We are thus carried at once into the supernatural, and here we find Cruikshank reigning supreme. He has invented in his time a little comic pandemonium, peopled with the most droll, good-natured fiends possible. We have before us Chamisso's 'Peter Schlemihl,' with Cruikshank's designs translated into German, and gaining nothing by the change. The * Kinder und Hans-Maerchen ' of Grimm are likewise ornamented with a frontispiece, copied from that one which appeared to the amusing version of the English work. The books on Phrenology and Time have been imitated by the same nation; and even in France, whither reputation travels slower than to any country except China, we have seen copies of the works of George Cruikshank.
He in return has complimented the French by illustrating a couple of lives of Napoleon, and the ' Life in Paris ' before mentioned. He has also made designs for Victor Hugo's ' Hans of Iceland.' Strange, wild etchings were those, on a strange, mad subject; not so good in our notion as the designs for the German books, the peculiar humour of which latter seemed to suit the artist exactly. There is a mixture of the awful and the ridiculous in these, which perpetually excites and keeps awake the reader's attention; the German writer and the English artist seem to have an entire faith in their subject. The reader, no doubt, remembers the awful passage in ' Peter Schlemihl,' where the little gentleman purchases the shadow of that hero -- " Have the kindness, noble sir, to examine and try
