“‘The Bottle Conjurer’ and smasher of it, and part destroyer of his contents--I mean George Cruikshank--arrived safely at the city of King Bladud and the throne of Beau Nash; and he commanded me with a willing assent to become a second ‘Anstey,’ or little ‘Bath Guide,’ to ferret all quarters with him--West to East and High to Low--having a monthly serial still on hand that required certain characters for illustration (perhaps ‘Jack Sheppard’ or the ‘Tower of London,’ after the _Omnibus_ had ceased running). Friend George began with the upper crust, as nearest ‘home’ and Lansdown; and leaving his card the day before at William Beckford’s mansion in the Crescent, went with me where I had been several times before. Possibly at the foot of Table Mountain it may not be known that this William Beckford was an esquire and a somebody in England, the owner and builder of Fonthill Abbey, inheritor but not enjoyer of immense wealth, and the celebrated author of ‘Vathek’ and the ‘Halls of Eblis,’ before which, in point of imagination, Byron, or somebody else, said ‘Rasselas’ must bow.” Mr. Beckford, notwithstanding original gifts, and the accident of riches, was a shy and eccentric bird that flew from every one, and nobody must approach; and so, when we got there, and were passing along a corridor, door suddenly in our faces, the apology being, ‘he saw Mr. Beckford coming, and it was more than he dare hazard for any one to notice him.’ And yet he left a gracious message in the hands of his house-steward, Mr. F-, who himself kept a stylish establishment and carriage, ‘to show Mr. Cruikshank all he desired;’ and even added, ‘that if Mr. Cruikshank knew how much he (Mr. B.) valued his earlier sketches, he would not have refused some of them when once solicited.’ I asked ‘G. C.’ the cause of this, and he remarked, ‘at that time he parted with few of his originals;’ and when we left Lansdown Crescent, he commented warmly on the treat and pleasure he had derived, and as a red-letter day in his biography. ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step,’ and so we soon threaded the externals of Royal a black dwarf--or rather a nutmeg shade--banged a Anstey’s “New Bath Guide.”