Much later, we find the preacher an octogenarian--albeit rudely buffeted by the world, and well-nigh forgotten as a living artist--still true to his noble text. “Alcoholic liquors,” he exclaimed to an audience, little more than two years before his death, “were recommended to keep up strength! But what kept up his strength? He had not taken a drop of wine, beer, or any alcoholic drink, for twenty-seven years, and he would be eighty-three next September, if he lived till then. What was it, then, that kept up his strength? Since he had given up drinking beer and smoking, he had had a higher enjoyment of life, because all his nervous system was in proper tone.” Cuthbert Bede, who knew Cruikshank intimately in his teetotal days, has drawn this graphic picture of the Temperance advocate at home:-- “Though I had interchanged letters with Mr. George Cruikshank for several years, it was not until early in the autumn of 1853 that I made his personal acquaintance. He had asked me to write a serial story for a projected publication to be illustrated by himself ; and, as it would simplify matters if we could talk over the subject together, I went up from the country to London to call upon him. He was then living in Mornington Crescent, near to Regent’s Park. Numerous portraits had made me familiar with his personal appearance, so that I needed not to be told who was the gentleman who so courteously received me downstairs, and then took me upstairs to his comfortable studio, where he introduced me to his wife. Some of our first conversation, indeed, was on the subject of his portrait; for, among the pictures on his walls, I had noticed the original of the portrait by Frank Stone, which was engraved on steel for the Omnibus, and was certainly a far more flattering representation of George Cruikshank than the caricaturist’s sketches of himself. I told him that I considered the best portrait of himself was to be found in his own etching, ‘The Reverie,’ published in his Table- Book, and in every respect a wonderfully fine specimen of his art and genius. I also referred to his own account of ‘My Portrait,’ in the _Omnibus_, in which, with his own pen and pencil, he portrayed himself, and made comments on a curious description of himself that had been given in a publication called ‘Portraits of Public Characters’; how he was said to be of the medium height, with a forehead of a prominently receding shape, with a handsome pair of whiskers, and hair partaking of a lightish hue; and, moreover, how the ludicrous and extraordinary fancies with which his mind was constantly teeming often imparted a sort of wildness to his look frighten from his presence those unacquainted with him.