The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 396, October 31, 1829

The fireside shows a vacant chair."

Yet, however splendid the galaxy of literary stars may be, which illumine our Annuals, they owe no little of their lustre to the engravings. It fortuitously happens that we have not "a connoisseuring eye," or we should swell this paper beyond the limits prescribed by editorial complaisance, in the pages of "THE MIRROR." We are not ignorant, however, of the incomparable advancement which the science of engraving has made in the lapse of the last ten years; or how far it has left behind those mere scratches of the graver which lit up our young admiration when a boy. Two of these we will be impertinent enough to criticise, in spite of the affection with which we cherish the visionary recollection of the pictures of grandmother's parlour. The subjects were "courtship," and "matrimony." In the former, the Chesterfieldian lover was seen handing his chere amie (a lusty wench, with red ochre cheeks) over a remarkably low stile: whether the subject, or the manner of its execution had inspired the muse, is no matter; but beneath was the following:—

"In courtship, Strephon careful hands his lass
Over a stile a child with ease might pass"

The next was "matrimony;" but, oh! "look on this picture and on this!" The careless husband, forgetting his capacious spouse, leaves her to scramble over a stile of alarming altitude, whilst his attention seems absorbed in the quarrel of two snarling terriers. Such conjugal uncourtliness elicits its merited censure in the cool satire of the accompanying motto:—