Here it will be seen Cruikshank assumed much. In the catalogue of his collected works, printed by the Executive Committee for securing the collection to the nation, he went further, saying, “So the final effect of _my note_ was to stop hanging for all minor offences.” The labours of the famous writers and speakers who advocated a milder code went, then, for nothing! It was in connection with William Hone that George Cruikshank suddenly rose to supreme popularity--out rivalling his compeers, including Rowlandson, then poor and dissipated like Gillray, and near his end. Cruikshank’s own father’s latest political caricature had appeared in 1810. The work which Cruikshank did for Hone, as “The Political House that Jack Built,” “The Political Showman at Home,” and, lastly, a “Slap at Slop,” produced at the time of Queen Caroline’s trial, enjoyed an extraordinary popularity, and commanded an immense circualation. [Illustration: 125] “The Queen’s Matrimonial Ladder” * was a great success. The drawings, “all by Mr. George Cruikshank,” as Mr. Hone advertised, were severely satirical throughout from the first, where the royal husband drunk, with a broken wine-glass in his hand, the garter falling from his leg, cards and dice and bottles scattered at his feet, and the candles guttering in the sockets, maunders alone to where the fat Adonis is being borne away in a barrow to the “English cry” of “Cats’ meat.” “Non mi Ricordo” was another squib of this year. * The edition before me, dated 1820, is the thirteenth. In the “Political Showman at Home,” with twenty-four cuts by Cruikshank, the satire is biting, and the ideas are plentiful. The showman, by way of introduction, addresses his readers: “Ladies and gentlemen, walk up! walk up! and see the curiosities and creatures--all alive! alive O! Walk up! now’s your time! Only a shilling. Please to walk up! “Here is the strangest and most wonderful _artificial_ cabinet in Europe!--made of nothing--but _lackerd brass, turnery, and papier mâchée_--all fret work and _varnish_, held together by _steel points!_ Very crazy, but very curious! “Please to walk in, ladies and gentlemen--it’s well worth _seeing!_ Here are the most wonderful of all wonderful living animals. Take care! Don’t go within their reach--they mind nobody but me! A short time ago they got loose, and, with some other _vermin_ that came from their _holes and corners_, desperately attacked a lady of quality; but, as luck would have it, I and my ‘four-and-twenty men’ happened to come in at the very moment: we pull’d away, and prevented ‘em from doing her a serious mischief. Though they look tame, their vicious dispositions are unchanged. If anything was to happen to me, they’d soon break out again, and show their natural ferocity. _I’m in continual danger from ‘em myself_; for if I didn’t watch’em closely, they’d destroy me. As the clown says, ‘there never was such times,’--so there’s no telling what tricks they may play yet.