How savage the satire was—­how fierce the assault—­what garbage hurled at opponents—­what foul blows were hit—­what language of Billingsgate flung!  Fancy a party in a country-house now looking over Woodward’s facetiae or some of the Gilray comicalities, or the slatternly Saturnalia of Rowlandson!  Whilst we live we must laugh, and have folks to make us laugh.  We cannot afford to lose Satyr with his pipe and dances and gambols.  But we have washed, combed, clothed, and taught the rogue good manners:  or rather, let us say, he has learned them himself; for he is of nature soft and kindly, and he has put aside his mad pranks and tipsy habits; and, frolicsome always, has become gentle and harmless, smitten into shame by he pure presence of our women and the sweet confiding smiles of our children.  Among the veterans, the old pictorial satirists, we have mentioned the famous name of one humorous designer who is still alive and at work.  Did we not see, by his own hand, his own portrait of his own famous face, and whiskers, in the Illustrated London News the other day?  There was a print in that paper of an assemblage of Teetotalers in “Sadler’s Wells Theatre,” and we straightway recognized the old Roman hand—­the old Roman’s of the time of Plancus—­George Cruikshank’s.  There were the old bonnets and droll faces and shoes, and short trousers, and figures of 1820 sure enough.  And there was George (who has taken to the water-doctrine, as all the world knows) handing some teetotal cresses over a plank to the table where the pledge was being administered.  How often has George drawn that picture of Cruikshank!  Where haven’t we seen it?  How fine it was, facing the effigy of Mr. Ainsworth in Ainsworth’s Magazine when George illustrated that periodical!  How grand and severe he stands in that design in G. C.’s “Omnibus,” where he represents himself tonged like St. Dunstan, and tweaking a wretch of a publisher by the nose!  The collectors of George’s etchings—­oh the charming etchings!—­oh the dear old “German Popular Tales!”—­the capital “Points of Humor”—­the delightful “Phrenology” and “Scrap-books,” of the good time, our time—­Plancus’s in fact!—­the collectors of the Georgian etchings, we say, have at least a hundred pictures of the artist.  Why, we remember him in his favorite Hessian boots in “Tom and Jerry” itself; and in woodcuts as far back as the Queen’s trial.  He has rather deserted satire and comedy of late years, having turned his attention to the serious, and warlike, and sublime.  Having confessed our age and prejudices, we prefer the comic and fanciful to the historic, romantic, and at present didactic George.  May respect, and length of days, and comfortable repose attend the brave, honest, kindly, pure-minded artist, humorist, moralist!  It was he first who brought English pictorial humor and children acquainted.  Our young people and their fathers and mothers owe him many a pleasant hour and harmless laugh.  Is there no way in which the country could acknowledge the long services and brave career of such a friend and benefactor?