our youngest English humour, a little trivial and slight, had ceased to be bestowed on that larger and more massive humourist who lingered from the past he was part of.” This is very true, and is a very sad story skilfully told. Think what would have become of the neglected or forgotten humourist, if, when the mere laughing public had turned away from him to Leech and Doyle, and Tenniel and Du Maurier, he had not been fired with the ardour of an apostle in the cause he had taken up. His Almanac had failed for lack of readers; and David Bogue had thrown up Cruikshank’s Magazine, after the second number--convinced that the artist had outlived his public. His ambition to become a painter was mercifully renewed, with the renewal of his health and mind, through temperance. Full of vigour he used to say, “A painter should paint from his shoulder, sir.” He became almost wholly a serious man in his work, and appealed to a public in a new capacity. He resolved, stimulated by the success of “The Bottle,” to execute a great picture that should remain behind him, a monument of his genius, and an immortal Temperance lesson. In the early ardour of his second youth he had braced himself to supply, so far as he might, albeit he had reached his sixtieth year, the deficiency in his art education, by working as a student at the Royal Academy. He had, he believed, all his powers unimpaired; why then should he not yet obtain the academical knowledge, of which he had been deprived, as he had said bitterly, through the improvident habits of his whisky-drinking father. Mr. Charles Landseer says: “He entered as student at the Royal Academy, during my keepership, April 22nd, 1853; but made very few drawings in the _Antique_, and never got into the _Life_. He was placed upon the Turner Fund in 1866--£50 per annum. I have heard that he made an application to Fuseli for admission to the R.A., and was informed that the school was too full, but that he might go and draw there if he could find a place.” * * Letter from Charles Landseer to B. J., Feb. 18, 1878. This is the brief record of George Cruikshank’s relations with the Academy. He was past the years when men learn. Time pressed too heavily upon the elderly man to leave him patience for the slow progress from the “Antique” to the “Life.” He had been at the “Life” in his own keen way since he was a boy; and he must be content to paint with the imperfect but original knowledge which had sufficed for his etchings.