It may be that George Cruikshank was in doubt sometimes, in the course of his boyhood, as to the calling or profession he would adopt. We know that he was inclined towards the stage, and delighted in acting to the end of his days; and he was full of military ardour, as we shall presently see. But he had little or no time for dreams. He had his daily bread to win, in his teens, as a designer of “Twelfth Night Characters,” and “Lottery Tickets,” a rough illustrator of songs, or pictorial delineator of any event or exhibition which excited public attention. He made a drawing of Nelson’s funeral car in 1805; in 1809, the O. P. riots at Covent Garden engaged his pencil. Even in 1822 he was the popular pictorial commentator, and his needle touched an extraordinary variety of subjects, even to the mermaid which drew crowds in St. James’s Street in 1822. His etching of this “disgusting sort of a compound animal, which contains in itself everything that is odious and disagreeable,” is to be found reproduced in “The Book of Days.” He even tried his hand at scene painting, in the days when his friends Clarkson, Stanfield, and David Roberts were at Drury Lane. “His art in its better developments being essentially dramatic,” Miss Alice Thompson * has truly remarked, “the love of the actual drama was not wanting. In his circumstances, however, to become an actor meant to become a strolling player; while he was hesitating about the possibility of embarking upon such a career, he obtained a commission to paint a drop-scene for Drury Lane Theatre, on the stage of which he was ambitious of appearing. The bit of scene-painting in question was a caricature of Sir William Curtis, and the young artist depicted him looking over a bridge, and did it with so much humour that the picture brought down the house. George Cruikshank’s success in scene-painting led to more employment of the same kind; he shared, as an artist, the theatrical beginnings of Stanfield and David Roberts.” * “A Bundle of Rue.” George Cruikshank. _The Magazine of Art,_ March 1880. George Cruikshank was “soldier-struck” as well as “stage-struck.” He was a pugnacious man. The Rev. Charles Rogers, who knew him in his old age, tells me that he used to regret to him that he had not entered the army. Describing his recollections of England at the time of the threatened French invasion, he gives us some of his military reminiscences and aspirations as a child. * * “A Popgun fired off by George Cruikshank, in defence of the British Volunteers of 1803, against the uncivil attack upon that body by General W. Napier, etc.” Illustrated with cuts. “Great Britain at this time might well be compared to the state of a beehive when its inmates have been disturbed by accident or an intruder; and we might quote Dibdin’s song of ‘The Tight Little Island,’ and say,-- ‘Buzz was the word of the island.’