CRUIKSHANK ON TIME.' [JUNE 1827.] TIME is generally represented either in the character of a Stream, or of an Old Gentleman. Of Time, as a Stream, the less that is said in a Magazine with any pretensions to originality, the better. Of Time as an Old Gentleman, suffice it to remark, that he is alternately active and passive. When active, he is armed with a scythe, and an excellent mower he is, laying a double swathe with inimitable neatness and precision; when passive, a crowd of idle people are engaged in killing Time, and he appears lying in a stupor; but no sooner have the delinquents fled, than he jumps to his feet with all the alacrity of a man in his seventh thousand year, declines the offer of medical assistance, and disappears. Formerly, he used to wear a long beard, and pride himself on a "slape sconce;" but nowadays he often sports a chin that shows like a stubble-field at harvest-home," and mounts a wig that gives him quite the air of an Apollo. In good truth, old Father Time, as he used to be called, is now a confirmed bachelor at whom maidenly ladies of a certain age keep setting their caps in vain. You see him frequently sitting in a bang-up greatcoat, on the box beside Coachee, or even with the ribands in his hand, driving like the very devil; and we know of nobody else to whom he bears so strong a general resemblance as Washington Irving's Stout Gentleman. George Cruikshank and we have long been cronies, and George has treated us with some admirable Illustrations of his Friend Time's character and pursuits. The frontispiece is excellent. There Time is seen resuming his antique appearance and propensities; winged, bearded, with his notorious. fore-lock, and hungry as hell. The solitary glutton has a 1 Illustrations of Time. By GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. board spread, for his exclusive delight, with all the delicacies of all the seasons. At head and foot of the table stands a castle-one quite fresh, only a few years old, the other dilapidated and ivy-wreathed, that the epicure may glut his maw with variety as he crunches battlement and foundation-stone. The two corner-dishes near the head of the table are a stately sycamore grove, and a three-decker; near the foot a date tree and a dromedary, a farmhouse and a wheat-stalk. The three side-dishes on the farther side of the table, are a shepherd piping to his flock; a 68-pounder carronade and grape-shot; a bull and a heifer. Of the three side-dishes close to the devourer, one is untouched, or nearly so,-a splendid coach, full of nobility, with only the leaders as yet eaten up; in a spoon in his right hand, a church; on a fork in his left, an elephant, endorsed with a tower bristling with spears; while in the centre of the table, is an ample miscellany of all ages, and sexes, and professions; with plumes, and helms, and crowns, and all the meanest and most majestic paraphernalia of mortality. There Tempus Edax sits, like Christopher North at Ambrose's, ere Tickler, and ODoherty, and the Shepherd have appeared, impatient to have all the good things of this world to himself; although, in gobbling up all the real and movable property in the universe, he leave himself to die of famine on the Last Day. George Cruikshank knows better than some people we could name, the grand secret of descending with skill and dexterity from stilts, and walking like an ordinary biped. The Frontispiece, therefore, is the only very sublime thing in all the Illustrations—and turning it over, dromedaries, elephants, towers, and temples and all, lo! "TIME CALLED AND TIME COME." The scene is on Moulseyhurst-within a roped ring of twenty feet-worth all the Boxiana of this Magazine, of Pierce Egan, and of John Bee. Conspicuous in the middle of the picture stands the Time-Keeper, with his tatler in his hand,—bawling the monosyllable. To the left, within the ropes, lies on his back, with his face up to heaven, the Man of the flash-side-say Jem Ward-in a state of innocence. His daylights are darkened, and something more than slumber has sealed up his eyes, which have been lanced in vain. In vain, too, does his strong-lunged Second roar into his ear. To VOL. V. I him, it is like a faint and far-off echo-or perhaps he hears it not at all, but is deaf as a house. His Bottle-holder on one knee, and with one fist half-angrily clenched, seems to upbraid him for being past the restoration of the water of life. A Jew kneels over him in despair, muttering and moaning about his "monish,”—while a sporting surgeon feels the feeble pulse in a wrist that is overshadowed by the blue swollen hand, all of whose knuckles seem dislocated with paying away at Crawley's os frontis; and a great big hulking disconsolate Cockney, such a one as always appertains to the flash-side, half swell and half gull, can with difficulty believe his heyes when the odds are finally floored, and his betting-book is a bankrupt. And there, close to the ninny's elbow, is that familiar, Bill Richmond, the Lily-white, with his box of ivories unlidded, his ogles leering with a knavish I've-neither-lost-nor-win hedgingish expression, in which, to the cheated Cockney, no consolation is to be found, and his topper so askew and askance on his knowledge-box, that, but for an enormous organ of destructiveness, it would slide to the sod. Five more finished reprobates you will rarely