London People. By Charles Bennett. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)-3lost of
these sketches have already appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, but they are well worthy of collection in a permanent form. The letter- press is slight enough, but a second study of the pencil sketches has only confirmed our original judgment. They are most excellent, so excellent as to make us regret that that they should not have a worthier setting. Mr. Bennett should illustrate an edition of Theophrastus, and so produce a book which would be at once in every study and on every drawing-room table. With one exception, that of "Young Gentlemen in Belgravia," every plate is a study, and there are one or two heads, notably those of the attorneys, page 28, and " Pegler," on which whole volumes might be written. The last is a perfect gem, the best illustra- tion of the London species of the genus John Bull, a very curious and exceptional variety of the typo, we ever remember to have seen. There is character in every stroke in that face, and Mr. Bennett has succeeded as few of our caricaturists can in rendering in black and white the idea of colour. He is a little less successful in his female heads, the "Mar- ket-woman "excepted, falling into the mistake of all caricaturists except Leech, who invariably make the characteristics of female heads too strong. No woman if fit to pass as a typo has an absolutely definite face. The drawings are excellently printed, and the whole book worthy of something better than the flimsy stuff used as a kind of verbal framing.
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