of him, he infused it into anything he touched. No artist ever threw such movement and infused such vital breath into his pictures, as this untaught man of genius spontaneously breathed into his etchings and woodcuts. A scrimmage by him inclines the beholder to lift his arm to protect himself. When he leads off a dance upon copper, you involuntarily hum a jig. When his characters are merry, you laugh outright with them. * Meeting Mr. R. H. Horne some two years before his death, he danced the hornpipe before him, to show how sound and strong and active he still was. On the other hand, is his mood solemn, he can make your heart beat quick, and send you shuddering away, with his images in your brain--presences you will find it hard to banish. “The awful Jew that Cruikshank drew” lingered for years in Thackeray’s mind; and the profound impression which it made on the public, when it appeared, has not faded even now. More searching observation than that of Cruikshank in his prime was never possessed by an artist. His range did not stretch beyond the suburbs of London except perhaps to Margate in the hoy, but all that came within it he made his own. Out of the suburban landscapes he conjured fairy scenes; and Highgate and Hampstead supplied him with distant horizons which his imagination widened at his will. Thackeray declared that Cruikshank had a fine eye for homely landscapes, and yet his trees are as bad as his horses. “Old villages, farm-yards, groups of stacks, queer chimneys, churches, gable-end cottages, Elizabethan mansion-houses, and other old English scenes, he depicts with evident enthusiasm.” His scenes to Brough’s “Life of Falstaff” are exquisitely drawn. Where Falstaff is arrested at the suit of Mrs. Quickly, and again when he persuades her to lend him more money, the old houses are fine picturesque studies. But London, and London streets and suburbs, constituted Cruikshank’s world in his heyday; and he caught all the phases of this his universe, save and except its upper classes. He lived in the midst of the people; he was of them. His humble fortunes cast his lot, in his early time, among the poorer classes of professional men. He was passionately fond of the stage, and was familiar with the popular comedians of the minor theatres, and the landlords of the houses which they and he frequented. He lived at Islington, and belonged to a club called “The Crib,” which had a room at the Sir Hugh Middleton public-house, of which Joseph Grimaldi,* the clown, was president. Mr. C. L. Gruneisen, who made Cruikshank’s acquaintance at “The Crib,” related how on one occasion, when a member bantered George rather savagely, and he--contrary to his custom--had borne the “chaff” without replying, he presently turned to him, and holding up his hand, showed a caricature of his assailant executed upon his thumb-nail, and said, “Look here! See how I have booked him!”