The Sun.
London, England, 1830-11-02 00:00:00

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, No.

Under the diligent auspices of Mr. Jenian,
'this work, we hear, is rapidly gaining popularity.
Ws are glad of this ; for the biographical
sketches are hit off with propriety and good
fseling, and without parade of language or senti-
ment; and the portraits as works of art are ad-
: !nimble, and as likenesses, faithful.

THE ANNUALS FOR 1831.

'HE HIJMOURIST FOR 1881.—Losnos, 1830.

Another of the prolific family of the Annuals,
and if inferior to some of its rivals in polish and
the "riatYs the number, and the talent of its
engravings. All these (and they amount to
fiftY) are from designs by the late caricaturist
Rowlandson, an artist who was once eminent
and Popular in his line, but who is now pretty
fleetly forgotten, eclipsed by the superior genius
or our modern Hogarth, Cruickshank. As a
caricaturist of real life, of whatever fell under
his own immediate observation, Rowlandson
possessed talents that entitle him to be remem-
bered beyond his age. But he had not the
exuberant--frolicsome imagination of Cruick-
shank. He could never have hit off an imp—
a daemon--a night-Mare, or some such gro-
, league anomaly, in a way to make the spectator
split his sides with laughing. He could never,
for instance, have illustrated 4, Peter Schla-
Mil," or the legend of 44 Old Booty," those
Most fortunate of illustrations. Rowland-
son dealt only with the common-places of
- life, He was no creator, like Cruickshank, of
a world of comic fancies. He was acute,
observant, but neither inventive nor original.
caricatures are for the most part deficient.in
Power, perhaps we should rather say exaggera-
tion, for it is so much the fashion now-a-days to
o'er-do every thing, that simple, unsophisticated
nature, whether in art, in literature, or on the
stage, makes little or no impression on our highly
stimulated faculties. Simple viands no longer
suit our palates, we must have strongly
spiced dainties. In the comedy of art, Cruick-
shank bas taught us to be fastidious, and disregard
as a thing of no mark nor likelihood, the
huinorous simplicity of Rowlandaon. In the
present volume, however, this artist's designs are
seen to great advantage. A few of them are
exquisitely humorous in conception. Death
riding. behind the counter compounding me-
divine in an apothecary's shop, is hardly en
allegory ; it is true to the life. We have seen
t,he thing a hundred times. " An Enemy
"sating down---Hope in the distance," is also
capital. In the front ground stands a bull bow-
Ing and scraping like a dancing-master, and
Preparing to toss a dog. Just beside this furious
animal, whose neck is as thick as a mile-stone,
Ilea a young woman, and behind her an old man

with a wooden leg, bawling and shouting like a
hurricane, for help. In the distance a fat, elderly
woman is seen scrambling over a gate-post, and
revealing in the operation a pair of legs, com-
pared to which the pillars in front of St.
Martin's Church are mere trifles. " Too Hot
and Too Late" is another exquisitely farcical
illustration. Three brace of the fattest con-
ceivable pedestrians are perspiring up a hill on
their road to dinner at a large house which stands
on the very summit. By the agony depicted in
their faces they are manifestly too late for the
soup, and, we fear, for the fish, though the two
parsons who (of course) are considerably in ad-
vance of the others, may possibly stand some
chance of coming in for a share of cold tut but.
It would be shocking were the Church to be in
Danger on such an important occasion as this.
The penultimate couple who are next in advance
to the Bishops (they must be Bishops,
they are so fat, and seem to feel their
situation so acutely), consist of a husband
and wife, both in a congenial state of liquefac-
tion. One is consoling the other, though both
are broken-kneed and winded. With regard to
the last brace, an Alderman and his apopletic
pug-dog, each is in that extreme state of ex-
haustion which a good Christian cannot con-
template without emotion. The Alderman
hobbles along, puffing like a grampus, without
his wig : his dog looks up to him as if deriving
a grim consolation from the superior misery of
his master ; and in the anguished features of
both we read that they have long since resigned
all hopes of getting to the top of the hill before
the ladies have summoned the gentlemen to tea
—a hard case but life is full of disappointments.
" Rich and Poor" is a clever characteristic illus.

tration of the truth, that the greatest crime in
England is poverty. For all but this there is
a salvo. The adulterer may be pardoned and
even praised ; the expert adventurer, after a sea-
son of purification at Botany Bay, may in time,
by diligence and adroit timeserving, win his way
to the Peerage ; but the poor man—he who can-
not afford to give a dinner to those who need it
not—is without the pale of redemption. He
is anathematized—excommunicated of men.
The church rejects him, the laity shun him;
there is pollution in his touch ; sin in his look;
a world of atrocities in the very tone of his
voice. He is the Paria of society, an unclean
spirit possessed by the greatest of all devils---
poverty.—" A Disciplinarian" is an apt com-
mentary on the marriage state. A Jezebel of a
wife is busy convincing her husband by that most
resistless of all arguments a sound drubbing.
Already she has knocked the truth into his head
through the medium of the poker, though the
uncourteous wretch appears insensible to the
value of her persuasive admonitions. It is sur-
prising how little true gratitude there is in the
world The Cow Doctor" is remarkable for
the figure and face of the veterinary surgeon,
who looks exactly like a kangaroo in spectacles.
—The remaining illustrations possess nearly
equal humour with those which we have feebly
attempted to describe ; and the prose and verse
in explanation are worthy of them.

ACKERAIANN'S JUVENILE FORGET ME NOT,

An elegant little work, characteristic both as
regards its embellishments, and its literary contri-
butions.

MRS. HALL'S JUVENILE FORGET ME NOT.

This, we doubt not, will be a favourite with
young people of both sexes. The engravings
are all good, some of them superior, as for in-
stance the one entitled Docility, which, appro-
priately enough, is placed as a frontispiece ; and
the literary is worthy of the pictorial department.
Among the tales, the most interesting, because
the best, and the most simply told, is decidedly
Gaspard and his Dog. We wish we could
afford space to extract this agreeable narrative.
But our limits are imperative.