"so-called nineteenth century," but a philosophic sightseer like myself rejoices in it. This picture and _The Fairy Ring_, already praised, reveal Cruikshank's talent sufficiently to prevent one from regretting that he ultimately preferred covering canvases to furrowing plates. [Illustration: (_a_) CRUSOE'S FARMHOUSE. (_b_) CRUSOE IN HIS ISLAND HOME. From "Robinson Crusoe," 1831.] To do him justice he was academically interested in the whole technique of pictorial art as practised in his day. He admitted, for instance, to Charles Hancock, "the sole inventor and producer of blocks by the process known as 'Etching on Glass,'" that if this invention had come earlier before him "it would have altered the whole character" of his drawing, though the designs which he produced by Hancock's process--the first of which was completed in April 1864--include nothing of importance. We will not further linger over the media of reproduction employed by our artist, but summon a few ideas suggested by the vision we have had of him sitting like a schoolboy in the schoolroom of the Royal Academy. As a draughtsman he had been professorial in 1817 when he published with S. W. Fores two plates entitled _Striking Effects produced by lines and dots for the assistance of young draftsmen_, wherein he showed, like Hogarth, the amount of pictorial information which an artist can convey by a primitively simple method. He was professorial, too, when in 1865 he attempted to put in perspective a twelve mile giant taking a stride of six miles, on a plate 6 inches long and 3-3/5 inches broad, and informed the publisher of "Popular Romances of the West of England" (1865) that about 1825 he had attempted to put in perspective the Miltonic Satan whose body "Prone on the flood, extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood." Cruikshank's greatest enemy was his mannerism which may even delude the pessimist of scant acquaintance with him into the idea that it imperfectly disguises an inability to draw up to the standard of Vere Foster. The Cruikshankian has merely to direct the attention of such a person to the frontispiece executed by Cruikshank for T. J. Pettigrew's "History of Egyptian Mummies" (1834). If a man can draw well in the service of science his mannerism is the accomplishment of an intention. [Illustration: THE VETERANS. From "Songs, Naval and National, of the late Charles Dibden," 1841.]