The soldier has lost an arm and a leg, but his face is the face of infatuation and her lips are the lips of lust. The toes of her bare feet express pleasure longing for ecstasy. I write seriously: they are very eloquent toes. There is a fire near the amorous pair, and the dog basking by it, uninterested in them, is a token of peace unpried upon. Her left hand grasps a pot of whiskey. She is in heaven. Indeed there is too much heaven in the picture for me to laugh at it. Behind the incongruity which clamours for laughter is the magic of drink reshaping in idea a half-butchered man and reviving the fires of sex. [Illustration: HOPE. From "Phrenological Illustrations," 1826.] After this we glide politely from women as they blossom in the drollery of Cruikshank. Jenny showers "pills, bolus, julep and apozem too" on the physicians who would have exenterated her (_vide_ "The New Bath Guide," 1830). The "patent washing machines" remember their sex at the approach of Waverley (_vide_ "Landscape-Historical Illustrations," 1836), and remind us that in 1810 T. Tegg published a less refined _Scotch Washing_ over the signature of Cruikshank. Nanse sheds the light of a candle upon the corpse of the cat compressed by a heavy sitter (_vide_ "The Life of Mansie Wauch," 1839). The squaw "in glass and tobacco-pipes dress'd" evokes lyrical refusal from the Jack who has sworn to be constant to Poll (_vide_ "Songs, Naval, and National, of the late Charles Dibdin," 1841). Lady Jane Ingoldsby smilingly--with lifted hand for note of interjection--allows her attention to be directed to the half of her drowned husband which was not "eaten up by the eels" (_vide_ "Bentley's Miscellany," 1843). William's widow contemplates with fury the sailor upon whose nose has alighted her dummy babe (_vide_ "The Old Sailor's Jolly Boat," 1844); and General Betsy gobbles her novel in a chaotic kitchen, oblivious of the horror of her mistress (_vide_ "The Greatest Plague in Life," 1847). In all this pageant of absurdity is wanting the special touch which surprises the spectator. The emotions of the women are rendered as with a consciousness that they are a merchandise of art and "in stock." [Illustration: Details from the Plate entitled _Heads of the Table_, in "George Cruikshank's Table-Book," 1845.]