The block is worthy of careful scrutiny. The only impression in existence (as I believe it to be) and in my possession is beautifully printed on India paper. In it we find Bewick’s white line used with excellent effect. Behind the main panel the colossal form of Death is just visible, holding in either hand “Death in the Cup” and “Death in the Dish.” At the lower corners his skeleton feet are just visible, fixed on the Arctic and Antarctic portions of the Globe. At the top of the panel Death drags a wheel off the chariot which is making a dash from London to Gretna Green. Immediately below this is a nail-studded coffin from which hangs a pall inscribed with the words “Death in London.” This overhangs the central group, in which Death spectacled and seated on a tombstone at a desk supported by human thighs, with a human skull as footstool, receives despatches and directs his myrmidons. Supporting this central panel two skeletons hurl death-dealing darts, whilst below one skeleton {157} starves in prison, and another, crowned with straw, rages as a maniac. On the right-hand border a skeleton highwayman, pistol in hand, awaits his victim, ignoring the gallows which is seen under the moon in the background, and ignorant of the noose already round his neck, manipulated by a skeleton hangman in the division above. On the left-hand border a somewhat cryptic design represents a skeleton toper surmounting a skeleton quack physician who sucks a cane and, with medicine bottle in hand, goes forth on his death-dealing mission. At the base Death, in a deluge of wind and rain, overturns a sailing boat, and incidentally presses down a struggling victim with his foot. The whole effect is finely decorative, and far surpasses anything else of Seymour’s of which I have knowledge. But we must not linger too long over each item of our promiscuous collection of cancelled illustrations. I shall now bring to your notice a very rare coloured plate by Henry Alken, which, though not suppressed in the strictest sense, is yet {158} sufficiently relevant to the subject to admit of its inclusion in these papers. It was undoubtedly prepared for a book of which Alken was the illustrator, but, for some reason or other, although engraved, it was not included among the published plates.