[Illustration: JUVENILE MONSTROSITIES, published January 24, 1826.] This praise is tributary to Cruikshank's second journalistic period. By journalistic I mean topical, attendant on the passing hour. His first journalistic period begins formally with his first properly signed caricature, an etching praised by Mr F. G. Stephens, entitled _Cobbett at Court, or St James's in a bustle_, and published by W. Deans, October 16, 1807. This period includes Cruikshank's contributions to "The Satirist," "The Scourge," "Town Talk" and "The Meteor." It merges into the second period in 1819, the year that saw the first three volumes of "The Humourist." The principal journalistic works of this second journalistic period are _Coriolanus addressing the Plebeians_ (1820), "Scraps and Sketches" (1828-1832), "The Comic Almanack" (1835-1853), "George Cruikshank's Omnibus" (1842), and "George Cruikshank's Table Book" (1845). _Coriolanus_ is less a caricature than a _tableau vivant_. It was invented by J. S., whom Mr Layard says was Cruikshank's gifted servant Joseph Sleap. The "Plebeians" are Thistlewood the conspirator, Cobbett armed with Tom Paine's thigh bones, Wooler as a black dwarf, Hone, George Cruikshank, etc. George IV., in his Shakespearean rôle abuses them soundly. As regards the monarch, the work is un-Cruikshankian; its laborious and minute technique is a foreshadowing of a happier carefulness. The journalism of "Scraps and Sketches" is immortal in _The Age of Intellect_ (1828), which even Mrs Meynell, writing as Alice Thompson, found "most laughable." Here a babe whose toy-basket is filled with the works of Milton, Bentley, Gibbon, etc., learnedly explains the process of sucking eggs to a gaping grandmother, who suspends her perusal of "Who Killed Cock Robin?" while she declares that "they are making improvements in everything!" To my mind the best topical plate in "Scraps and Sketches" is _London going out of Town, or the March of Bricks and Mortar_ (1829). No one who has seen a suburb grow inexorably in field and orchard, obliterating gracious forms and sealing up the live earth, can miss the pathos of this masterpiece. Yet it is not a thing for tears, but that half smile which Andersen continually elicits by his evocation of humanity from tree and bird and toy. For Cruikshank gives lamenting and terrified humanity to hayricks pursued by filthy smoke. He gives devilish energy to a figure, artfully composed of builder's implements, which saws away at a dying branch; and he imparts an abominable insolence to a similarly composed figure which holds up the notice board of Mr Goth. [Illustration: _Fatal effects of tight lacing & large Bonnets_ From "Scraps and Sketches," Part I., May 20, 1828.]