrel ended."

Hark how the tinker apostrophises the violinist, stating to the widow at the same time the advantages which she might expect from an alliance with himself:

"Despise that shrimp, that withered imp,

Wi' a' his noise and caperin';

And take a share with those that bear
The budget and the apron!

"And by that stowp, my faith an' houpe,

An' by that dear Kilbaigie!

If e'er ye want, or meet wi' scant,
May I ne'er weet my craigie.”

Cruikshank's caird is a noble creature; his face and figure show him to be fully capable of doing and saying all that is above written of him.

In the second part, the old tale of "The Three Hunchbacked Fiddlers" is illustrated with equal felicity. The famous classical dinners and duel in “Peregrine Pickle" are also excellent in their way; and the connoisseur of prints and etchings may see in the latter plate, and in another in this volume, how great the artist's mechanical skill is as an etcher. The distant view of the city in the duel, and of a market-place in "The Quack Doctor," are delightful specimens of the artist's skill in depicting buildings and backgrounds. They are touched with a grace, truth, and dexterity of workmanship that leave nothing to desire. We have before mentioned the man with the mouth, which appears in this number emblematical of gout and indigestion, in which the artist has shown all the fancy of Callot. Little demons, with long saws for noses, are making dreadful incisions into the toes of the unhappy sufferer; some are bringing pans of hot coals to keep the wounded member warm; a huge, solemn nightmare sits on the invalid's chest, staring solemnly into his eyes; a monster, with a pair of drumsticks, is banging a devil's tattoo on his forehead; and a pair of imps are nailing great tenpenny nails into his hands to make his happiness complete.

The late Mr. Clark's excellent work, "Three Courses and a Dessert," was published at a time when the rage for comic stories was not so great as it since has been, and Messrs. Clark and Cruikshank only sold their hundreds where Messrs. Dickens and Phiz dispose of their thousands. But if our recommendation can in any way influence the reader, we would enjoin him to have a copy of the "Three Courses," that contains some of the best designs of our artist, and some of the most amusing tales in our language. The invention of the pictures, for which Mr. Clark takes credit to himself,

says a great deal for his wit and fancy. Can we, for instance, praise too highly the man who invented that wonderful oyster?

Examine him well; his beard, his pearl, his little round stomach, and his sweet smile. Only oysters know how to smile in this way; cool, gentle, waggish, and yet inexpressibly innocent and winning. Dando himself must have allowed such an artless native to go free, and consigned him to the glassy, cool, translucent wave again.

In writing upon such subjects as these with which we have been furnished, it can hardly be expected that we should follow any fixed plan and order we must therefore take such advantage as we may, and seize upon our subject when and wherever we can lay hold of him.

For Jews, sailors, Irishmen, Hessian boots, little boys, beadles, policemen, tall life-guardsmen, charity children, pumps, dustmen, very short pantaloons, dandies in spectacles, and ladies with aquiline noses, remarkably taper waists, and wonderfully long ringlets, Mr. Cruikshank has a special predilection. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with amazing gusto; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," and the immortal Fagin of "Oliver Twist." Whereabouts lies the comic vis in these persons and things? Why should a beadle be comic, and his opposite a charity boy? Why should a tall life-guardsman have something in him essentially absurd? Why are short breeches more ridiculous than long? What is there particularly jocose about a pump, and wherefore does a long nose always provoke the beholder to laughter? These points may be metaphysically elucidated by those who list. It is probable that Mr. Cruikshank could not give an accurate definition of that which is ridiculous in these objects, but his instinct has told him that fun lurks in them, and cold must be the heart that can pass by the pantaloons of his charity