What a curious picture it is—­the horrid rickety houses in some dingy suburb of London, the grinning cobbler, the smothered butcher, the very trees which are covered with dust—­it is fine to look at the different expressions of the two interesting fugitives.  The fiery charioteer who belabors the poor donkey has still a glance for his brother on foot, on whom punishment is about to descend.  And not a little curious is it to think of the creative power of the man who has arranged this little tale of low life.  How logically it is conducted, how cleverly each one of the accessories is made to contribute to the effect of the whole.  What a deal of thought and humor has the artist expended on this little block of wood; a large picture might have been painted out of the very same materials, which Mr. Cruikshank, out of his wondrous fund of merriment and observation, can afford to throw away upon a drawing not two inches long.  From the practical dustmen we pass to those purely poetical.  There are three of them who rise on clouds of their own raising, the very genii of the sack and shovel.

Is there no one to write a sonnet to these?—­and yet a whole poem was written about Peter Bell the wagoner, a character by no means so poetic.

And lastly, we have the dustman in love:  the honest fellow having seen a young beauty stepping out of a gin-shop on a Sunday morning, is pressing eagerly his suit.

Gin has furnished many subjects to Mr. Cruikshank, who labors in his own sound and hearty way to teach his countrymen the dangers of that drink.  In the “Sketch-Book” is a plate upon the subject, remarkable for fancy and beauty of design; it is called the “Gin Juggernaut,” and represents a hideous moving palace, with a reeking still at the roof and vast gin-barrels for wheels, under which unhappy millions are crushed to death.  An immense black cloud of desolation covers over the country through which the gin monster has passed, dimly looming through the darkness whereof you see an agreeable prospect of gibbets with men dangling, burnt houses, &c.  The vast cloud comes sweeping on in the wake of this horrible body-crusher; and you see, by way of contrast, a distant, smiling, sunshiny tract of old English country, where gin as yet is not known.  The allegory is as good, as earnest, and as fanciful as one of John Bunyan’s, and we have often fancied there was a similarity between the men.

The render will examine the work called “My Sketch-Book” with not a little amusement, and may gather from it, as we fancy, a good deal of information regarding the character of the individual man, George Cruikshank:  what points strike his eye as a painter; what move his anger or admiration as a moralist; what classes he seems most especially disposed to observe, and what to ridicule.  There are quacks of all kinds, to whom he has a mortal hatred; quack dandies, who assume under his pencil, perhaps in his eye, the most grotesque appearance possible—­their