In Cruikshank's work in illustrating "Household and Fairy Tales" by the brothers Grimm, we have a masterful production from the best period of his genius, and we have it illustrating a superior text, the translation made by Edward Taylor in 1823 and reprinted in 1868 with an introduction by John Ruskin. Thackeray said that they had been the first real, kindly, agreeable, and infinitely amusing and charming illustrations for a child's book in England, and that they united beauty, fun, and fancy. And who was a better judge of this than Thackeray? If it was not too bold to say that "Tom Tit Tot" is the best household fairy story in the language, it could be said with equal truth that Cruikshank's etching of the two elves in "The Elves and the Shoemaker" is the best fairy illustration yet done. These German stories are charming. The contention that the stories are creepy is but the contention of a moralist. It should carry no weight with the teacher who would give the boy artistic notions of beauty, love, and mystery. These notions are always safer than those of cold realism worked out in artificial conduct. Sir Walter Scott wrote in this strain to Edward Taylor in 1832: "There is a sort of wild fairy interest in them which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the good boy stories which have in late years been composed for them. In the latter case, their minds are, as it were, put into stocks, like their feet at the dancing-school, and the moral always consists in good moral conduct being crowned with temporal success. Truth is, I would not give one tear shed over Little Red Riding Hood for all the benefit to be derived from a hundred histories of Johnny Goodchild. In a word, I think the selfish tendencies will soon enough be acquired in this arithmetical age; and that, to make the higher class of character, our wild fictions--like our own simple music--will have more effect in awakening the fancy and elevating the disposition than the colder and more elaborate compositions of modern authors and composers." It is hoped the pictures of Cruikshank and the translation of Taylor will soon appear in a large and attractive volume.