1 JANUARY 1859, Page 35

fin Iris.

CHU TK8 HANK REP UBLIRKED. •

Keen, honest, laughter-moving George Cruikshank has been for some thirty or forty years the friend of every one, man and boy, who levee whim, humour, and art. Contemporary British art has no name more popular, or more respectable. One may count, therefore, upon a veil general welcome for the present reissue of many of those quaint, sug- gestive, and capital little etchings which, if laughter has a ghost, must be haunted by the spirit of many a guffaw of our fathers and grand- fathers, and many a childish titter of those who now look upon the same things with the eye of manhood. The Illustrations of Time reproduced in this first part ring the changes, it will be recollected, in a number of ways, upon Time the fact and Time the word,—now conveying a moral lesson none the loss aptly because humorously, now aiming at nothing above a mere joke or pun. "Term Time,' where the lawyer, aft& swallowing the oyster, announces to plaintiff and defendant that "the Court awards them a shell each," is one of the beet known : another of the "Hard Times," where a starving street ballad-singer, screeching out "the Roast Beef of Old England," fixer' a pair of dreadful eyes upoa a scraggy joint hung up temptingly in the shop of a dozing butcher, is one of those which combine a serious suggestion with grotesque form. he the title-page, which we infer to be new, " Tempus Edax Rerum " is wit- tily figured at dinner, with such articles for his dishes as a sailing ship, a Gothic abbey, and an elephant with a manned castle on its back, which he is about to take down at a gulp : the real things being treated by the great devourer as their confectionery images would be by a Christmas party. The "Sketch-book," the "Phrenological Illustrae tions," and others, are to follow in the series, if we may judge from the design on the wrapper. Grave and gay, terrible and ridiculous, Mr. Credo- ahank has whole shoals of good things to reproduce.

• Reissue of Scraps and Sketches by George Cruikshanh. In Monthly Parts. Part I. Illustrations of Time. Published by Kent and Co.