ncluding,
amid names of lesser note, literary stars such as Douglas Jerrold, Leman
Rede, Percival Leigh, Laman Blanchard, Leigh Hunt, William Howitt, and
Samuel Lover. These essays, or rather letterpress descriptions, were
written to the pictures, which were not drawn (as is generally supposed)
in illustration of the text. The portraits are taken from almost every
grade in life: from the dressmaker to the draper's assistant, and from
the housekeeper to the hangman; the last, by the way, being perhaps the
most characteristic sketch of the series. The best of these forty-three
"pictures" is the one which faces the title-page, a gathering of the
company which individually take part in this "gallery of illustration."
The designs are characteristic of the artist's style, but possess little
power of attraction, being destitute of any claim to originality either
of conception or treatment. The artist's share of the work is by far the
best part of the somewhat lugubrious entertainment, which the
performances of his literary associates scarcely serve to enliven. The
book, however, was a success in its day, for, if we mistake not, it was
followed by a second series, is even now sought after by the "collector"
(not bibliomaniac), and possesses some historical value by reason of the
fact that national types, such as _The Diner-out_, _The Stockbroker_,
_The Lion of the Party_, _The Fashionable Physician_ (that is to say, of
1840), _The Linen Draper's Assistant_, _The Barmaid_, _The Family
Governess_, _The Postman_, _The Theatrical Manager_, _The Farmer's
Daughter_, and _The Young Lord_, no longer live and move and act their
part amongst us. A change comes over the people in the course of forty
years, and some years hence our grandchildren may well smile at the
extraordinary monstrosities (female) who figure in the graphic satires
of 1883-4.

Kenny Meadows was the son of a retired naval officer, and was born at
Cardigan on the first of November, 1790. You will look in vain for any
notice of him, or of his services in the cause of illustrative art, in
any of the biographical dictionaries of his own or a subsequent period;
and this appears to us an unaccountable omission, for he achieved in his
time considerable celebrity as an artistic illustrator of books. His
work will be found bound up with that of most of his artistic
_confreres_ in nearly all the illustrated periodicals of his day; he was
one of the first to introduce wood-engrav