n; _Margate and
Brighton_; _The Devil's Visit_; _Steamers and Stages_; _Monsieur
Touson_; _Monsieur Mallet_, by H. W. Montague; _Mathew's Comic Annual_
(a miserable _melange_ by our friend Pierce Egan); the famous _Devil's
Walk_, by Coleridge and Southey, etc., etc. These little volumes, which
are now rare, contain nearly one hundred excellent examples of Robert
Cruikshank's workmanship, the woodcuts being executed after the artist's
designs by W. C. Bonner and other wood engravers of eminence. We can
stay only to describe one, which illustrates one of the many experiences
of John Bull in his memorable visit to France. Struck with the
appearance of a French lady, "young and gay," the stanza tells us--

"Struck by her charms he ask'd her name
Of the first man he saw;
From whom, with shrugs, no answer came
But, '_Je vous n'entends pas._'"

Three other books (two of them exceedingly rare) must suffice to
complete our survey of Robert's merits as a designer and book
illustrator. These are "Colburn's Kalendar of Amusements" (1840), "Job
Crithannah's Original Fables" (1834), and Eugene Sue's "Orphan." There
is an Irishman sitting on a barrel in one of the woodcuts to the
"Kalendar," who quite equals any of the Hibernians of George. The
eighty-four designs to the "Fables" are admirable specimens of the
artist's best manner, and George himself rarely executed better
illustrations than those of the _Farmer and the Pointer_, at page 110,
_The Cow and the Farmer_, at page 163, and _The Old Woman and her Cat_,
at page 219. This rare and choice book abounds with admirable
tailpieces; one of which exhibits a sufferer down in the agonies of
gout, the treatment of which subject may even be compared with the more
elaborate and admirable design by the brother described by Thackeray.
Sue's "Orphan" has numerous carefully executed etchings by the artist,
after the style and manner of his brother; in the very signature,
"Robert Cruikshank," we trace a distinct copy of George's peculiar
trademark or sign-manual. Mr. Walter Hamilton, in his essay on the
brother, presents us with a dozen copies of Robert's designs, eight of
which, although unacknowledged, are taken from Crithannah's "Fables,"
and will bear as much comparison with the original and beautiful
woodcuts as the work of a common sign-painter with a finished painting
by Landseer. A detailed but probably imperfect list of the artist's book
work will be found in the _a