There is perhaps no gift so likely to be transmitted from father to son as a talent for drawing. Certainly it runs in the Cruikshank family, for there are already five of the name known to collectors, much to their confusion. As a guide to Mr. Reid in the preparation of his catalogue, the old gentleman made a brief statement, which is one of the curiosities of art gossip, and it may serve a useful purpose to collectors in the United States. His father, Isaac Cruikshank, was a designer and etcher and engraver, as well as a water-color draughtsman. His brother, Isaac Robert, a miniature and portrait painter, was also a designer and etcher, and "your humble servant likewise a designer and etcher. When I was a mere boy," he adds, "my dear father kindly allowed me to play at etching on some of his copper-plates, little bits of shadows or little figures in the background, and to assist him a little as I grew older, and he used to assist _me_ in putting in hands and faces. And when my dear brother Robert (who in his latter days omitted the Isaac) left off portrait-painting, and took almost entirely to designing and etching, I assisted him, at first to a great extent, in some of his drawings." The result was that, in looking over the pictures of sixty years ago, he could not always tell his own work; and, to make matters worse, his brother left a son, Percy Cruikshank, also a draughtsman and engraver, and he, too, has an artist son, named George. The family has provided work for the coming connoisseur. The glory of the living veteran, however, will remain unique, because he, first of the comic artists of his country, caught the new spirit, avoided the grossness and thoughtless one-sidedness of his predecessors, and used his art in such a manner that now, in his eighty-fourth year, looking back through the long gallery of his works gathered by the affectionate persistence of his admirers, he can not point to one picture which for any moral reason he could wish to turn to the wall.