“George” (says Mr. Sala) “had both the _Geist_ and the _Naturgabe_. Long before he was out of jackets he had learned to draw with facility, symmetry, and precision; and if we recollect right, the collected exhibition of his original drawings, shown at Exeter Hall some years since (1863), comprised some sketches in pencil of ‘Coalies’ at the old ‘Fox under the Hill,’ executed in 1799. His manner of handling was, at the first, mainly founded on that of the renowned Gillray, to whose position as a caricaturist, political and social, he ultimately succeeded, although he never exhibited any traces of Gillray’s vices--revolting grossness, and at last a downright madness in delineation, rivalling that of the _pictor ignotics_, William Blake.” Without unreservedly endorsing Mr. Sala’s opinion on Gillray and Blake, I hasten to admit that Cruikshank was, from his manhood onwards, free, with a few exceptions, from their coarseness and wildness. Some of his coarse coloured plates in “The Scourge,” dated 1811, forbid the assertion that he never, even in youth, transgressed the bounds of modesty. He always had, however, a tenderness and grace, an earnestness and a lively sympathy, which were entirely his own. In a few prefatory words to “A Catalogue of a Selection from the Works of George Cruikshank, extending over a period of upwards of sixty years, from 1799 to 1863,” he said, in his own whimsical way, “‘The George Cruikshank Gallery,’ as it is called, originated in consequence of many persons having expressed their belief that G. C., the caricaturist of former days, was the grandfather of the person who produced the ‘Worship of Bacchus.’ The committee, therefore, who are exhibiting the ‘Worship of Bacchus,’ requested to have some of my early works, in order to show that they were the production of one and the same person, or to prove, in fact, that I am not my own grandfather.” * * One day, while Dr. B. W. Richardson was engaged at his house in Hinde Street, with an old patient who had been away many years in India, George Cruikshank’s card was handed to the doctor. “It must be the grandson, or the son, at any rate, of the great artist I remember as a boy,” said the patient. “It is impossible the George Cruikshank of Queen Charlotte’s trial time can be alive!” The doctor asked the vivacious George to come in. He tripped in, in his eighty- fourth year; and when the old officer expressed his astonishment, George exclaimed, “I’ll show you whether he’s alive!” With this he took the poker and tongs from the grate, laid them upon the carpet, and executed the sword- dance before Richardson’s astonished patient.