see in a pyramidical group, and should the man die they will be all lagged together;—but the gallows is not to be robbed of its dues-for a vein is about to be opened—and Jem, though vanquished to-day, will yet live to be elevated to that conspicuous situation which he was born and bred to adorn. But look at his opponent! Second and bottle-holder lift him like a log from the sod. Those masses of muscle have lost their strength; he is sick and exhausted as a dog that, after a forty-mile run, lies down cheek-by-jowl with reynard on the road-mire his face is indistinguishable in mouth, nose, or eyes-but he staggers up to the scratch like a drunkard, and then, as deaf to time as his antagonist, falls down with a squelch-thirteen stone-bating a few pounds of sweat and blood. While we live, Jem Ward shall never be Champion. Is it the part of a man who aspires to the championship, to travel about the country, shamming Yokel, and cheating haw-bucks and provincial boxers out of the purses for which they wish honestly to contend? No-it is but one form of that swindling at which Jem, under various auspices, has long been so expert—and we cannot but wonder at John Bee, as honest a man as lives, and in all other instances the sworn foe of knavery, giving countenance to such base and unmanly tricks as were never practised before by any of the first-rate men. Then, in the London ring itself, has not the knave and fool been guilty of the most barefaced cross with Abbot? And of something very like a cross with Josh Hudson? If Hudson really licked him, what title has he to be a candidate for the championship at all? If Josh did not lick him, then Jem should, for that his second offence, have been kicked for ever out of the ring. His battle with Crawley was a fair one—and was he not fairly beaten? After all this, it is sickening to hear him talked of, even yet, by the flash-side, as Champion. If ever he fight Brown of Bridgenorth, he will bite the dust. Jem is a fine fighter, that is certain-active, skilful, a hard hitter, nor is his bottom bad. But he has not power to stand up against Brown, six of whose blows will settle his hash. It is all very well to talk about "poor old Shelton" whom Brown beat. "Poor old Shelton" is only a very few years, some three or four, older than Brown; and although he had seen rather too much service, was he not, previous to that battle, considered the very best two-handed fighter on the list? But be all this as it may, no cross-cove, whether knave or fool, should ever in our day be the Champion of England. Forbid it, ye living worthies, Cribb and Spring-forbid it, ye dead immortals, Jem Belcher and the Game Chicken! Forbid it, ye shades of heroes all, from Broughton to Power! Forbid it, ye—whose mauleys are armed more formidably than of old with the cestus-with the unpurchased pen, pencil, and press -Bee, Egan, Cruikshank, and North-for the eyes of your country are upon you, and "England expects every man to do his duty." But enough-too much perhaps-of blows and blood-so cast your eye, fair reader, down to the left-hand corner of Plate I.-and tell us what thou readest "A SHORT TIMEGOING OF AN ERRAND." There stands, winged gorgeously as that superb moth, the great owl-moth of Brazil, him whom the enthusiastic Kirby calls the glory of the Noctuidæ, him whose portraiture James Wilson, brother of the Professor, hath in his late Illustrations of Zoology with pen and pencil so finely visioned―there, we say, stands Oberon the fairy king-and Puck, is it ?—yes, Puck let it be—like lightning obeying his lord's command. Oberon. “Fetch me this herb—and be thou here again, Puck. "I'll put a girdle round about the earth How infinitely more poetical are wings like these, than seven- -one single step would take us up to Posso, seven miles above Peebles! That would never do. By mincing our steps, indeed, one might contrive to stop at Innerleithen; but suppose a gadfly were to sting one's hip at the Pirn-one unintentional stride would deposit Christopher at Drummelzier, and another over the Cruik, and far away down Annan Water! Therefore, there is nothing like wings. On wings you can flutter, and glide, and float and soar—now like a hummingbird among the flowers—now like a swan, half rowing, half sailing, and half flying adown a river-now like an eagle afloat in the blue ocean of heaven, or shooting sunwards, invisible in excess of light, and bidding farewell to earth and its humble shadows. "O that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest!" Who hath not, in some heavy hour or other, from the depth of his very soul, devoutly passionately-hopelessly-breathed that wish to escape beyond the limits of woe and sin-not into the world of dreamless death-for, weary though the immortal pilgrim may have been, never desired he the doom of annihilationuntroubled although it be, shorn of all the attributes of beingbut he hath prayed for the wings of the dove, because that fair creature, as she wheeled herself away from the sight of human dwellings, hath seemed to disappear to his imagination among old glimmering forests wherein she foldeth her wing and falleth gladly asleep-and therefore, in those agitated times, when the spirits of men acknowledge kindred with the inferior creatures, and would fain interchange with them powers and qualities, they are willing even to lay down their |