Nearer perhaps to Cruikshank's heart than this triumph of fancy was _The Fiend's Frying Pan_ (1832), published in the last number of "Scraps and Sketches," which represents the devil, immensely exultant, holding over a fire a frying-pan which contains the whole noisy lascivious crowd and spectacle of Bartholomew Fair. The fair was proclaimed for the last time in 1855, and Cruikshank was pleased to figure himself as an inspirer of the force that struck at its corrupt charm after the fair of 1839 and condemned it to a lingering death. _The Fiend's Frying Pan_ is now chiefly remarkable as an early example of Cruikshank's love of crowding a great deal of real life into a vehicle that belittles it. This frying-pan sends the thought forward to the etching entitled _Passing Events, or the Tail of the Comet of 1853_, where Albert Smith's lecture on Mont Blanc, a prize cattle show, emigration to Australia, and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," are all jumbled together in the hair of a comet which possesses a chubby and beaming face. The pictorial journalism of the "Comic Almanacks" is often delicious; no ephemerides, in my knowledge, equal them in sustained humorous effect. _Guys in Council_ (1848) haunts one with its grave idiocy. Even His Holiness Pius X. could scarce refrain from smiling at the blank stare of the rigid papal guy in the chair, at the low guy who, ere leaving the conclave, challenges him with a glance of malignant cunning. On the other hand, it would be hypercritical to seek a prettier rendering of an almost too pretty custom than _Old May Day_ (1836), with its dancers ringing the Maypole by the village church. Cruikshank's extraordinary power of conveying dense crowds into the space of a few square inches--say six by three--is shown in _Lord Mayor's Day_ (1836) and _The Queen's Own_ (1838), illustrating Victoria's Proclamation Day. In the 1844 Almanack he humorously foreshadows flying machines in the form of mansions; but the 1851 Almanack shows his liberality scarcely abreast of his imagination, as _Modern Ballooning_ is represented by an ass on horseback ascending as balloonist above a crowd of the long-eared tribe. [Illustration: SEPTEMBER--MICHAELMAS DAY. From the "Comic Almanack," 1836.]