Our artist loves to joke at a soldier; in whose livery there appears to him to be something almost as ridiculous as in the uniform of the gentleman of the shoulder-knot.  Tall life-guardsmen and fierce grenadiers figure in many of his designs, and almost always in a ridiculous way.  Here again we have the honest popular English feeling which jeers at pomp or pretension of all kinds, and is especially jealous of all display of military authority.  “Raw Recruit,” “ditto dressed,” ditto “served up,” as we see them in the “Sketch-Book,” are so many satires upon the army:  Hodge with his ribbons flaunting in his hat, or with red coat and musket, drilled stiff and pompous, or at last, minus leg and arm, tottering about on crutches, does not fill our English artist with the enthusiasm that follows the soldier in every other part of Europe.  Jeanjean, the conscript in France, is laughed at to be sure, but then it is because he is a bad soldier:  when he comes to have a huge pair of mustachios and the croix-d’honneur to briller on his poitrine cicatrisee, Jeanjean becomes a member of a class that is more respected than any other in the French nation.  The veteran soldier inspires our people with no such awe—­we hold that democratic weapon the fist in much more honor than the sabre and bayonet, and laugh at a man tricked out in scarlet and pipe-clay.

That regiment of heroes is “marching to divine service,” to the tune of the “British Grenadiers.”  There they march in state, and a pretty contempt our artist shows for all their gimcracks and trumpery.  He has drawn a perfectly English scene—­the little blackguard boys are playing pranks round about the men, and shouting, “Heads up, soldier,” “Eyes right, lobster,” as little British urchins will do.  Did one ever hear the like sentiments expressed in France?  Shade of Napoleon, we insult you by asking the question.  In England, however, see how different the case is:  and designedly or undesignedly, the artist has opened to us a piece of his mind.  In the crowd the only person who admires the soldiers is the poor idiot, whose pocket a rogue is picking.  There is another picture, in which the sentiment is much the same, only, as in the former drawing we see Englishmen laughing at the troops of the line, here are Irishmen giggling at the militia.

We have said that our artist has a great love for the drolleries of the Green Island.  Would any one doubt what was the country of the merry fellows depicted in his group of Paddies?

“Place me amid O’Rourkes, O’Tooles,
The ragged royal race of Tara;
Or place me where Dick Martin rules
The pathless wilds of Connemara.”

We know not if Mr. Cruikshank has ever had any such good luck as to see the Irish in Ireland itself, but he certainly has obtained a knowledge of their looks, as if the country had been all his life familiar to him.  Could Mr. O’Connell himself desire anything more national than the scene of a drunken row, or could Father Mathew have a better text to preach upon?  There is not a broken nose in the room that is not thoroughly Irish.