as if they had been piled on their
back with a pitchfork. The same remarks apply to the men; while the
originals are witty or clever, handsome or well-dressed, those presented
to us by the artist are destitute of calf, and their limbs so curiously
constructed that the free use of them as nature intended would be a
matter of utter impossibility. Those defects are the more noticeable
because the artist has shown in his admirable essays on George
Cruikshank and John Leech how thoroughly he was alive to the possession
of artistic genius in others.

The admiration which we have for Thackeray the man of letters, and the
way in which we have already expressed that admiration, render it
unlikely that the drift of these remarks will be misunderstood. While
rejoicing that the admirable tales and satires of the humourist are
uninjured by illustrations which are altogether unworthy of them, we
venture to suggest how much better the result might have been had the
latter been entrusted, as in the case of "The Newcomes," to other hands,
and the artist contented himself with the initial letters and designs on
wood with which his writings are pleasantly interspersed. We have seen
it somewhere stated (we think in the volume entitled "Thackerayana")
that the author's rapid facility of sketching was the one great
impediment to his attainment of excellence in illustrative art. Some of
his designs indeed bear on their face evidence of the rapidity with
which they were thrown off; but no satisfactory explanation appears to
be possible of his contempt for what Mr. Hodder has termed the
"practical laws which regulate the academic exercise of the pictorial
art," and his apparent ignorance of the art of balancing his figures so
as to enable them to stand upright, to walk straight, or to move their
limbs with the grace and freedom assigned to them by nature. One of the
designs to "The Virginians" shows a horseman, who in the letterpress is
described as crossing a bridge at full gallop, whereas in the picture
both man and horse will inevitably leap over the parapet into the river
below. Nothing could possibly avert the catastrophe, and the effect thus
produced is due, not to the manifest carelessness and haste with which
the sketch is thrown off, but to a palpable defect in the artistic
powers of the designer himself. Yet in the face of defects so patent and
so palpable we have found it gravely stated, "The world which is loth to
admit high excelle