owed a clever series of "Contrasts," such as the professional
fasting man fortune-making at the Aquarium, and a Balaclava hero left to
starve by a grateful country--thus repeating unconsciously Cruikshank's
famous plate of "Born a Genius: Born a Dwarf," wherein the tragedy of
Benjamin Robert Haydon and the triumph of Tom Thumb, both proceeding in
the Egyptian Hall, were dramatically depicted. Another, and still more
remarkable, contrast of Mr. Reed's was that in which the terrible
_tricoteuses_ of the French Revolution, knitting with quite tragic
joviality before the guillotine, are compared with the modern Society
ladies in court enjoying a criminal's sensational trial, so that the
spectator hardly knows which are the more repellent. It may be stated,
as a matter of curiosity, that--except for the point of contrast, which,
after all, is a principal feature of the design--Doyle anticipated Mr.
Reed's protest by showing, in 1849, a "Scene in Court during an
interesting Trial," when the crime of Manning and his wife was
engrossing the attention of all England and proving a "great attraction"
to _dames du monde_.

In 1890 Mr. Burnand raised his young recruit to the rank of
Staff-officer to fill the vacancy which had just occurred--a premature
promotion, the wiseacres said. Mr. Reed then produced his forensic
drawings, often basing them on sketches supplied by Sir Frank Lockwood,
Q.C.; yet his work fluctuated so much in quantity that it was more than
once rumoured that he and _Punch_ had parted company. But in due course
his triumph came when, in the Christmas number of 1893, he began
"Prehistoric Peeps"--including "The First Hansom," "Primeval Billiards,"
and "A Quiet Game of Whist in Primeval Times." These popular fancies
were no sudden inspiration; they were developed gradually. Following a
natural humorous bent for dealing with sham antiquities in _Punch_, Mr.
Reed had started during the previous year a series of "exhibits" in the
Imperial Institute of the Future, consisting of comic restorations of
common objects of to-day--the ridiculous speculations of the future
archaeologist. There was a much-patched and battered restoration of a
four-wheeled cab; then a comic policeman; and the draughtsman was
proceeding with a hansom when he experienced a difficulty in getting
freshness into the treatment. So he determined to become a Cuvier on his
own account, and, by going back to the beginning, to show the real
original hansom