The frontispiece to the first of these books, engraved on steel with much delicacy by Davenport, is so carefully drawn, and displays such refinement of humour, that it might be ascribed to Wilkie or Smirke; and in Knickerbocker, George could hardly then have become a misocapnist when he limned with such intense gusto the "Pipe-Plot," with its group of smoke-compelling burghers, or the "Death of Walter the Doubter," where his lymphatic Excellency, lungs and pipe exhausted together, exhales his peaceful soul in the last whiff of canaster!
