“Our artist loves to joke at a soldier, in whose livery there appears to him to be something almost as ridiculous as in the uniform of the gentleman of the shoulder-knot. Tall life-guardsmen and fierce grenadiers figure in many of his designs, and almost always in a ridiculous way. Here, again, we have the honest, popular English feeling which jeers at pomp or pretension of all kinds, and is especially jealous of all display of military authority. ‘Raw recruit,’ ‘ditto dressed,’ ditto ‘served up,’ as we see them in the Sketch Book, are so many satires upon the army. Hodge with his ribbons flaunting in his hat, or with red coat and musket, drilled stiff and pompous, or that last, minus leg and arm, tottering about on crutches, do not fill our English artist with the enthusiasm that follows the soldier in every other part of Europe. Jeanjean, the conscript in France, is laughed at, to be sure, but then it is because he is a bad soldier; when he comes to have a huge pair of moustachios and the _croix d’honneur_ to _briller_ on his _poitrine cicatrisé_, Jeanjean becomes a member of a class that is more respected than any other in the French nation. The veteran soldier inspires our people with no such awe: we hold that democratic weapon the fist in much more honour than the sabre and bayonet, and laugh at a man tricked out in scarlet and pipeclay.” “In the supernatural,” says Thackeray, “we find Cruikshank reigning supreme. He has invented in his time a little comic pandemonium, peopled with the most droll, good-natured fiends possible. We have before us Chamisso’s ‘Peter Schlemil’ (1824), with Cruikshank’s designs translated into German, and gaining nothing by the change.... He has also made designs for Victor Hugo’s ‘Hans of Iceland.’ Strange, wild etchings were those, on a strange, mad subject; not so good, in our notion, as the designs for the German, books, the peculiar humour of which latter seemed to suit the artist exactly. There is a mixture of the awful and ridiculous in these, which perpetually excites and keeps awake the reader’s attention; the German writer and the English artist seem to have an entire faith in their subject. The reader, no doubt, remembers the awful passage in ‘Peter Schleusihl,’ when the little, gentleman purchases the shadow of that hero: ‘Have the kindness, noble sir, to examine and try this bag.’ He put his hand into his pocket, and drew thence a tolerably large bag of Cordovan leather, to which a couple of thongs were fixed. I took it from him, and immediately counted out ten gold pieces, and ten more, and ten more, and still other ten, whereupon I held out my hand to him. ‘Done,’ said I, ‘it is a bargain; you shall have my shadow for your bag.’ The bargain was concluded; he knelt down before me, and I saw him with a wonderful neatness take my shadow from head to foot, lightly lift it up from the grass, roll and fold it up neatly, and at last pocket it. He then rose up, bowed to me once more,