Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave took up the Exhibition in the _Saturday Review_, and thought it necessary to reintroduce Cruikshank to the British public: “Old George Cruikshank has been old George Cruikshank,” he said, “any time during the last thirty years to those whose nursery days date so far back. Indeed, we have heard his illustrations to _Grimm’s Fairy Stories_ spoken of as the delight of their youth by some whose childhood dates forty years ago, whilst the similar labour of love which he has devoted to _Jack and the Beanstalk_ is the thumbed and tattered darling of many who do not yet aspire to rank in the rising generation. He must, in fact, be old George Cruikshank, we are afraid, in the number of his years; yet our century has seen no better example of that ever-youthfulness which is one of the most frequent and least doubtful signs of genuine genius. That the name of Cruikshank deserves to be coupled with this epithet has never been dubious to those who, looking beyond certain mannerisms and limitations in his power as an artist, can appreciate high gifts to move both tears and laughter, exhibited on however small and unpretending a scale; or who can value downright originality, expressing itself in its own manner, irrespective of popular fashion; or who are aware what peculiar skill he has reached as an etcher.” But the _opus Georgii_ had been scattered through modest ways, in children’s books, title-pages to forgotten music, ephemeral pamphlets, mediocre works, or romances of passing popularity, as well as in the pages of Fielding, Smollett, Grimm, Scott, and Dickens. Nearly thirty years had passed over his head since he illustrated “Oliver Twist”; and so the crowd passed by his sterling excellence, and, in the old fashion, turned “to some loud trumpet-blowing hero of the hour.” [Illustration: 196] I remember seeing him standing in his exhibition room. It was empty. There was a wild, anxious look in his face, when he greeted me. While we talked, he glanced once or twice at the door, when he heard any sound in that direction. Were they coming at last, the tardy, laggard public for whom he had been bravely toiling so many years? Here was his last mighty labour against the wall, and all the world had been told that it was there. His trusty friend Thackeray had hailed it in the _Times_. A great committee of creditable men had combined to usher it with pomp into the world. All who loved and honoured and admired him had spoken words of encouragement. Yet it was near noon, and only a solitary visitor had wandered into the room. Thackeray might well say, “How little do we think of the extraordinary powers of this man, and how ungrateful we are to him!”