pounds weight
of sloe, liquorice, and ash-tree leaves were annually mixed with Chinese
teas in England, was supplemented by a trial in the Court of Exchequer,
in which a grocer named Palmer was fined in L840 penalties, for the
fabrication of spurious tea. It appeared that there was a regular
manufactory of imitation tea in Goldstone Street, which was composed of
thorn leaves, which, after passing through a peculiar process, were
coloured with logwood; the same leaves, after being pressed and dried,
were laid upon sheets of copper, coloured with verdigris and Dutch pink,
and sold as _green_ tea. These revelations led, in 1818, to the artist's
admirable caricature of _The T Trade in Hot-water, or a Pretty Kettle of
Fish: dedicated to J. Canister and T. Spoon, Esquires_. Besides these,
we have the same year: _An Interesting Scene on Board an East Indian_, a
very coarse but admirable performance; _Introduction to the Gout_ (a
fiend dropping a hot coal on the toe of a _bon vivant_); _A Fine Lady,
or the Incomparable_, in which it appears to us that Robert had a hand;
_Les Savoyards_ and _Le Palais Royal de Paris_; _Comparative Anatomy, or
the Dandy Trio_; and _The Art of Walking the Streets of London_, eight
subjects, etched by the artist after the design of George Moutard
Woodward.

[Illustration:
_Designed, Etched and Published by_ GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. _November 1st,
1829._

"A SCENE IN KENSINGTON GARDENS, OR FASHIONS AND FRIGHTS OF 1829."

_Face p. 152._]

On the 4th of December, 1818, the number of convicts lying under
sentence of death in his Majesty's gaol of Newgate, amounted to no less
than sixty, of whom ten were females; probably not three of these
unfortunate beings would have been hung now-a-days. Under the Draconian
laws, however, then in force, people were hung in scores for passing
forged one-pound Bank of England notes; and this barbarous state of
things, disgraceful to a Christian country, led to the famous and
telling satire of the _Bank Restriction Note_, one of the very few which
seem to have escaped oblivion, and which, having been repeated and
reproduced in all the latest essays which have been written on him,
calls for no extra description from ourselves. It is said to have had
the effect desired, and that "no man or woman was ever hanged after this
for passing forged one-pound Bank of England notes."

1819.

In 1819 we have one of George Cruikshank's severe and telling attacks
upon