Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/134

126 seemed to be, in their refusal to eat them at Christmas time. It is only within a generation that the Presbyterian or Congregationalist descendant of the Puritan of two centuries ago, has been persuaded to yield his principles and his digestion to the uncovenanted mercies of the maker of Christmas pies—profane, idolatrous and indigestible.

has been started in England to procure funds for a testimonial to George Cruikshank, who, at an advanced age, finds himself, after a life of industry, in not very good circumstances. We presume that he is not actually in want, for he has done a prodigious deal of work, almost all of which has been very popular, and such as, if it had been produced to day when artists are so highly paid, would have made him rich; but it is felt that it ought not to be said of George Cruikshank, that he is merely not poor; the present generation of men in middle life owes him more than this; it owes him a generous competence, heartily and gratefully given. Thackeray once wrote of him: "Before the century was actually in his teens, we believe that George Cruikshank was amusing the public. Is there no way in which the country could acknowledge the long services and brave career of such a friend and benefactor?" This appeal has awakened a wide response, and the first men in England, with a few of the men best known in this country, have agreed to act as a committee to collect a sum of money large enough to cheer the old man's heart with the assurance that the world to which he has given so much pleasure, still remembers him, and would give him pleasure in its turn. The long list of honorable names is headed by that of John Ruskin as President, and includes of living Englishmen almost every name famous in literature, science, and art. Tennyson and Browning, Longfellow and Lowell, Reade and Kingsley, Charles Knight and Robert Chambers, Swinburne and Allingham, among men of letters; Huxley and Acland, Ansted and Wilson, among men of science; Holman Hunt, Frederick Leighton, Burne Jones, Arthur Hughes, Ford Madox Brown, John Gilbert, J. A. Whistler, Thomas Woolner, Dante G. Kossetti, William Burges, George Street, and John P. Seddon, among artists and architects: these names out of a list of over three hundred, all more or less widely known, and the greater part of them distinguished, will suffice to show that this is no ordinary complimentary testimonial, but that a man is to be honored for whom no crown is thought fit that is not woven by the very princes of the twin worlds of Art and Letters.

One name surprises us by its absence from this roll-call of wits—the name of a man who personally owes more to the genius of Cruikshank than any one whose name is inscribed on it. It is probably merely by accident that the name of Charles Dickens is not to be found in this catalogue. It should have been at the head of it. For so long as "Oliver Twist" shall be read through tears and smiles, so long will Cruikshank's illustrations to that immortal fiction sink with it into the memory, and become forever part and parcel of the world's delight in it. Never before, perhaps, was an author so fortunate as to meet with such an interpreter, and we shall have to believe Charles Dickens a very different man from what his writings report him, if we are to think him insensible to his obligation or unwilling to acknowledge it. Who that has ever seen it can forget the picture of Mrs. Corney and Mr. Bumble at tea; or Charlotte opening oysters for Noah Claypole; or Oliver asking for more; or Fagin giving lessons to his boys in pocket-picking; or Oliver, shot in robbing Mr. Maylie's house; or Sykes and his dog; or Fagin in prison? The edition that we read when a boy, was illustrated by these etchings, and so deep an impression did they make upon our mind that to