all their strangeness, are only of the earth earthy. Fuseli's fairies belong to the infernal regions; they are monstrous, lurid, and hideously melancholy. Mr Cruikshank alone has had a true insight into the character of the " little people." They are something like men and women, and yet not flesh and blood; they are laughing and mischievous, but why we know not. Mr Cruikshank, however, has had some dream or the other, or else a natural mysterious instinct (as the Seherinn of Prevorst had for beholding ghosts), or else some preternatural fairy revelation, which has made him acquainted with the looks and ways of the fantastical subjects of Oberon and Titania.
We have, unfortunately, no fairy portraits in the gallery which we have been enabled to provide for the public; but, on the other hand, can descend lower than fairy-land, and have pro- cured some fine specimens of devils. One has already been raised, and the reader has seen him tempting a fat Dutch burgomaster, in ancient gloomy market-place, such as George Cruikshank can draw as well as Mr Front, Mr Nash, or any man living. Here is our friend once more; our friend the burgomaster, in a highly excited state, and running as hard as his great legs will carry him, with our mutual enemy at his tail.
What are the bets ? Will that long-legged bond-holder of a
devil come up with the honest Dutchman ? It serves him right,
why did he put his name to stamped paper ? And yet we should
not wonder that some lucky chance will turn up in burgomaster's
favour, and that his infernal creditor will lose his labour; for one
so proverbially cunning as yonder tall individual with the saucer
eyes, it must be confessed that he has been very often outwitted.
There is, for instance, the case of ' The Gentleman in Black,' which has been illustrated by our artist. A young French gentleman, by name M. Desonge, who having expended his patrimony in a variety of taverns and gaming-houses, was one day pondering upon the exhausted state of his finances; and utterly
