be of Corinthian
Tom dancing with Corinthian Kate at Almack's! What a prodigious dress
Kate wore! With what graceful ABANDON the pair flung their arms about
as they swept through the mazy quadrille, with all the noblemen standing
round in their stars and uniforms! You may still, doubtless, see the
pictures at the British Museum, or find the volumes in the corner of
some old country-house library. You are led to suppose that the English
aristocracy of 1820 DID dance and caper in that way, and box and drink
at Tom Cribb's, and knock down watchmen; and the children of to-day,
turning to their elders, may say "Grandmamma, did you wear such a dress
as that, when you danced at Almack's? There was very little of it,
grandmamma. Did grandpapa kill many watchmen when he was a young man,
and frequent thieves' gin-shops, cock-fights, and the ring, before you
married him? Did he use to talk the extraordinary slang and jargon which
is printed in this book? He is very much changed. He seems a gentlemanly
old boy enough now."

In the above-named consulate, when WE had grandfathers alive, there
would be in the old gentleman's library in the country two or three old
mottled portfolios, or great swollen scrap-books of blue paper, full of
the comic prints of grandpapa's time, ere Plancus ever had the fasces
borne before him. These prints were signed Gilray, Bunbury, Rowlandson,
Woodward, and some actually George Cruikshank--for George is a veteran
now, and he took the etching needle in hand as a child. He caricatured
"Boney," borrowing not a little from Gilray in his first puerile
efforts. He drew Louis XVIII. trying on Boney's boots. Before the
century was actually in its teens we believe that George Cruikshank was
amusing the public.

In those great colored prints in our grandfathers' portfolios in
the library, and in some other apartments of the house, where the
caricatures used to be pasted in those days, we found things quite
beyond our comprehension. Boney was represented as a fierce dwarf, with
goggle eyes, a huge laced hat and tricolored plume, a crooked sabre,
reeking with blood: a little demon revelling in lust, murder, massacre.
John Bull was shown kicking him a good deal: indeed he was prodigiously
kicked all through that series of pictures; by Sidney Smith and
our brave allies the gallant Turks; by the excellent and patriotic
Spaniards; by the amiable and indignant Russians,--all nations had boots
at the service of poor Mas