A GREAT CRUIKSHANK COLLECTION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 148, 23 June 1906, Page 11

A GREAT CRUIKSHANK COLLECTION.

* Collectors from all parts of Europe and America (says the Tribune) are as sembling in London for the sale, which will shortly take place at Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge's rooms, of the late Mr. Edwin Truman's famous collection of books and drawings, cari catures, and engravings, mainly by George Cruikshank. Dealers still tell stories of Mr. Truman's enthusiasm as a collector — how in one case he bought the whole stock of a deceased publishc in order to make sure of possessing ;i part, and how he so overloaded his cab with tho precious prints that the cab broke down on London Bridge, holding up the traffic for over half-an-hour. AH the ordinary work of Cruikshank will be represented, and with them many unique or extremely rare engravings. Among the fourteen hundred lots is the two-volume first edition of Grimm's Popular Stories, of which Ruskin wrote m his "Elements of Drawing," "If ever you happen to meet with these stories, pounco upon them instantly; tho etchings in them are the finest things next to Kembrandt's that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was invented." The very rare theatrical book, "The I British Stage, or Literary Cabinet," is supposed to. be the finest copy extant, and "The Meteor, or Monthly Censor," is another great rarity. Even the British Museum does not possess a copy of this magazine, which contains etchings of Napoleon and Talleyrand. Tho chapbooks, tho "Cries of London," the "Life of Lord Londonderry" (1822), which was suppressed at tho time, add to the attractions of the greatest Cruikshank sale ever held.

Tho women of the United Kingdom have nearly twice as many chances of being married as tho women of any other nation in Europe. This is ono of the many remarkable facts shown in the annual statistical abstract from tho principal nations of the world, issued by tho Board of Trade recently. The period covered by the figures is from 1893 to 1903 In each of those ten years there have been fourteen of sixteen marriages per thousand of the population in Great Britain, while in other countries th© rate has remained steadily at between seven and eight per thousand